[2] This session saw passage of several signature progressive reforms pushed by Governor Robert M. La Follette.

Including the creation of a civil service commission to implement merit-based rules for all state government jobs, creation of new powers and commissions for railroad, public health, and tax regulation, and attempts to eliminate lobbying and corporate-funding of political campaigns.

This was also the first of several sessions in which Milwaukee County sent a substantial delegation of socialist democrats to the legislature.

Senators representing even-numbered districts were newly elected for this session and were serving the first two years of a four-year term.

[1] The governor of Wisconsin during both of the legislative sessions of this term was Republican Robert M. La Follette, of Dane County, serving the first year of his third two-year term, having won re-election in the 1904 Wisconsin gubernatorial election.