Atheist Kelda Roys Wins Democratic Primary for Wisconsin Senate Seat
By Hemant Mehta, August 12, 2020

For four years, from 2009-2013, Kelda Roys was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, serving in a variety of leadership roles. She only left that otherwise-safe seat to run for Congress, in 2012, but lost her primary to the eventual winner (and current member of the Congressional Freethought Caucus) Mark Pocan.

Roys took a short break from politics after that and started her own business, but she returned to politics in 2018 to run for governor and unseat Republican Scott Walker.

She even made national headlines for a viral campaign ad in which she breastfed her baby daughter while talking about policy.

In the Democratic primary, however, she took third place to Tony Evers (who eventually became governor in a very close race).

Did she stop there? Hell no. State Senator Fred Risser — who had served in the legislature for an astonishing 64 years — recently announced his retirement from his reliably blue district. So Roys decided to run for it.