China Becomes Flashpoint In High-Stakes 17th Senate District Race

Rep. Jenna Jacobson ran a campaign ad claiming Sen. Howard Marklein “invested thousands of dollars in Chinese corporations.” (Photo of Jacobson courtesy of campaign. Photo of Marklein by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Both the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Wisconsin Senate have said that, in their efforts to win control of the chamber, their candidates are staying focused on issues close to home. However, this week the focus of the race for the 17th Senate District turned to a country 6,000 miles away: China.

The race in Wisconsin’s 17th Senate District, a key district that will help determine control of the body, pits Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), the incumbent in the race, against Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon), a two-term state representative. Marklein was first elected to the seat in 2014 after serving two terms in the Assembly and has served for the last two sessions as the co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, which drafts the state budget.

The subject of China entered the race when the Jacobson campaign began running an ad last week that claimed Marklein had “invested thousands of dollars in Chinese corporations” while voting against a “measure that would have made Wisconsin buy more American-made products.” The ad displays an image of Marklein’s face beside the Chinese flag.

“While Marklein was making money off of his Chinese investments, he was stealing money from American workers like me,” a man dressed as a construction worker says in the ad. “Someone who sold us out like that should never be in the state Senate.”

The ad led to Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), head of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate, to call a press conference to defend Marklein Tuesday. Testin called the ad “deceptive” and a “sick smear campaign.”

Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email that it’s “quite unusual for China or another other foreign country to be much of an issue in a campaign for a state legislative seat.”

Burden said the “focus on China in the 17th district is a kind of proxy for other issues,” including concerns about politicians “enriching themselves unethically because of investments” as well as worries about the construction of new data centers that some Wisconsinites see as drain on resources and harmful to the environment in addition to being related to U.S. AI developers’ competition with China.

The ad, however, is seeking to tie some of Marklein’s prior reported investments to his lack of support for a Democratic bill in 2013 that would have required state and local contracts to give preference to materials manufactured in the United States.

Wisconsin public officials and candidates are required to file a Statement of Economic Interests under state law to disclose financial relationships and prevent conflicts of interest.

According to his 2022 statement of economic interest, Marklein had over $50,000 in a WisdomTree Emerging Markets Fund as well as between $5,000 and $50,000 in investments in the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Fund. According to Sofi, investing in emerging market funds means owning shares in companies from India, Brazil, South Africa and China with the latter representing a large portion of many emerging market index funds.

Marklein’s most recent statement of economic interest included no emerging market funds.

In his press conference defending Marklein, Testin appeared to think the ad was related to investments made through the Wisconsin Retirement System, saying Jacobson, and every state employee, has similar investments. (The Wisconsin Retirement System is not prohibited from making investments in businesses in China, though Republicans have proposed barring the State of Wisconsin Investment Board from doing so in the past.)

Testin said Jacobson was “trying to be tough on foreign adversaries now that it might be politically beneficial for her.”

“The truth is that Jacobson could have spent months standing up to our nation’s adversaries like China, but when she had the opportunity to support meaningful legislation that would protect Wisconsin from foreign influence, she voted no,” Testin said, referring to bills that would have restricted business with China.

Testin proposed and Marklein co-authored a bill that would have barred Wisconsin agencies from contracting with certain foreign businesses, including China. Two other bills would have prohibited China from buying Wisconsin land and prohibited the University of Wisconsin system from providing study abroad and research there.

“Jacobson has no backbone, only a slick eye for political gain. She’s quick to point a finger at people like Sen. Marklein when it benefits her, but when she has the chance to help Wisconsin, she’s only interested when there could be gains for her,” Testin said.

Jacobson voted against the two bills that passed the Assembly. Both were vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers. The issue has also come up in the race for governor, with Republican candidate Tom Tiffany saying he would have signed at least one of those bills as governor.

Burden said connecting politicians to China could “tarnish” their reputations. According to a Nov. 2025 Marquette Law School Poll, 65% of Americans held an unfavorable view of China and its leader, President Xi Jinping, while 19% said they had a favorable view of China.

Burden said of Jacobson’s ad that “a connection to Marklein’s potential support for Chinese businesses and government is a way for her to point out to voters without a strong partisan preference why he should be defeated.”

Will Karcz, a spokesperson for the state Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, said in a statement to the Examiner that the ad was meant to provide voters in the 17th with “the truth of Howard Marklein’s personal foreign investment history.”

“Howard has repeatedly voted against protecting Wisconsin manufacturing while cashing in on tens of thousands of dollars he invested in Chinese-owned corporations,” Karcz said. “He got rich on the backs of Wisconsin workers. Jenna Jacobson is running to make Wisconsin stronger while Howard has spent the last 10 years putting his bottom line ahead of his constituents.”

Whether the message resonates with voters is unclear.

Todd Allbaugh, a former Republican who grew up in Richland Center and formerly worked for Sen. Dale Schulz, told the Examiner in an interview that he was confused when he saw the ad about a week ago. He lives in Madison, but still has family in the district.

“I’ve seen this ad now probably somewhere around 20-ish times. It was baffling,” Allbaugh said. He said he didn’t understand what it was trying to get at until he looked it up using Claude, the AI assistant developed by Anthropic. “If you have to go to Claude to figure it out, it probably isn’t a really effective ad.”

Allbaugh acknowledged that Marklein has some advantages in the race given his status as an incumbent. Marklein won his 2022 race with 60% of the vote, though the district has changed considerably under the new maps. It now represents Iowa, Lafayette, Green, Crawford and Grant counties as well as parts of Dane County.

“I know the 17th Senate District pretty much like the back of my hand because it’s home,” Allbaugh said. “With the newly drawn maps it’s certainly become more competitive for Democrats, probably the most competitive in a very long time.”

Allbaugh said that he thinks Marklein is “scared for his political life,” as he is suddenly running in a competitive district and that can be seen in his campaign. One of Marklein’s recent ads positioned him as a bipartisan “bridge builder” and as “your man in the middle” and highlighted tax cuts that have been made while he’s been in office as well as some investments that have been made into local EMS and into the Lone Rock Bridge, which opened this year after two years of construction.

In Allbaugh’s opinion, Jacobson’s campaign should focus on local issues that Marklein has had some say over. He noted the closure of the UW-Platteville Richland Center campus and the UW-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County campus that have happened while Marklein has chaired the Joint Finance Committee as well as the struggle that public schools in the district have had.

“I think she’s a super strong candidate. She’s affable. She is enormously more likable and connects to people better than Howard Marklein, and I would if I were advising them, which I’m not, I would lean into that,” Allbaugh said. “Be authentic instead of listening to consultants with boilerplate things that they’re using in the other races. It doesn’t seem like a smart use of money when there are so many more easily understood issues that are particular to the 17th Senate District.”

Jacobson’s economic statement of interest from 2022 and 2024 does not list any emerging market funds.

Her 2024 statement lists an investment in the American Funds The New Economy Fund. According to the Capital Group website, it is mainly invested in the U.S. though it has a mix of investments abroad. About 15% of the fund is in Asia, including China.

How did China get wrapped up in the competitive race for Wisconsin’s 17th state Senate District?  was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.