Rebecca Ann Kleefisch (née Reed; born August 7, 1975) is an American politician and former television reporter who served as the 44th Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin from 2011 to 2019.[1] A member of the Republican Party, she was elected to the position on November 2, 2010, as the running mate of GovernorScott Walker; the pair narrowly lost reelection to a third term in 2018.[2]
Kleefisch was a candidate in the 2022 Wisconsin gubernatorial election, but lost the Republican nomination to businessman Tim Michels in the August 9 primary.[3]
Kleefisch supports Wisconsin's 1849 abortion ban that went into effect in 2022 after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision by the United States Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion in the United States. The law bans abortion in all instances except to save the life of the mother.[6][7] Kleefisch believes that abortion should be illegal in all other instances, including after rape or incest,[8] or to protect the health of the mother.[9] She also wrote[10] that she agrees with Sharron Angle that raped women should "turn lemons into lemonade" by having their rapist's child.[4]
Marriage rights
Kleefisch has indicated support for same-sex marriage, acknowledging her views have changed since she compared same-sex marriage to marrying a dog or an inanimate object in 2010, comments she later called a "poor choice of words."[11][12][13][14][15] By 2022, Kleefisch said "I am in the same place that I would say as a vast majority of Wisconsinites and Americans are. My opinion has changed…gay marriage will be legal when I am governor of Wisconsin."[16]
Kleefisch criticized Wisconsin's progressive income tax system and has promised "transformational income tax reform" if she were to become governor. She suggested eliminating taxes on retirement income.[18]
Kleefisch is open to paid family leave, saying "we need to make sure that moms and dads have time to bond with their babies. That's absolutely something that I would look at as governor."[19]
In 2009, Kleefisch said that there is "no consensus that people have caused climate change."[20]
In 2012, when she faced a recall election, Kleefisch criticized the recall process, arguing that it has become a "spectacle" and were designed only to recall officials guilty of grave wrongdoing, rather than used as a way to resolve policy disputes. In 2021, however, Kleefisch championed the recall election of four Mequon-Thiensville School District over policy disputes.[21] In 2022, she proposed removing some election-related powers from the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission and transferring them to the state Department of Justice, headed by the elected state attorney general.[22]
Although Kleefisch's husband Joel had been a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly since being elected in 2004, Kleefisch's own first entry into politics began when she ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2010.[26][27] During her Republican primary campaign, Scott Jensen was her strategist; she made appeals to conservative talk radio hosts and Tea Party groups,[28] as well as social conservatives and the Christian right, circulating a flier saying that, if elected, she would be "relying on the wisdom and faith she has in Jesus."[27] In the primary election, she defeated four rivals, including Brett Davis, who had support from the party establishment and was favored by Scott Walker, the Republican candidate for governor.[28] In the November 2010 general election, she won election on a single ticket as Walker's running mate.[29]
Following a contentious collective bargaining dispute in 2011, an effort began to recall Walker and Kleefisch. After examining petitions, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board determined there were more than 800,000 valid signatures to hold a recall election.[34] In the June 5, 2012 recall election, Walker and Kleefisch were retained in office. Kleefisch is the only lieutenant governor in the history of any state in the United States to face recall election and ultimately survive a recall.[35]
Post-lieutenant governorship
In January 2019,[36] Kleefisch was appointed to serve as the executive director of the Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission.[37] She served in that position until becoming a Jobs Ambassador for Associated Builders and Contractors of Wisconsin in November 2019.[38] As a jobs ambassador, she promotes careers in the skilled construction trades.[39]
In September 2021, Kleefisch announced that she would seek the Republican nomination for Governor of Wisconsin in the following year's election.[40] In her announcement, she likened herself to Donald Trump.[25] She began her campaign by criticizing the leadership of incumbent Democratic Governor Tony Evers and attacking his response to the 2020 Kenosha unrest.[41] In October 2021, she told Republicans that they needed to "hire mercenaries" and engage in "ballot harvesting" (a practice she has called for banning) to help her win the 2022 race.[42] In November 2021, she said that a vaccine requirement for poll workers in Wisconsin was intended to prevent Republicans from becoming poll workers and thus hide wrongdoing.[43] Kleefisch recently sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission, alleging that they broke the law during the 2020 election.[44]
During her campaign, Kleefisch initially recognized that Biden won the 2020 election but by early 2022, she declined to take a position on the matter.[45][46] In April 2022, Kleefisch said that the election was "rigged."[47] On decertifying the results of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, Kleefisch said it is "not constitutionally possible."[48]
Kleefisch received the endorsement of former governor Walker months ahead of the primary, and was long regarded as the front-runner in the race. However, a June 2022 endorsement of her opponent Tim Michels along with a July endorsement Michels by former governor Tommy Thompson helped Michels to narrow the gap between them.[49] Kleefisch was defeated in the primary by Michels, who himself went on to lose the general election to incumbent Evers.
Personal life
Kleefisch is married to former State Representative Joel Kleefisch, who was also a reporter for WISN-TV. They have two daughters.[50] They lived in Oconomowoc, located 16 miles west of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and were members of Crosspoint Community Church, a Christian & Missionary Alliance-affiliated megachurch in Oconomowoc. Since losing re-election, Kleefisch and her family moved to Concord, Wisconsin.[51]
In late August 2010, Kleefisch was diagnosed with colon cancer.[52] She had a tumor removed in early September 2010,[52] and finished chemotherapy treatment by April 2011.[53]
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