How about a change of pace for Wisconsin governor?
Instead of a long line of professional politicians in the governor’s mansion on Lake Mendota, how about an outstanding entrepreneur who has created thousands of new jobs and a bundle of wealth for venture investors?
Such a person exists. Such a person has previously, but privately, expressed an interest in running for governor someday. The timing for that person is now.
That business and civic leader would be Kevin Conroy, the highly innovative CEO who just cut a deal with Abbott Laboratories for the sale of his Exact Sciences Corporation for $21-23 billion.
Was it the biggest deal in the history of the state? I can’t recall any bigger.
This wasn’t Conroy’s first rodeo. He previously headed Third Wave Technologies, a Madison molecular diagnostics company that he sold in 2008 for $580 million. He’s a serial entrepreneur who really knows the biomedical space, a long-emerging sector in a state that badly needs reinvention of its economy.
The four Wisconsin Economic Summits of 2000-2003 revealed clearly that the state could no longer rely on manufacturing and farming for job creation. Both sectors get more uber-efficient every year. Their job numbers have gone down every year even as their production dollars have gone up. Manufacturing in Wisconsin once reached nearly 600,000 jobs; it now employs fewer than 500,000.
After Third Wave, Conroy joined Exact Sciences in 2009 and moved it from Boston to Madison. Its first big product was Cologuard, which uses stool samples to test for colon cancer. It is much less invasive than a colonoscopy and much less costly – about $500 vs. $3000.
His team grew Exact Sciences to $3 billion in sales and 7000 “team members.”
He knows what education can mean for a career. He has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Michigan State University and a law degree from the University of Michigan. After graduation, he worked as patent lawyer.
His growth strategy at Exact Sciences as a public company included ten acquisitions in the related biomedical spaces. He knows the art of the deal.
Exact Sciences is investing heavily in other cancer detection technologies, including DNA and RNA blood markers. It is gospel in the oncology world that detecting cancers early vastly improves the outcomes from treatment.
In the announcement of the sale to Abbott, Conroy said that he expected to stay with the merged company until the second quarter of 2026. That gives him plenty of time to mount a campaign for governor on the Democratic ticket.
Politics is in his blood. His father Joe was in the Michigan legislature for 22 years, and politics was conversational fare as he grew up.
Conroy also did what other strong CEO’s often do; he has been heavily engaged in civic affairs. Perhaps looking ahead to running some day, he has been involved in the Milwaukee Urban League; Bio Forward, a bio-technology trade association; the Wisconsin Technology Council; the Madison Chamber of Commerce; and the Overture Center Foundation.
He has a flare for marketing and promotion. He promised to sky dive when he ran the United Way Campaign in Dane County in 2016 and made the jump when it was successful. He hired popular PGA golfer Jerry Kelly of Madison as company spokesperson.
The timing for a Conroy for Governor campaign couldn’t be better. There are seven other Democrats in the primary for governor next August, most with political backgrounds. The other exception is Missy Hughes, who helped lead the giant Organic Valley Cooperative in the southwestern part of the state. None of them, including two lieutenant governors, have jumped to lead the pack in preliminary polls. Conroy could be a standout.
In addition, the two Republicans running for governor are not widely known in the state and will have heavy baggage from their close associations with President Trump, whose approval ratings have tanked.
More importantly, the president’s “strongly disapprove” ratings are almost 50%. That’s half of the population that hates his guts and will be highly motivated to vote, while Trump’s hard core MAGA followers number about 30% and are less likely to vote when Trump is not on the ticket, as will be the case in the midterm elections in November 2026.
In short, there could be some relatively clear sailing for Conroy if he jumps in. Like the others, he still will have to do the work of getting broadly known to voters across the state.
And, yeah, there is the money part of politics. Conroy has deep-pocket friends and high visibility in the business world. With his share of the proceeds from the sale of Exact Sciences to Abbott, he could probably fund his own campaign.
His profile should appeal to independent voters who are looking for a better answer than either party has so far surfaced.
In an interview in 2018 with Isthmus, a Madison publication, Conroy said, “creating a strong economy in Wisconsin and believe in the importance of public service. Some day that may be a course I pursue.”
For fresh blood in the Wisconsin political picture, let’s hope that “some day” is early 2026.
