Wisconsin's 64th Assembly district
The 64th Assembly district of Wisconsin is one of 99 districts in the Wisconsin State Assembly. Located in southeast Wisconsin, the district comprises the northeast corner of Kenosha County, including all of the village of Somers and the northern half of the city of Kenosha. The district also contains the University of Wisconsin–Parkside campus, Carthage College, the Kenosha campus of Gateway Technical College, and Kenosha Regional Airport. The district is represented by Democrat Tip McGuire, since May 2019.
The 64th Assembly district is located within Wisconsin's 22nd Senate district, along with the 65th and 66th Assembly districts.
History
The district was created in the 1972 redistricting act which first established the numbered district system, replacing the previous system which allocated districts to specific counties. The 64th district was drawn from part of the former Kenosha County 1st district, which had encompassed nearly all of the city of Kenosha. The 1972 64th Assembly district was drawn from the north side of the city, the south side wards were used to create a third Kenosha County-based district. The last representative of the Kenosha 1st district, George Molinaro, went on to win election as the first representative of the 64th Assembly district.Other than the 1982 redistricting, which temporarily scrambled State Assembly districts, the boundaries of the 64th district remained relatively consistent for the next 40 years, confined to the wards of the north side of the city of Kenosha. That changed in the controversial 2011 redistricting plan which moved the district further north to straddle the boundary between Kenosha and Racine counties. This was done as part of a broader gerrymander of the southeast Wisconsin districts to pack the majority of Racine and Kenosha Democratic votes into one state senate district. This map was only slightly adjusted in the 2022 court-ordered redistricting plan. The 2024 map removed all of the Racine County precincts from the district and added all of the rest of the village of Somers and more of the city of Kenosha.
Notable former representatives of this district include George Molinaro, who was the 62nd speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, and Peter W. Barca, a one-time U.S. representative and former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.