The Wisconsin Green Party emerged in the late 1980s when several independent local Green groups combined.
Walter Bresette and
Frank Koehn of the
Lake Superior Greens were instrumental figures in the early years of the party's development. Koehn's election to the
Bayfield County board in 1986 was the first time a Green Party candidate had ever been elected to an office in the United States. Dennis Boyer, Richard Latker, Joyce Melville and others established a large chapter in Madison that brought together veteran activists (many of them former members of the
Labor-Farm Party, which disintegrated in 1987 after Greens and
Marxists in the party failed to agree on a platform) and student activists affiliated with the
UW-Madison Greens. In 2006, the party helped place antiwar initiatives on the ballots in 32 towns (24 of which passed those propositions). In the spring of 2006, nine of 13 Green Party candidates won races in which they ran. John Hardin (Barron County), Ben Farrell (Winnebago County), Bob Ryan (Door County), Barbara Vedder (Dane County), John Hendrick (Dane County), and Kyle Richmond (Dane County) all won re-election to their respective county board seats. Vedder had been appointed to an open seat a few months before the election. The Wisconsin Green Party's headquarters are in
Madison. ==Statewide nominees==