An Uber driver, a dairy farmer and a therapist walk into the Capitol

“You look familiar,” state Rep. Lee Snodgrass recalled a customer saying while she was bartending at a restaurant in her district.

“Well, I’m probably your state representative,” she replied.

State Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) is a part-time server and seasonal garden center employee.

Snodgrass, a Democrat from Appleton, is one among many of her colleagues to also work a job outside the state Capitol.

After the state budget passes in the summer of oddnumbered years, and with campaign season many months away, the pace in Madison usually slows until the fall. Lawmakers will dial up their side gigs in the meantime.

Some own businesses, rental properties or maintain law licenses. State Rep. Shae Sortwell, a Republican from northeastern Wisconsin, sits behind a big wheel most Fridays.

“I think they find it a little bit amusing that a politician or whatever is driving the freight trucks,” Sortwell said of his employer. But “it’s been fun.”

He left a full-time factory job when he was elected to the Assembly in 2018, he said, but after a few years of working solely as a legislator, the married father of six began looking for more work to earn some extra cash. Having another job also “gives you better perspective when dealing with policy decisions,” Sortwell wrote in an email.

Sortwell had experience operating larger vehicles from his time in the military, so he now steers a rig the size of a U-Haul for a small company in Green Bay. He typically works one 12-hour shift on Fridays but grabs extra hours in the summer, around Christmas and during hunting season, he said.

The position has helped him stay mindful of where Republicans are in 2025, he said. “We picked up a lot of plumbers and steam fitters and carpenters and former union Democrats,” Sortwell said of the 2024 election. “I think that is certainly a perspective that we want to make sure is not lost. And I do find myself at times having to remind colleagues that, ‘Hey, don’t forget, this is actually affecting regular working class folks.’” A ‘full-time lite’ legislature Wisconsin’s statehouse is one step down from being considered full-time by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Wisconsin lawmakers are not as busy as those in higher-population states that have longer sessions and larger districts.

In Wisconsin, state senators and representatives will earn a salary of about $61,000 in 2025. State legislators can also claim a per diem allowance for cash spent on food and lodging when they travel to Madison. The median household income in Wisconsin is about $78,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The statehouses in Illinois, Ohio and Alaska are in the same “full-time lite” category as Wisconsin. But Illinois lawmakers’ base salary in 2024 was about $90,000. In Ohio, it was about $70,000, and about $84,000 in Alaska.

“People assume our salaries are much higher than they are,” said Snodgrass. “To be able to make ends meet, maybe have a tiny bit extra, in this economy, it really does take having another job.”

When she’s not doing the people’s work in Madison, Snodgrass is a part-time bartender and server at a restaurant on the Fox River. Snodgrass, who is single and has two adult chidren, lives in Appleton and was first elected in 2020. She started picking up hours at the restaurant last year when she found herself needing a little more cash.

“To be honest, they raised my rent,” Snodgrass said. The gardening, bartending legislator Snodgrass has a background in professional communications. She didn’t tend bar or wait tables in her twenties. Now she usually picks up weekend shifts at the restaurant.

In the spring, you can also find her moving tomato flats and ringing out customers at the garden center in Appleton’s Northside True Value. Between both jobs, she’s learned never to serve white wine in a warm glass and that the Latin name for Black-eyed Susan is Rudbeckia hirta.

“It demystifies who I am,” Snodgrass said about her other jobs. “When I’m there, I really do forget. I take off that hat.”

There were times in May when she’d spend eight hours at the garden center, pick up a couple shifts behind the bar and attend her legislative meetings during the regular work week.

It was a “juggling act,” she said.

After the legislature passes the state budget, it’s “adult field trip time,” Snodgrass said. She schedules meetings and tours with organizations in her district with a goal of learning more about her community.

Snodgrass tries to leave politics at the door, but sometimes customers or coworkers recognize her. Once at the garden center, an employee who works for the hardware store approached her. She knew he wasn’t a Democrat, she explained.

“I hear you’re a politician,” he said. “I just said, ‘You know, I don’t like to talk politics in front of the plants, it’s not good for their growth.’ He started laughing,” she said.

“The people that come into the garden center, the people that come into the restaurant, their politics may not be the same as mine,” Snodgrass continued. “But it’s a really good thing for me to interact with them and have casual conversation and just learn what’s top of mind for them.”

‘Tethered to reality’ Sortwell believes the Assembly’s Republican Caucus represents a breadth of experience. Snodgrass, however, acknowledged that the compensation of state representatives virtually ensures that only a select few can afford to run for office.

“We are never going to be able to recruit a real variety of people and working-class people to do this job if we don’t find a way to make it affordable” for people to support themselves, she said.

Many of her colleagues, Snodgrass said, have a spouse or partner with a lucrative profession.

There are also dozens of business owners, multiple attorneys and a handful of realtors between the state Assembly and state Senate, according to a review by The Badger Project. Dozens more do not list any other employment on their bios.

State Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) runs a land development business that builds single-family homes in Brown County. He also secures book deals and speaker engagements as the business manager for Immaculée Ilibagiza, an American author and motivational speaker from Rwanda.

“I’ve been able to manage that effectively for a decade, and I’ve had two or more jobs for almost my entire life, so it feels very normal for me,” Steffen said. “I think it’s something that benefits, not detracts from my ability and output as a legislator.”

He understands the issues of small business owners personally, he said. And when he’s in the business mindset, the political hat comes off.

“I’m just a normal small business owner in those times,” Steffen said. “And I like that.”

The list goes on. State Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere) — yes, that’s his real name — is the director of operations for Papa John’s Pizza in Wisconsin. State Rep. Karen Hurd (DWithee) is a nutritionist, and state Rep. Clint Moses (RMenomonie) is a chiropractor. State Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) helps large companies prepare their taxes. State Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) is a professional counselor and operates a private practice. State Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) is an interim police chief in Chippewa County. State Rep. Chanz Green (R-Grand View) owns a northwoods tavern.

It “informs us and keeps us very closely tethered to reality,” Steffen said.

Sortwell echoed the sentiment: “It’s an important perspective that people who are representing the people of Wisconsin … are still employed and still feeling the same pressure in the job market that every other Wisconsinite is feeling. I actually think it brings strength to the Legislature.”

Her “number one priority is obviously the legislature,” Snodgrass said. But at other moments, it’s simply time to start “pouring wine.”

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.