Mandela Barnes Will Run for Governor

Mandela Barnes. (Public Domain).

Former Lieutenant Governor and state legislator Mandela Barnes has announced he will run for governor in the 2026 election, which will immediately shake up the Democratic primary.

His campaign is touting polls showing he has more support than any other Democrat in the gubernatorial race and runs well ahead of U.S. Congressman Tom Tiffany, widely seen as the front runner in the Republican primary.

In a video launching his campaign, Barnes promised to stand up to the “chaos” caused by the policies of Republican President Donald Trump and make life more affordable for Wisconsin

“Seems like the harder you work, the more Washington looks the other way: lower prices for billionaires, higher prices for working people,” Barnes declared. “Under Trump the name of the game has been distraction and chaos to avoid accountability… The only way for our state to move forward is to reject the Washington way, and get things done the Wisconsin way.”

Barnes announced that he will do a statewide “Wisconsin-Way” tour “to discuss how high costs are impacting Wisconsinites.”

He promised to “close tax loopholes for the ultra rich so we can cut taxes for middle-class families,” and to expand BadgerCare, Wisconsin’s version of Medicaid, by accepting federal funding that Republican legislators have long resisted.

Barnes also favors overturning Act 10, the signature law of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, which decimated public worker unions and led to reductions in worker salaries and benefits.

Barnes, 39, served as a state Assembly representative for one term (2013-2017), unsuccessfully sought a state Senate seat and then ran for and won the position of lieutenant governor in 2019, at age 31, becoming the first Black person to hold the position in Wisconsin history. He served under Gov. Tony Evers for one term, 2019 to 2023.

On July 20, 2021, Barnes announced his candidacy for the United States Senate in the 2022 election, contesting the seat held by Republican Ron Johnson. Barnes was the eighth person to enter the Democratic primary, but, by the end, all of Barnes’s major competitors had withdrawn and endorsed him. He lost by just 1% to Johnson in the general election, even as Evers won his reelection by 3%.

His loss was a bitter pill for Democrats to swallow. Johnson’s campaign relentlessly attacked Barnes as out of the mainstream, and Barnes didn’t effectively counter this. After the defeat, then state Democratic chair Ben Wikler blamed under funding by the national Democratic Party: Johnson had a $26.4 million edge in spending by outside groups.

As a result, some Democrats in Wisconsin were uneasy about Barnes entering the campaign for governor, as a New York Times story in October reported. Yet he remains a formidable candidate. “Mandela would be the front-runner the moment he got into a campaign for the Democratic nomination,” Wisconsin Democratic consultant Joe Zepecki told the Times.

The Barnes campaign has cited polls conducted by Platform Communications that showed him with double the support of any other candidate in the Democratic primary and for Mandela’s PAC by Impact Research which found Barnes leading potential Republican rivals, Tiffany and Tim Michels, by +6 points and +7 points respectively.

That said, it’s not likely any of the many Democrats running for governor will withdraw from this race now that Barnes has announced. Those candidates include Milwaukee County executive David Crowley; state Rep. Francesca Hong; Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez; state Sen. Kelda Roys; former Democratic state Rep. Brett Hulsey; and Missy Hughes, who served as Evers’s top economic adviser.

Barnes had in the past called himself a Progressive who supported Bernie Sanders for president in both 2016 and 2020. He supported a Green New Deal, a $15 per hour minimum wage and legalizing marijuana. Since losing the election for U.S. Senator he has worked as President of Power to the Polls Wisconsin to engage infrequent voters and increase turnout, and founded Forward Together Wisconsin, which worked to lower the cost of energy bills, an issue that’s already gotten discussion in this fall’s campaigns.

In the video launching his campaign, Barnes begins by showing the union jacket of his father, who was a member of UAW Local 1866:

“He wore it everywhere,” Barnes recalled. “Back then those were jobs that could afford you a home, support a family and save for retirement.

That’s not the case anymore.”