Michael Alfonso Wins Wisconsin's 7th District and Will Become the Youngest Member of Congress

Michael Alfonso has won Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District. The Associated Press called the race for the Republican, and Decision Desk HQ also called it on Tuesday night. At 26, Alfonso will become the youngest member of the United States Congress when the new Congress sits in January.

In the AP snapshot read on Wednesday, Alfonso had 186,035 votes, with 648 of 673 precincts reporting, which is 96.29 percent, and an estimated 96.32 percent of the vote counted. Unofficial returns showed Alfonso leading Democrat Fred Clark, a former state lawmaker, by about 56 percent to 44 percent, with nearly all the ballots tallied, according to the New York Post and Particle News. The counts are unofficial and will change as the last ballots are tallied.

The youngest on Capitol Hill

Alfonso takes the youngest member title from Florida Democratic Representative Maxwell Frost, who is 29. His mother-in-law, Rachel Campos-Duffy, posted on Wednesday: "Michael will be the youngest member of the new Congress & the first one born in this century." Alfonso was born in February 2000. The first presidential election he was old enough to vote in was in 2020. He was 1 year old during the September 11, 2001 attacks, and he was 4 years old when Democratic Representative Gwen Moore, the oldest member of Wisconsin's congressional delegation, was first sworn in in 2005. He is 49 years younger than Moore, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

A family seat and a first campaign

Alfonso is the son-in-law of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and he has won the same seat Duffy once held. He has not previously held office. He won the five-way August primary with about 48 percent of the vote. In a November 3 interview, he described his age and outsider status as giving him "a stake in the future," the Journal Sentinel reported.

He will replace Republican Representative Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor instead of seeking reelection. The 7th District is a deep red district that covers most of northern Wisconsin, and it is the largest district in the state.

Who he is

Alfonso works as an accountant for the Diocese of Superior. He previously worked as a producer for The Dan Bongino Show while living in Florida, and he worked in construction and concrete while at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lives in Hayward with his wife, Evita Duffy, and their daughter, who was born about five months ago.