Spiros wins three-way 86th race

By Kevin O’Brien

Rep. John Spiros (R-Marhsfield) emerged as the winner of a three-way Republican primary contest on Tuesday, capturing 43 percent of the vote and beating his colleague in the Assembly, Rep. Donna Rozar, also of Marshfield, and Trine Spindler, a dairy farmer from the town of Day.

Districtwide, Spiros earned 3,709 votes, compared to Rozar with 2,721 (32 percent) and Spindler with 2,143 (25 percent). Spiros will go on to face Democrat John Small, the former village president of Marathon City and previous county board supervisor, in the Nov. 5

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general election.

Spiros, vice president of safety and claims at Roehl Transport in Marshfield, has represented the 86th since 2013, and he was able to run as the incumbent even after the district’s boundaries changed as a result of a redistricting bill signed into law earlier this year.

Rep. Rozar has represented the old 69th Assembly District since 2020, but she was drawn out of that district, so she decided to run in the new 86th instead. Rozar will serve out the remainder of her current twoyear term in the 69th until the start of 2025.

Spindler, who ran primarily on the issue of opposition to industrial wind and solar projects in rural areas, won the most votes in several Marathon County townships, including Cleveland, Day, Eau Pleine, Green Valley, and Wien, and also in the village of Stratford.

Spiros, however, dominated most of the electoral map in Marathon County, earning the most votes in the villages of Edgar and Marathon City, and in the towns of Bergen, Cassel, Emmet, Marathon, McMillan, Rib Falls, Spencer, and Stettin.

Rozar won a majority of the votes in the portion of Marshfield that’s in Marathon County and also captured the most votes in the villages of Spencer and Fenwood.

Other results

In Marathon County, county clerk Kim Trueblood and county treasurer Connie Beyersforf both fended off their respective challengers in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

Trueblood won her race the most decisively, earning 80 percent of the votes (12,721), compared to just 20 percent for Toshia Ranallo, an administrative assistant for Marathon County who earned 3,091 votes countywide.

Beyersdorf won her primary 66 percent of the vote (10,072), beating Jen Seliger, a town of Hamburg resident who previously served as town chairman and on the Merrill School Board.

No Democrats are running for clerk or treasurer, so Trueblood and Beyersdorf will be running unopposed in the Nov. 5 election.

In the statewide referendums that would have prohibited the governor from spending federal money without legislative approval, local voters were decidedly in favor of the measures, but overall, they failed to earn enough votes to pass.

Statewide, 58 percent of electors voted against Question #1 and 57 percent voted against Question #2. In Marathon County, however, about 52 percent of voters cast ballots voted in favor of both questions. Of all the municipalities in western Marathon County, only one, the village of Edgar, voted in accordance with the rest of the state.