Headway in Wisconsin

Feb 3, 2026

Headway in Wisconsin

Matthew Rodreick

Last week I hopped in the car and left Minneapolis for Madison, Wisconsin. Once again we are very close to passing our $5 million SCI Research Grant bill (AB92/SB99). But, as usual, there is a small cadre of Senators who are holding us back. Some of them are hard line fiscal conservatives who refuse to see government as a solution to any societal problem and some just don’t understand the scope and complexity of the problems inherent to the injury or the medical research ecosystem.

So, our staff and Wisconsin advocates decided that getting face time in the waning weeks of the legislative session was our best bet. I was joined by stalwart Wisconsin advocates John Martinson, the stubborn and relentless veteran Christina Baurichter and longtime friend of U2FP, scientist Murray Blackmore. Without any pre-scheduled meetings we moved guerilla style through the legislature, catching staff and legislators in between committee meetings for any face to face opportunities to make our case.

Our meeting with Senator Rob Hutton (far right; R - Brookfield, District 5 went well and we believe we may have swayed him to vote yes. Christina Baurichter (left), John Martinson (center) and Murray Blackmore (right) were invaluable to our progress with legislators last week.

The purpose of our day was to try and sway our key opponents and to gather intel on what the counter arguments were and what leverage we could gain to give our bill some momentum.

Our talking points are somewhat complex, but we are now well practiced at delivering them:

Yes there are only about 10,500 people in Wisconsin living with SCI, but they represent several hundred million dollars in costs of care
In a highly competitive federal funding landscape, Wisconsin SCI researchers will be far more competitive with a small investment in the space
Both of these are return on investment (ROI) arguments: attracting federal and private funding in the near term and reducing costs of care in the medium and long term
Lastly, placing people with lived experience of SCI at the decision making table is one of the ways to hold government funds accountable to their stated purpose

How did it go? We earned one more yes vote and swayed two legislators closer to a yes. For background, the WI legislature has this unwritten ‘Rule of 17.’ Since the Republicans hold a slight super majority in the Senate, leadership will not put any bill up for a vote that requires Democrat’s vote to pass. This means that 2 Republican Senators can paralyze the entire legislature. By our calculations if we got our bill to the floor we would pass with about 90% of the House and Senate. But we are stymied by two to three Senators. We needed 4 and we got 1 for sure and maybe two more.

Republican senators are holding a caucus (informal show of hands) later this week that will include our proposed bill. We’ve risen in priority as a result of our presence and progress at the Capitol last week.

So stay tuned and be ready - we anticipate asking for your calls and emails toward the end of this week.