Wednesday, February 19, 2025
31 °
Mostly Cloudy

Farm wife, mother, immigrant seeks area Assembly seat

Posted

BY MIKE WARREN
EDITOR

ROZELLVILLE -- A Danish immigrant from Marathon County has found herself in the middle of a three-way Republican race for a spot on the November ballot.

Spindler

Trine Spindler is seeking the Republican nomination for the 86th Assembly district seat in the Aug. 13 Primary, which also includes Rep. Donna Rozar (R-Marshfield) and Rep. John Spiros (R-Marshfield). The winner will square off against John Small (D-Marathon) in the General Election Nov. 5.

Originally from Denmark, met her future husband, Kobey, while she was a foreign exchange student in Stratford (2001-02), moved to the Rozellville area in 2005 and legally immigrated in 2019. Now, the couple is raising their three children on his family’s centennial dairy farm.

“We’ve been here dairy farming since 2012,” Spindler told us, during our July 17 visit to the farm. “We have a hundred and thirty milking cows, three hundred head, a couple of milking robots,” she added.

“We have three kids that we decided to send to Columbus Catholic. We use school choice and it has been the best decision we’ve made,” says Spindler. “It is a fantastic school and it’s a great option to be able to use school choice for that. Stratford is also a good school, but we really liked what Columbus Catholic could offer. And we hope that our children will end up taking over the farm at some point and become fifth-generation (farmers) and keep caring for the land that we care about.”

The Spindlers farm 350 acres seven miles southeast of Stratford, in the Town of Day.

“I decided to run in this election after talking with our current representatives and asking for their help in helping our small townships gain local control over industrial wind and solar,” Spindler told us. “I have been the Farmland First leader for Marathon County for over a year-and-a-half now and we have been helping all townships throughout Marathon and Wood and Clark counties pass local solar and wind ordinances to help them protect the health and safety of their residents,” she added.

“A little over a year-and-a-half ago a neighbor a mile up the road here was approached by a wind company and they gave her a big, long contract and they asked, ‘Please sign on the dotted line. We’ll give you a million dollars,’ and she kind of just let everybody know, and I buzzed up there and said, ‘What is this? What is this about?’ We sat down and we read the contract, and it was so one-sided that we decided that we should let other people know what was going on,” Spindler recalled.

“I started hosting informational meetings,” she said. “I helped our Town of Day first pass a wind ordinance, then I helped it pass in like fifteen other townships in Marathon County afterwards. And then this year, we just wrote the solar ordinance, passed it in Town of Day, and it’s now being made available to the rest of the townships, so if they want a similar ordinance, but for solar energy, they have that option as well. We’re also helping a lot of the town boards understand what the statute’s actually saying, so they know exactly how much power they have and may not have.

“I got into this race when I realized there wasn’t a whole lot of appetite currently in Madison for helping us,” said Spindler. “It has been so much work going from township to township and it’s been so much work asking the county boards to help – which has also been a stumbling block – that I finally just kind of had enough. I said, ‘If you guys are not willing to help us, we will do it ourselves.’ That’s usually how it goes around here. If we want to get something done, we can do it. And we’re right in the middle of it anyway, so why not take it the whole way? We’re very concerned with the way farmland is being used and we want to do our very best to create a community that our children can be proud of growing up in,” Spindler told us.

Spindler says she strongly believes new representation is needed across the board in government. While working with Farmland First and campaigning door to door, Trine says she has spoken with hundreds of residents “who are tired of being controlled rather than protected, by Madison and Washington,” Spindler said via her initial campaign press release.

“A lot of people don’t feel like they’re being heard. They feel like they’re being dictated to,” Trine told us during our visit. “I would much rather be here on the farm with my kids than go to Madison, but I cannot risk our way of life disappearing. I would not be okay with that.”

“I’ve made central Wisconsin my home. I love living here,” she added. “The people are outstanding.”

Spindler has degrees in marketing from a college in Denmark and UWSP at Marshfield and UW-Stevens Point and worked as a marketing specialist for three years at News 9 WAOW in Wausau before the Spindlers expanded their farm.

A Republican Primary now looms Aug. 13 between Spindler and a pair of current Marshfield incumbent legislators.

Rep. John Spiros issued a statement March 19 after announcing his reelection campaign for the 86th Assembly District, which he has represented since 2012. His announcement followed a similar one made by Rep. Donna Rozar, who has represented the 69th Assembly District since January 2021.

The newly re-drawn 86th Assembly District now includes portions of Wood, Marathon and Portage counties.

The new 86th Assembly district will be comprised of portions of the current 69th (red), 70th (pink), 86th (green) and 87th (blue) Assembly districts.

In Wood County, the 86th now covers the cities of Marshfield and Pittsville, the villages of Arpin, Auburndale, Hewitt, Rudolph and Vesper, and the towns of Arpin, Auburndale, Cameron, Cary, Hansen, Lincoln, Marshfield, Milladore, Richfield, Rock, Rudolph, Sherry, Sigel and Wood.

In Marathon County, the villages of Edgar, Fenwood, Marathon City, Spencer and Stratford now find themselves entirely in the new 86th, along with the towns of Bergen, Cassel, Cleveland, Day, Eau Pleine, Emmet, Green Valley, Marathon, McMillan, Rib Falls, Spencer and Wien, and a portion of Stettin.

Parts of Portage County which now find themselves in the realigned 86th are the village of Junction City, and the towns of Carson and Eau Pleine.

The entire village of Milladore – which falls in parts of Wood and Portage counties – is also now in the new 86th Assembly district.

86th District

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here