La Crosse’s William Garcia announced bid to be Wisconsin’s Democratic Party chair — succeeding Ben Wikler’s seat

The next chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin could come from the La Crosse area.

William Garcia’s platform is “Grow! Persist! Resist!” Garcia is seeking the seat that Ben Wikler will vacate in June.

He launched his bid Monday in a peculiar place — outside of Republican US House Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s office.

Garcia has been the chair of the La Crosse County Democratic Party for the past five years — he is co-chair this year. He is also the chair of the 3rd Congressional District Democratic Party.

He said at a news conference that party leadership is “broken” with state leaders paying little attention to local concerns. He is also well aware of Wisconsin’s reputation as a “swing state.”

“We will be the swingiest of swing states,” Garcia told reporters. “In the 2026 election, everything stands on a knife’s edge, with the governor’s race, the Assembly and the state Senate all poised to go either potentially all of them Democrat, or all of them Republican.”

Garcia added that Democrats should be more attentive to party members at the local level.

“Right now, it’s all too top-down,” he said. “It’s too much coming down from the state party, and not enough going up from the grass roots, where it belongs.”

Garcia has a Masters Degree in English Literature from Middlebury College and a Bachelors from the University of Texas-Austin in Radio-Television-Film. He taught high school English for 15 years, before moving to higher education. Garcia taught First-Year Writing at UW-La Crosse and now works as a Support Instructor at Western Technical College. He is a member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 3605 and a theatre director.

As for Wikler, he will step down from his post at the state party convention June 14-15. At least five likely candidates, including Garcia, have been mentioned in media reports as possible successors.