Mark Pocan

Mark William Pocan ( POH-kan; born August 14, 1964) is an American politician and businessman serving as the U.S. representative from Wisconsin's 2nd congressional district since 2013. The district is based in the state capital, Madison. A member of the Democratic Party, Pocan is co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus and chair emeritus of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

From 1999 to 2013, Pocan represented Wisconsin's 78th Assembly district in the Wisconsin State Assembly. He succeeded Tammy Baldwin in the Assembly and later succeeded her in the U.S. House of Representatives after Baldwin was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Pocan was born and raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He graduated from Harvey Elementary School, Washington Junior High School, and Mary D. Bradford High School in 1982, where he was elected senior class president. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1986.

Shortly after graduating, Pocan opened up his own small business, a printing company named Budget Signs & Specialties, which he continues to own and run as of 2012. He is a member of the AFL-CIO, which he joined as a small business owner.

Pocan's active years at UW–Madison in College Democrats led to his election in 1991 to the Dane County Board of Supervisors, where he served Madison's downtown community for three terms, leaving the board in 1996.

In 1998 Pocan's longtime friend and ally, Tammy Baldwin, gave up her seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly to make a successful run for Congress. Pocan ran to succeed her in the western Madison district and won a three-way Democratic primary with 54% of the vote. He faced no Republican opponent in the general election and won with 93% of the vote against an independent. He won reelection in 2000 with 81%—the only time he faced a Republican challenger. He was unopposed for reelection from 2002 to 2010.

As a state legislator, Pocan earned a reputation for moving the Wisconsin political debate to the left. One of the most outspoken progressive members of the state assembly, he focused on issues including corrections reform, the state budget, education funding, and fighting privatization schemes.

For six years, Pocan sat on the Joint Finance Committee, including a term as co-chair. He also took on a leading role among Assembly Democrats, running caucus campaign efforts in 2008 when Democrats went from five seats down to retaking the majority for the first time in 14 years.

Pocan is one of the few progressive Democrats to have joined the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative-leaning organization that produces model legislative proposals. He used his membership to investigate the organization's agenda and sponsors and wrote a series of articles on his experiences with ALEC for the Madison-based magazine The Progressive from 2008 to 2011. On the September 29, 2012, edition of Moyers and Company, Pocan said, "ALEC is a corporate dating service for lonely legislators and corporate special interests that eventually the relationship culminates with some special-interest legislation and hopefully that lives happily ever after as the ALEC model. Unfortunately what's excluded from that equation is the public."

Joint Survey Committee on Retirement Systems

In 2012, Baldwin gave up her congressional seat in order to run for the U.S. Senate and Pocan decided to run in the open 2nd congressional district. He won a four-candidate Democratic primary with 72% of the vote. He won all 7 counties in the district, including the heavily populated Dane County with 74% of the vote. The 2nd district is extremely Democratic, and it was widely believed that Pocan would win the general election as its nominee. On November 6, 2012, Pocan won the general election, defeating Republican Chad Lee 68%–32%.

In January 2020, Pocan endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for president. On July 19, 2024, he called for Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 United States presidential election.

In July 2024, in protest of the Gaza–Israel conflict, Pocan chose not to attend Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress. On March 4, 2025, he walked out of President Trump's address to Congress while Trump was speaking.

On June 25, 2025, Pocan posted a comment on X telling White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, to "go back to 1930's Germany". The White House condemned the post as antisemitic, but Pocan did not apologize, claiming he would refuse to engage with what he called the "racist base of the GOP" and saying that "normal people" understood he was comparing Miller's views to those of the Nazis.

Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies

Pocan identifies as a progressive Democrat. He is a member of organizations including Wisconsin Citizens Action, the American Civil Liberties Union, Fair Wisconsin and Midwest Progressive Elected Officials Network.

Pocan supports decreasing U.S. military spending. Pocan, Pramila Jayapal, and Barbara Lee attempted to reduce the size of the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, but their motion was rejected 93–324. Jayapal and Pocan, the Congressional Progressive Caucus's co-chairs, said, "Every handout to Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman is money that could have been spent on ending the [COVID-19] pandemic, keeping small businesses afloat and staving off an economic meltdown."

Pocan has called himself an opponent of "corporate power" and corporations "that get too big". In March 2021, he criticized Amazon for its treatment of workers, including behavior he described as union busting and "mak[ing] workers urinate in water bottles". The company denied that delivery drivers were sometimes forced to urinate in bottles, but later recanted the statement and apologized to Pocan.

In 2022, Pocan authored legislation to impose a moratorium on mergers and acquisitions in the food and agricultural sector. He supports reforms to federal agricultural commodity checkoff programs, including requiring that the programs publish budgets, be audited, and not contract with lobbyists or engage in anti-competitive practices.

In September 2018, Pocan supported legislation invoking the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to stop U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, saying, "The world's worst humanitarian crisis has been triggered by our secretive, illegal war in Yemen waged alongside the Saudi regime. As the Saudis use famine as a weapon of war, starving millions of innocent Yemenis to near death, the United States fuels, coordinates and provides bombs for Saudi airstrikes, and secretly deploys the military to participate in on-the-ground operations with Saudi troops."

Pocan is openly gay. He credits his political activism in part to an incident soon after he graduated from college and opened his printing business, when two men followed him after he left a gay bar and beat him with a baseball bat while they called him "faggot" and other anti-gay slurs. This spurred him to become active in Madison's LGBT community. Pocan was the only openly gay member of the state assembly after Tammy Baldwin's election to Congress, and one of three LGBT members of the 100th Wisconsin Legislature, alongside Senator Tim Carpenter and Representative JoCasta Zamarripa.

On November 24, 2006, Pocan and his long-term partner, Philip Frank, were legally married in Toronto. Pocan's brother, William S. Pocan, serves as a circuit court judge in Milwaukee County. Pocan is among the few U.S. representatives not to identify with any religion.

Pocan has received the following recognitions while in office:

Fair Wisconsin Statewide Leader Award (2009)

Planned Parenthood Rebecca Young Leadership Award (2009)

Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin Legislator of the Year (2008)

Wisconsin Library Association's Public Policy Award (2008)