Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announces his retirement (UPDATED)

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By LAURA SCHULTE

USA Today Network

MADISON – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced his retirement Thursday afternoon, marking the end of his decades-long political career as the Assembly began what is likely its final meeting of the year.

His voice breaking with emotion at times, Vos, 57, said he’d been thinking about retiring for most of last year, and decided it was the right decision after a mild heart attack in November.

“Luckily, my doctors say I’m perfectly fine, but I do need to reduce my stress,” he said. “And let me tell you, this job is stressful.”

He said spending the past 13 years as the speaker has been the “greatest professional honor” of his life. Vos is the longest-serving Assembly speaker in Wisconsin history.

“I am struck by how much this work has shaped me, how honored I am to play a small part in democracy,” he said. “And how proud I am to know that the state of our Legislature is strong.”

The Rochester Republican has represented the 63rd Assembly District in southeastern Wisconsin since 2005 and as speaker since 2013. His district covers parts of Racine and Walworth counties.

Vos, who also served as a co-chair of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee in 2011, said he would complete his term.

Once the subject of a national profile that dubbed him Wisconsin’s “shadow governor,” Vos has championed landmark conservative initiatives, including Act 10, right-to-work, a lame-duck session curbing the powers of then-incoming Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and a slew of tax cuts.

The state Legislature is “not just where laws are passed,” Vos said, but “where democracy slows down on purpose.”

“We debate in public, we answer to our voters,” Vos said. “We live with the consequences of our actions, right or wrong.”

He said he did not arrive in Madison expecting to have such a long political career.

“I arrived with a belief that this institution mattered and that a healthy respect for the fact that the people who sent me here expected me to take the job seriously, even when it was hard, unpopular or lonely,” he said. “Over the years, that belief has only deepened.”

Vos at times has come under fire within his own party for not pursuing more aggressively calls for taking the illegal step of decertifying the 2020 election in Wisconsin in the face of President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.

He fended off a primary challenge from a Trump-backed candidate in 2022, and his relationship with the president has since thawed.

Vos in 2021 hired retired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to review the 2020 after Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud, a largely fruitless review that cost taxpayers more than $2 million. Vos later fired Gableman and said he regretted hiring him.

“There were moments of real pressure, moments when the institution itself was being tested,” Vos said. “I am so incredibly proud that all of us were able to stand together.”

In a statement Evers said Vos’ retirement marked the “end of an era in Wisconsin politics.”

“Although we’ve disagreed more often than we didn’t, I respect his candor, his ability to navigate complex policies and conversations, and his unrivaled passion for politics,” he said. Evers cited working across the aisle with Vos in passing the last two-year state budget, a measure to increase state revenue to counties and municipalities and a deal to keep the Milwaukee Brewers in Wisconsin.

“Robin’s one-of-a-kind, so I wish whoever becomes the next Assembly Speaker well. They’ll no doubt have their work cut out for them,” the governor said.

While Evers wished Vos and his family well, Democratic Party of Wisconsin chairman Devin Remiker, in a statement, said the speaker “leaves behind a legacy of a state government he tried his best to make dysfunctional and leave working people with higher costs and fewer rights.”

“History will not remember him as the giant in lifted heels he sees himself as. It will remember him as a little man who was only remarkable for his gift of still managing to punch down despite his own smallness,” Remiker said.

Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, thanked Vos in a statement for his friendship and mentorship over the last 25 years.

“I love Robin like a brother. Sometimes, I just want to slap him, and sometimes give him a hug. And I know he feels the same about me,” Wanggaard said. “We didn’t always agree, but we always were able to hear each other out and generally find common ground.”

“He understands that it’s okay to disagree, and not take it personally. Whether he fought with the governor (and he fought with Governors Walker and Doyle, too), President Trump, Democrats or Republicans he fought with passion, vigor and always fairly and he did it for Wisconsin,” Wanggaard said.

(This story was updated to add new information.)