Yee Leng Xiong, a Marathon County Board member and former nonprofit executive, won the Democratic primary for Wisconsin state treasurer on Tuesday, setting up a November general election matchup against Republican incumbent John Leiber. If elected, Xiong would become the first Hmong American elected to statewide office anywhere in the United States, a milestone that has drawn attention well beyond Wisconsin's borders.
Xiong defeated Dylan Ray Helmenstine, a former Medicaid health care rate analyst with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, according to Urban Milwaukee. Total turnout in Tuesday's primary reached 619,919 votes, with Xiong capturing 354,296 votes, or 57.2%, to Helmenstine's 265,623 votes, or 42.8%, per Ballotpedia. The Associated Press called the race for Xiong at 9:18 p.m. Tuesday night, with Xiong holding 57% of the vote once 90% of ballots had been counted.
Helmenstine, who also serves on the Black Earth Village Board and the Wisconsin Heights School District Board, hails from Black Earth in western Dane County and sits on multiple local boards and commissions there. Xiong, meanwhile, serves as Marathon County School Board treasurer in addition to his county board seat. The primary drew a wide slate of Democratic legislative endorsements for Xiong, including state representatives Tara Johnson, Lori Palmeri, Christine Sinicki, Jodi Emerson, Andrew Hysell, and Brienne Brown, along with U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and former Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton.
A Nonprofit Leader Turned County Official
Before entering electoral politics, Xiong built a career running nonprofit organizations serving Wisconsin's refugee and immigrant communities. He served as executive director of the Hmong American Center from 2016 through 2024, where he grew the organization's budget to $1.9 million, according to BallotReady. In 2025, he moved into a new executive role as director of New Beginnings for Refugees.
Xiong is not a newcomer to political campaigns. In November 2024, he ran as the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin's 85th Assembly District in central Wisconsin, losing narrowly to Republican incumbent Patrick Snyder by a 53% to 47% margin in what was considered a key battleground race under the state's redrawn legislative maps. That loss came two years before his statewide primary win, giving Xiong recent experience navigating competitive districts even as he now pursues a statewide office.
What the Treasurer's Office Actually Does
Wisconsin's state treasurer is technically the state's chief financial officer, signing state checks and serving as a statutory member of the Public Employee Trust Fund, which oversees the state's public pension and benefit programs. But the office has been steadily hollowed out over decades. The Wisconsin Legislature has moved much of the treasurer's former duties to agencies controlled by the governor, leaving the position with far less authority than its title suggests.
Notably, the Department of Revenue now handles operational administration and custody of the state's unclaimed property program, while the treasurer's role there is limited to statutory promotion and public outreach, reflecting decades of legislative reductions, according to Ballotpedia. Wisconsin voters actually rejected a 2018 constitutional amendment that would have eliminated the treasurer's office as an elected position altogether, preserving it despite its diminished responsibilities.
The Board Seat That Still Matters
The treasurer's most consequential remaining power comes from a seat on the three-member Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, alongside the secretary of state and the attorney general. That board manages revenues from the sale of state-owned timber and distributes proceeds to the Common School Fund, which purchases books and media for public school libraries and funds certain public works projects statewide.
The scale of that fund is substantial: its total principal balance expanded to more than $1.6 billion by August 2025, built from public land sales, timber revenues, legal fines, capital gains, and unclaimed property, per the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. In February 2026, the board announced a record $73.5 million distribution from the fund for the 2025-2026 school year, a 5% increase over the prior year, according to the Wisconsin Secretary of State. Beyond library funding, the board also runs the State Trust Fund Loan Program, issuing low-interest loans directly to municipalities and school districts for infrastructure projects, letting local governments finance public works without raising property taxes, as WUWM 89.7 FM has reported.
Setting Up a Rematch of 2022's Lone GOP Win
Xiong will now face incumbent Republican John Leiber, who was elected in November 2022 after narrowly defeating Democrat Aaron Richardson. That victory made Leiber the only Republican candidate to win a statewide executive office in Wisconsin that cycle, a fact underscored by the Wisconsin Examiner, which noted that Governor Tony Evers and other Democratic constitutional officers all won reelection that same November. Leiber, a real estate attorney and former legislative staffer who earned his law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 2021, has built his campaign around running the treasurer's office with a single staffer and no expansion of state government.
The contrast between the two candidates sets up a November race that turns as much on competing visions for a diminished office as on any single policy dispute. Xiong brings nonprofit budget management experience and a potential historic first to the ticket, while Leiber is campaigning on fiscal restraint and keeping the office lean. Whether Wisconsin Democrats can use that contrast to complete the statewide sweep they narrowly missed in 2022, when Leiber was the only Republican to break through, will be decided by voters in November.
