On Thursday, Wisconsin Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos announced that he would not be running for reelection.
Vos claimed that he had had a heart attack in November, which prompted him to decide not to run again due to the stress of the job. It should be noted that Vos provided no proof that he actually had a heart to begin with, so this claim should be taken with a grain of salt.
In reality, he probably saw the writing on the wall. After years of being one of the most powerful Republicans in the state, he saw his power starting to dwindle over the past few years, putting him in a politically untenable position.
On the right, he had Trump angry at him for not doing enough to feed into The Big Lie and reverse the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump and his MAGA morons were so angry that they tried to recall Vos twice and ran against him during a regular election.
On the left, he saw progressives win control of the state supreme court, and then watched them undo the gerrymandering that had given him the power he had for years. In the last election, he saw his majority shrink by several seats. While his district is still safely Republican, there is a growing chance that the Democrats could actually regain control of the state assembly, which would cost him his position as speaker.
While there is a lot of celebrating on the left that Boss Vos will no longer be terrorizing the state, they shouldn't celebrate too long. There's a lot of work to do between now and November to make sure that the Democrats win the majority. Otherwise, the next speaker could be just as bad, if not worse, than Vos ever was.
