Vos, the Wisconsin GOP leader who served the longest run as Assembly speaker and became a central target for critics and Democrats, said Thursday that he plans to step away from office at the end of the year, bringing an abrupt end to a long tenure that helped shape the state’s conservative legislative agenda.
Speaking from the Assembly floor, Vos, who is 57, framed his retirement as a leadership choice rather than a health-driven one, saying he had suffered a mild heart attack in November and did not disclose it publicly until Thursday. He told The Associated Press that he suspects Democrats will be “happy that I’m gone,” and he added, “You’re going to miss me,” in comments aimed at conservative supporters who have challenged him internally.
Vos said it was “unlikely” he would run for office again, though he did not rule it out. He said, “It was the tap on the shoulder that I needed to make sure that my decision is right,” describing the prompt he said guided his decision.
First elected to the Assembly in 2004, Vos became speaker in 2013. He has served 14 years as speaker and is in his 22nd year in the Assembly, a record that made him Wisconsin’s longest-serving speaker in 2021, when he surpassed Democrat Tom Loftus, who held the position from 1983 to 1991.
During his tenure, Vos helped advance major Republican priorities, including efforts linked to former Gov. Scott Walker. Vos was a close ally of Walker and helped pass key components of Walker’s agenda, including the 2011 law known as Act 10 that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers, as well as other measures opposed by Democrats such as tax cuts, a “right to work” law, and voter ID requirements.
Vos also used his legislative role to limit Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ agenda, including passing bills during the lame-duck session before Evers took office in 2019 that weakened the governor’s powers, and then later ignoring special sessions Evers called. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vos and fellow Republicans fought to limit Evers’ authority, and Vos led a lawsuit to overturn Evers’ stay-at-home order, which resulted in Wisconsin being described as the first state where a court invalidated a governor’s coronavirus restrictions.
The announcement came amid shifting partisan dynamics for Wisconsin’s legislature. Republicans had grown their majority under Republican-drawn legislative maps that Vos helped promote, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered new maps in 2023 that contributed to Democratic gains in the last election. The Republicans held as many as 64 seats under Vos, but that number dropped to 54 in what will be his final year, and Democrats have signaled optimism that they can win a majority this year.
Vos has faced political pressure from within his party as well as from Democratic opponents, including friction with President Donald Trump. The AP reported that Trump criticized Vos for not doing enough to investigate Trump’s 2020 loss in Wisconsin; Vos later hired a former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice to look into the matter but fired him amid bipartisan criticism that the effort advanced discounted conspiracy theories and found no evidence of widespread fraud or abuse. The episode, Vos has said, amounted to a rare misstep, and he is now advocating for revoking the former justice’s law license, saying hiring him was the biggest mistake he ever made.
While critics have portrayed Vos as a dominant figure over Wisconsin governance, colleagues and political opponents have offered contrasting evaluations of his leadership. Evers, who said his relationship with Vos was sometimes contentious, called the retirement “the end of an era in Wisconsin politics,” adding that while they disagreed more often than not, he respected Vos’s candor, his ability to navigate complex policies and conversations, and his passion for politics. Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who worked with Vos in the legislature and said they remained friends despite being political opposites, called Vos a “formidable opponent” and said he was “probably the most intelligent and strategic Assembly speaker I have seen.”