Earlier this month, someone asked JoCasta Zamarripa, the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin Secretary of State, what her top priority would be.
"My number one priority is to see the governor sign driver's licenses for undocumented Wisconsinites into law," she said.
There's a problem with that answer. Wisconsin's Secretary of State doesn't issue driver's licenses. The DMV does, and it's part of the state Department of Transportation. Zamarripa's top priority has nothing to do with the job she's running for.
It has been her priority for a long time, though. As a state legislator, the Milwaukee alderwoman wrote bills to give illegal immigrants driver's licenses and in-state college tuition. Back in 2015, she proposed a special driver's card just for them.
She has company at the top of the ticket. David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive running for governor as a Democrat, said at a candidate forum that he supports the idea too. The ACLU is backing him because he opposes ICE operating in Milwaukee neighborhoods.
Wisconsin Democrats have been pushing this for years. The state used to give licenses to illegal immigrants until 2007, when the legislature started requiring proof of legal status. Gov. Tony Evers tried to undo that in his budget in 2019, and again in 2021. Both times, Republicans in the legislature took it back out.
That's what's on the ballot this year. With a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature, it would finally become law, and Wisconsin would join 19 other states, including California, Illinois, and New York, plus Washington, D.C.
All year, Democrats have promised voters they're the party of "affordability." Then their candidates say what they actually care about.
Take the plan House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries rolled out for his party's first 100 days if it wins the House. It's pitched as an affordability agenda, but one of its centerpieces is undoing what Democrats call the Trump administration's "Medicaid cuts" and "SNAP cuts." Those are the anti-fraud rules and work requirements in the One Big Beautiful Bill that Trump signed last year, and they're meant to stop benefits from going to people who shouldn't get them.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, about 61 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants use at least one major welfare program. Illegal immigrants mostly can't sign up themselves, but they can collect benefits through children born here.
Some Democrats aren't bothering with the affordability pitch at all. In New York City, Darializa Chevalier, the Democratic nominee in the 13th Congressional District and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, wants to abolish ICE. "All deportations are wrong," she said in June.
A podcast host asked her about immigrants who've been convicted of crimes. Chevalier said deporting them violates the Fourth Amendment's protection against double jeopardy.
Double jeopardy isn't in the Fourth Amendment. It's in the Fifth. It means being tried twice for the same crime, and deportation isn't a criminal trial. Chevalier got the amendment wrong and the concept wrong in the same answer.
There's a real cost-of-living argument here, and it cuts against the Democrats. A white paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that illegal immigration pushes wages down and housing costs up, the two things squeezing American families hardest.
Democrats can keep saying "affordability." But when Wisconsin's Democratic nominee for Secretary of State was asked for her number one priority, she said driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.
