October 22, 2025
Showing Up
Matthew Rodreick
We had a whirlwind of a day at the Wisconsin Capitol. Last Wednesday, I drove to Madison to meet up with our advocates there, who showed up once again to push for smart SCI research funding. Just to be clear, these are the same folks who have already shown up countless times after so many difficult meetings, so many shared stories of struggle and so many disappointments.
In the rotunda of the Wisconsin Capitol last Wednesday, October 15, 2025. From left: Bethany Sullivan, Samantha Troyer, Mackenzie Wann, Me, John Martinson, and Mike Mohr.
Overcoming that inertia is tough for anyone. To do it with an SCI is practically heroic on both a logistical and psychological level. And as the day started, it looked like we were facing yet another disappointment.
We all met up in Senator Wanggaard’s office where his chief of staff informed us that our $5M Research Grant bill was not going to be scheduled for a floor vote. Though we have support from a majority of Republican Senators, we don’t have buy-in from the “mandatory” threshold of 17 Republican senators.
Why do we need more than a majority to move forward? You may remember that the Republican Majority in Wisconsin practices what’s called the “Rule of 17”, an unspoken agreement to only schedule bills for floor votes if they can pass them without Democratic Party support (i.e., 17 votes).
Our bill has enough votes to pass with both parties but not enough to pass with only Republicans. This means that a few very conservative Senators can withhold their vote and keep our bill (or any bill) from being scheduled for a full vote on the floor. It’s not very democratic, but it serves the party in power, which of course seems to be the standard in American politics today. Suffice it to say, being told our bill was basically dead in the water was a hard thing to hear at the beginning of our day, though not entirely unexpected since that’s how we failed to pass last session.
But we were already there - we showed up - so we weren’t just going to give up, go to lunch and cry in our soup. Instead, we went straight into impromptu meetings with our opponents, as well as a couple of meetings with supporters for intel.
Long story short, we discovered two encouraging things:
- A growing number of Republican Senators are voicing their displeasure with the Rule of 17, and are pushing back within their party. To quote one of them we met with: “there are a lot of good bills that will not pass because one or two senators will not budge…and yours is one of them.”
- We discovered that we have more votes than our Senate author or the Majority Leader knew about, thanks to an amendment we negotiated a couple of months ago. Due to some parliamentary processes that amendment was not fully known throughout the Senate.
So, over the next couple hours we crisscrossed the Capitol meeting with Senators in the hallways and outer offices to both influence and listen closely to legislator’s responses in an attempt to read between the lines.
After a bunch of these guerilla style meetings we crowded into the outer office of the Senate Majority Leader, Devin LeMahieu. At first, his staff gave us a bit of a run around regarding the number of Senators who supported our bill, but we kept pressing. When Sen. LeMahieu’s Chief of Staff learned that we actually had more yes votes than she thought she said, “well that’s a whole different story…tell Sen. Wanggaard to make a formal request.” So we did.
We ended the day by informing our authors in both the House and Senate that there appears to be a path for getting our $5M SCI Research Grant bill to the floor!
Samantha, Bethany and Mackenzie outside the Capitol in Madison.
Our collective persistence is making a difference. We press on, through whatever crack in the door we can find. And it is all happening because we continue to show up. We show up to tell our stories, hone our talking points, figure out how the system works and use the language of that system to voice our community’s priorities.
Many many thanks to our Wisconsin advocates who won’t give up: John Martinson, Samantha Troyer, Bethany Sullivan, Mike Mohr, MacKenzie Wann and the others who couldn’t be there that day but have stayed in the fight.
And thanks to our authors, Sen. Wanggaard (Sen.Wanggaard@legis.wisconsin.gov) and Rep. Tittl (Rep.Tittl@legis.wisconsin.gov). Send them a note to put some wind in their sails so we can get this thing done.
And finally, thanks to those of you who took time to call and write to Senator LeMahieu. Your efforts helped keep our bill top of mind and surely helped our conversation with the Senators staff. Let’s keep showing up, however we can, to support this necessary work.
PS - Your financial support is what enables us to keep showing up. Consider donating if you haven't already, or increasing your support if you are able. Our monthly donors are critical to these efforts as well so consider chipping in monthly if you haven't already!
