State law doesn’t prohibit someone from running in a district where they don’t live, but they must move there before assuming office. State Rep. Elijah Behnke says he would rent a home in the new district.
By Peter Cameron, THE BADGER PROJECT
The most recent round of redistricting in Wisconsin hit like a thunderbolt into the political status quo in the state.
The new political maps, submitted to the state Supreme Court by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and approved by the Republican-controlled state Senate and Assembly, not only made the Legislature competitive for the first time in more than a decade, it also moved many incumbents into new districts.
One of those was state Rep. Elijah Behnke, a Republican who lives about 30 miles north of the city of Green Bay near Lake Michigan.
Behnke then made the surprising choice against running in the 4th Assembly District, where his home sits, instead deciding to declare his candidacy in the neighboring 6th Assembly District to the west.
Asked via email about his plans should he win, Behnke, who is married with two children, said “I will be renting in the Town of Chase (which is in the 6th Assembly District) while we search for our forever home,” Behnke wrote.
State law only requires legislators live in the district they represent once they take office, which for Behnke would be in January. They do not need to live in a district in order to run for office there.
Why did Behnke decide to run in a district in which he didn’t live?
Behnke noted that he currently lives close to the district line, and preferred to represent a more rural district, rather than the 4th, which includes Green Bay’s northern suburbs.
“I grew up on a 40 cow, 120 acre dairy farm,” he wrote in an email. “A lot of the time small farms and rural towns get forgotten in Madison. I like to be a voice for those that can’t afford a lobbyist. We lost the family barn in 2022, and were actually looking to move in the fall of 2023 anyway. It was not an easy decision, but through prayer and lots of family discussion, we felt this was the best for our family.”
Either way, Behnke had to run a primary campaign against an incumbent from his own party, as both the 4th and 6th Assembly Districts each had Republican state representatives already living there. But in the 6th lived state Rep. Pete Schmidt, who in 2019 pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors for an incident in which he was accused of choking a worker at his farm.
Schmidt was first elected to the seat in 2022, but lost badly in August to Behnke’s primary challenge.
In an interview with Wisconsin Watch, Behnke agreed that Schmidt was an “easier target” than state Rep. David Steffen, who lives in the 4th and is running to represent it this year.
Instead, Behnke’s father Darwin Behnke ran in the Republican primary to unseat Steffen in August, but was crushed by the incumbent.
In the general election, Elijah Benhke is being challenged by Shawano Democrat Shirley Hinze, a longshot candidate who doesn’t have a campaign website.
Behnke, who runs on “Conservative Family Values” and touts being “an active member in my Faith community” on his website, was secretly filmed in 2022 saying that Republicans “should cheat like Democrats” to win future elections and that he wanted to “punch” Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
He later told a reporter that he regretted his choice of words.
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