Fitzgerald was elected to the Wisconsin Senate in 1994, when he unseated Republican incumbent
Barbara Lorman in a three-way Republican
primary election, with 6,098 votes for Fitzgerald, 5,613 for Herbert Feil and 5,494 votes for Lorman. He was reelected six times, serving until he joined Congress in 2021. His Republican colleagues elected him majority leader for the 2011–12 legislative session, and he served as leader of the chamber's Republicans for the rest of his time in the legislature. In prior sessions, Fitzgerald served as minority leader, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Finance, and chair of the Senate Corrections Committee. His constituency included much of the
Beaver Dam micropolitan statistical area and parts of the
Madison and
Milwaukee metropolitan areas, stretching across most of Dodge County and parts of Columbia, Dane, Jefferson, Washington, and Waukesha Counties.
2011 Wisconsin protests In 2011, public employees protested Governor
Scott Walker's
budget repair bill. In January 2011, Fitzgerald said he wanted to meet with the unions before changing the laws, adding, "We're not going to walk through hell and go through that if the governor doesn't offer that up." On February 8, 2011, the Walker administration appointed Fitzgerald's father to head the state patrol. Three days later, Walker introduced his budget repair bill, which limited collective bargaining from most public workers, but not
law enforcement officers such as state patrol. Fitzgerald and all but one Republican in the State Senate supported Walker's bill.
Gerrymandering In 2011,
Wisconsin Republicans drew the state's legislative map with 99 Assembly and 33 Senate districts. In 2016, a three-judge panel ruled this map an "unconstitutional
gerrymander". As of 2016, the state had spent over $2 million to defend the legislative maps. The bill would also prevent the incoming administration from withdrawing from a lawsuit seeking to repeal the
Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by taking the power to do so away from the governor and giving it to the legislature. He justified the attempt to curb the incoming administration's powers, saying, "state legislators are the closest to those we represent" and suggesting that urban voters (who are more likely to vote for Democrats) do not reflect the real electorate.
COVID-19 pandemic In April 2020, during the
COVID-19 pandemic, Fitzgerald opposed calls by Governor
Tony Evers to delay an election from early April to late May, to make it an entirely mail-in election, and to mail ballots to all registered voters. Due to the pandemic, it was estimated that many voters would be effectively disenfranchised, and in-person voting was also considered a public health risk. According to the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Fitzgerald "had no answer to how local election officials are supposed to keep people safe as a massive shortage of poll workers has resulted in the closure or reduction of polling locations, forcing more people to vote at a single site." Due to Wisconsin legislature's slowness to waive a requirement that unemployed Wisconsites wait a week before they can be reimbursed unemployment benefits, Wisconsin lost $25 million in federal funding from the federal CARES Act. Fitzgerald and Assembly speaker
Robin Vos were warned that this would happen unless they passed the waiver. Amid the pandemic, Fitzgerald said he opposed a statewide
face mask mandate. He supported a lawsuit against Evers for implementing a face mask mandate. The state legislature could have convened a session to strike down Evers's mandate, but Republicans opted to let the courts strike down the mandate so as to prevent vulnerable Republican legislators from having to vote against face mask mandates just before an election. ==U.S. House of Representatives==