With state elections around the corner, everyone is looking at who they want to vote for to represent their district. They look for someone who can represent the citizenry, but also someone who they can count on. In Whitewater, one of our very own citizens Democratic candidate Brienne Brown is running to represent District 31 in the Wisconsin State Assembly. 

“The reason why I first decided to run was because I feel like women’s rights and democracy is on the line,” said Brown. “There is a lot of gerrymandering that was caused by Republican representatives. They carved pieces out of neighborhoods to make use of all the Republicans they got.” 

Brown has been a Whitewater resident for 10 years now, building a notable pedigree of community work. She is a member of the Whitewater Common Council, and in that capacity she works on the Plan and Architectural Review Commission. She’s worked for the Community Foundation and has been on the Irvin Young Memorial Library Board for the past 10 years. 

“I’ve been on a bunch of different boards that the city has, and that led me to city council,” Brown said. “I was asked to run for this position for assembly back in June, right when the news of the Dobbs decision was leaking for the Supreme Court in terms of women’s rights being revoked, and Roe vs Wade being overturned.” 

One of the big things that Brown stands against is gerrymandering, which is the act of manipulating boundaries to favor one party over the other. Brown mentions that Republicans purposely cut out houses and neighborhoods to give them the advantage. She states that they try to fix the district boundaries to be 55% Republicans and 45% Democrats to give them the advantage. 

Some other things that Brown stands for are women’s rights, especially regarding abortion and women’s bodies. Wisconsin has a five-year prison sentence for the woman and her doctor who performs the procedure no matter how far along in the pregnancy they are.

She also supports farmers and their work, especially with larger companies buying land around them to raise prices of land. 

Finally, Brown supports education. Teachers are not paid enough money for the work that they do, causing them to either quit teaching or go to a different school that offers them more money. Also, she says that schools are severely underfunded so they can’t afford to pay teachers a good salary or upgrade their school. 

“What’s happening at the K-12 level is you have teachers who are really good, and then they get a state award, and then they get poached by a richer school district,” said Brown. “You don’t have that consistency with teachers who stick around, so you don’t have that connection with students.” 

With elections coming up on Nov. 8, Brown reminds everyone that voting is important.  

“Wisconsin is set up in a way where you are constantly voting, which is very tiring, but very important,” said Brown. “If you’re a student and you’re not registered to vote, you have to jump through a ton of hoops to vote here.” 

Voting this November will includes seats for the Senate, House of Representatives, Governor, Lieutenant Governor and State Legislators of Wisconsin.