4/4 Primary Preview Part I
Illinois and Wisconsin
Happy spring, happy Tuesday, happy Election Day! It’s the first big voting day of the year, so we’ve got a multi-part preview for readability’s sake (10,000 words is brutal enough for us to read in one go, and we wrote it.) This half of our preview will cover municipal elections in Chicago and other Illinois cities, as well as municipal and judicial elections in Wisconsin; the second half will cover Denver, Kansas City, MO, St. Louis, and a Los Angeles city council special election.
Illinois
That’s right, it’s not just Chicago! It’s merely mostly Chicago. Three large suburban cities have mayoral elections of their own worth a look. In Chicago’s runoffs, we’ll start with relevant excerpts from what we said about each race in our first-round preview (click here for mayor and Wards 1-20, here for Wards 21-50) and then look at the state of the runoff.
Chicago
Mayor
Round 1: Paul Vallas 33% / Brandon Johnson 22%
As much as it pains us to say it, Paul Vallas is going to the runoff […] Vallas was a budget director who Richard Daley promoted to Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, where he quickly found the One Weird Trick to allow charters without affecting the budget of public schools: raiding the teacher’s pension fund and creating a billion-dollar budget crisis that continues to this day. Of course, by the time his decisions were catching up with the city, he was long gone, unsuccessfully running for mayor, and then fucking off to other cites where he innovated ever newer and bolder ways to privatize any parts of the educational system he could get his hands on. Vallas returned to Illinois to run for office in 2014 and 2019, failing both times, before announcing last year another attempt at the mayor’s office […]
Brandon Johnson is a progressive, full stop. Even if he’s backed away from some of the police defunding language he used to use, Johnson has a pretty down-the-line progressive platform, and has proposed hefty new taxes on the wealthy.
We’re finally here. Paul Vallas, the former CPS CEO and serial school privatizer, and Brandon Johnson, the former CPS teacher and Cook County Commissioner, face off in today’s biggest race. Johnson is committed to a slate of progressive policies, while Vallas has been forced to spend literally the entire campaign feebly insisting he’s a Democrat (fact check: ehhhhh idk about that my guy), palling around with far-right anti-LGBTQ activists, and running away from years’ worth of Republican-sounding comments on right-wing talk radio. Local and national media have helped to launder his reputation significantly, in part because they agree with his politics and in part out of a sense of fairness, but the basic thrust of Johnson’s campaign against Vallas—that Vallas is, if not a Republican, certainly closer to a Republican than a Democrat—is just true. On the race’s last day, no news broke, but two new polls did. Those polls were from progressive firm IZQ Strategies and GOP firm Victory Research, the two pollsters that performed best in the first round, and each showed a 50%-45% race. IZQ’s poll showed Johnson at 50% and Vallas at 45%, while Victory’s poll showed the reverse. It’s been a dead heat since the runoff was announced, and all that’s left to do is see who comes out on top (and vote for Brandon Johnson, if you live in Chicago and haven’t voted already.) Keep in mind that late-arriving mail-in ballots are likely to be very favorable to Johnson, as they were in the first round, and could shift the final result significantly in the days following the election.
City Council
Ward 4 (Near South Side, Oakland, and Douglas)
Round 1: Lamont Robinson 46% / Prentice Butler 15%
Meanwhile, a broad coalition is backing state Rep. Lamont Robinson, from machine figures to progressive alders and state legislators, as well as most non-CTU labor unions; King’s chief of staff Prentice Butler has his boss’s support.
Normally after a first round where one candidate was inches away from an outright victory and the other was stuck in the mid-teens, the runoff would be a foregone conclusion. However, Prentice Butler, chief of staff to outgoing incumbent Sophia King, kicked off the runoff with a press conference announcing the endorsement of every other candidate in the race. Most of those candidates were corporate and cop-friendly centrists, and while Butler isn’t quite that bad, he is the more moderate choice than Robinson, the first LGBTQ Black member of the IL state legislature. Robinson is supportive of the major progressive planks under consideration, while Butler is wishy-washy on just about everything, except the real estate transfer tax, which he opposes. The SEIU has gone hard for Robinson in the runoff, whereas Butler is on his own here.
Ward 5 (Kenwood, Hyde Park, and Woodlawn)
Round 1: Desmon Yancy 26% / Tina Hone 19%
The closest Ward 5 has to a frontrunner is Desmon Yancy, Senior Director of Organizing and Advocacy for the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, by dint of the support he’s receiving from organized labor. Yancy appears to be straddling the progressive and more establishment elements of Chicago politics, but he should mostly be thought of as the SEIU’s candidate, considering he used to be an employee and they’re bankrolling him[….]Martina Hone is the only candidate in the field who has held elected office before…in Virginia. She’s raising some of the best money in the field, and her whole deal is demanding more cops.
Ward 5 wound up with two candidates who have quite divergent views, especially on public safety. The right understands that she’s on their side, which is why the Chicago Tribune, corporations, and investors are working in the runoff to elect her, while labor money has flowed to Yancy. Unlike in the 4th Ward, Yancy came nowhere close to winning outright and has to make up a significant gap from 50%.
Ward 6 (Chatham and Greater Grand Crossing)
Round 1: William Hall 24% / Richard Wooten 23%
If there’s a frontrunner, it’s pastor and Rainbow PUSH alum William Hall, who has a huge financial advantage and near-unified support from progressives and organized labor. Barbara Ann Bunville is the first of three cops running here, and she’s the one with the FOP’s endorsement (they passed over Richard Wooten and Sylvester Baker Jr.)
William Hall was expected to make the runoff, thanks to his wide institutional progressive coalition, but Hall getting less than a quarter of the vote, and the man joining him being Richard Wooten, not even the cops’ favorite cop candidate, were both unexpected developments. In the runoff, Hall’s allies, especially organized labor, have doubled down on electing him, while Wooten has continued to go it alone.
Ward 10 (Hegewisch, Riverdale, South Deering, East Side)
Round 1: Peter Chico 40% / Ana Guajardo 27%
The favorite is union organizer Ana Guajardo, who has the support of Sadlowski Garza as well as Chuy García and most of the labor movement. […] Cops Peter Chico and Jessica Venegas are running tough-on-crime campaigns straight out of the 90s; perhaps unsurprisingly, the FOP endorsed both.
The temptation in an election where the union candidate is headed into a runoff with the cop candidate, and starting from a 40%-27% disadvantage, is to despair about her chances. But Guajardo is in a better position than she looks. For one thing, the third place candidate was DSA-endorsed Óscar Sánchez, who took 19% of the vote, and whose voters are going to be much easier for Guajardo to scoop up. The voters of police union co-endorsee Jessica Venegas, who earned 11%, are probably going to be leaning towards Chico, but Venegas was running a less overtly conservative campaign than Chico was, and there are other reasons to think that her voters may have been more like Guajardo voters than Chico voters.
The 10th Ward is majority Latine on paper, but not necessarily in practice. It’s centered around a heavily Latine neighborhood, but one that’s too small for a full Council district, so it also contains majority Black extensions to the north and southwest, as well as the far southeast corner of the city, which is majority Latine on paper, but whose electorate is majority white, and conservative at that. Chico got 58% of the vote in that region, but took 35% in the central Latine part of the district, and 25% in the majority Black precincts. Meanwhile, Guajardo, Sanchez, and Venegas fared poorly in the whiter parts of the district, and better elsewhere. In short, Chico was a regional candidate who did as well as he did in the first round because of conservative white voters who are now tapped out for him. For the runoff, labor is spending six figures on the Guajardo campaign, while Chico has collected almost as much from business groups, most notably the Chamber of Commerce and REALTOR PAC. The result is a runoff which may come down to turnout: a lower turnout, whiter electorate probably elects Chico, whereas a more Latine/Black electorate probably goes for Guajardo.
Ward 11 (Bridgeport and McKinley Park)
Nicole Lee (i) 31% / Anthony Ciaravino 29%
Appointed by Lightfoot after [former Ald. Patrick] Daley Thompson’s conviction automatically removed him from the council, Lee is a career corporate executive—and the daughter of Gene Lee, a longtime aide to the Daley machine in its heyday. Lightfoot-approved and Daley-connected, Lee is a continuation of the Daley machine whether or not she says so. However, she’s also the first Asian woman on the Chicago City Council, and this ward was redrawn to be majority-Asian[…] conservative police officer Anthony Ciaravino (backed by the FOP).
The 11th district runoff winds up being a lot like the 10th district runoff: DSA attempted to pick up an open seat, but failed to make the runoff, leaving voters to choose between the establishment candidate who did consistently okay throughout the district and found their greatest level of support among the ethnic group that the district was drawn to elect a member of, and a cop candidate who did mediocre at best but won the whitest, most conservative corner of the district by wide margins. Lee is much more moderate than Guajardo, but she’s also in much better position to win, having largely split the Asian vote with the third place finisher, moderate business owner Don Don, who took 20% of the vote. On top of which, voters for the DSA candidate, Ambria Taylor, are more ideologically motivated and will be opposed to Ciaravino, though not enamored with Lee.
Ward 21 (Washington Heights, Auburn Gresham, Morgan Park)
Round 1: Ronnie Mosley 25% / Cornell Dantzler 22%
The frontrunner in this election is Ronnie Mosley, a political strategist who runs Homegrown Strategy Group, which counts among its clients the JB Pritzker for Governor campaign. Pritzker is, unsurprisingly, one of his highest profile endorsers, joining organized labor, state Sen. Jacqui Collins, and the Chicago Tribune. [...] Firefighter Cornell Dantzler’s campaign would be totally dead in the water if it weren’t for the firefighters union funding him; as it is, it’s only mostly dead in the water.
We were wrong about Dantzler the first time, and we’re not going to be making the same mistake twice. Mosley already seriously underperformed in the first round, and has had a rough runoff thanks to a resume padding (lying) scandal. Mosley has been calling himself a graduate of Morehouse College, when in reality he attended but left before he graduated. Dantzler has been merciless about capitalizing on this weakness, even comparing him to George Santos. As much as we’re loath to root for a slick political consultant with a penchant for lying, the fact that Dantzler in particular is his opponent leaves us little choice—Dantzler is calling for more cops and is backed by Nicholas Sposato, one of two de facto Republicans on the City Council.
Ward 24 (North Lawndale)
Round 1: Monique Scott (i) 45% / Creative Scott 15%
Monique Scott was appointed last year after her brother Michael resigned from the city council. It’s not at all clear that she’ll have to fight to keep the job, because the field of challengers she faces is kind of weak [...] repeat candidates Creative Scott, Traci Treasure Johnson, and Larry Nelson might have residual name recognition.
Our money is on Scott here. Okay, fine, we’ll make an actual guess—Monique, the incumbent who nearly got to 50%, is probably winning the runoff. Creative only got 15% and since then has raised essentially no money, provided little contrast with Monique, and seen no business, labor, or factional interest come to his aid.
Ward 29 (Austin, Montclare)
Round 1: Chris Taliaferro (i) 49.7% / CB Johnson 40%
Chris Taliaferro is an establishment-y backbencher with a conservative streak. [...] drug abuse prevention group founder CB Johnson, who has run twice before and even has Danny Davis’s endorsement, but doesn’t seem to be interested in actually campaigning.
The 29th Ward was one of the last calls of the primary. Taliaferro was above 50% in the vote count right up until the penultimate update, when write-in votes dragged him just under. CB Johnson surprised us by not only finishing second but also getting downright close to Taliaferro. The result is an election which would unquestionably have gone for Taliaferro if it were held in February, but which isn’t quite as set in stone with a fresh electorate and an extra 5 weeks of campaigning.
The 29th is a district snaking up the side of the city. In its southern, very heavily Black half, Johnson won 54%-39% over Taliaferro. However, in the northern, more diverse half, Talieferro won 63%-25%. That margin was an even more extreme 73%-13% in the northernmost, majority white precincts that came quite close to voting for Trump. There’s a strong chance that the result here will be Johnson losing despite being a mild favorite of Black voters in a majority Black ward because of white bloc votes going to Taliaferro.
Ward 30 (Irving Park, Portage Park, Belmont Cragin)
Round 1: Jessica Gutiérrez 38% / Ruth Cruz 27%
The 30th Ward was the site of a major showdown in 2019, when 4-term incumbent Ariel Reboyras went into a tense runoff with Jessica Gutiérrez, daughter of Luis Gutiérrez, just weeks after he’d left Congress […] Gutiérrez hasn’t rebranded herself as much as she’s slightly updated her image to reflect that she can no longer credibly call herself an outsider, speaking more about experience and commitment than last time, as well as trying to position herself both as the pro-cop candidate (“Crime is out of control, and I am a crime fighter”) and the pro-choice candidate. She still talks about fighting against the “failed” Latine leadership in the district, because in many ways she’s still fighting against Reboyras, who is backing college administrator Ruth Cruz. Cruz and Gutiérrez both have labor backing, the former basking in LiUNA! support, while the latter has Teamsters, Unite Here!, and a few others. The actual policy differences between the two are slight, but there’s something cynical about Gutiérrez’s approach that makes it harder to believe she’ll stick with the moderately progressive policies she’s supporting.
Ruth Cruz couldn’t lay claim to the votes of the left in the first round, with DSA endorsee Warren Williams in the running, but with him out, his loss is her gain. That’s not just true in the sense that his 24% of the vote is up for grabs, but also many of his institutional supporters. Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, County Councilmember Anthony Joel Quezada, state Sen. Omar Aquino, and U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez are now all working to elect Cruz. Gutiérrez, by contrast, has received another influx of family money, as well as help from Rep. Mike Quigley and a few establishment politicians, including long time Republican state house member and current suburban mayor Angelo Saviano. Despite finishing well ahead of Cruz, Gutiérrez is a known quantity who realistically should have done even better and is the underdog for the runoff.
Ward 36 (Belmont Cragin to West Town)
Round 1: Gilbert Villegas (i) 46% / Leonor “Lori” Torres Whitt 30%
[M]achine Ald. Gilbert Villegas suffered a truly humiliating blowout loss to now-Rep. Delia Ramirez, a progressive and then-Chuy ally, in the primary for IL-03 last year, even losing his seat on the state party committee at the same time. Progressives and Chuy have grown apart in record time; Chuy is backing Villegas for another term, less than a year after backing Ramirez in that primary. The Northwest Side’s progressive political class isn’t as ready to call a truce with Villegas; Ramirez, state Sens. Omar Aquino and Cristina Pacione-Zayas, and state Rep. Lilian Jiménez are all behind Leonor “Lori” Torres Whitt, a CTU organizer and CPS teacher running a progressive campaign that looks to finish what Ramirez started last year.
Whitt did manage to hold Villegas under 50%, but only barely, and getting there herself is going to be difficult. Not the least reason for that is the third place candidate, David Herrera, who took 16% of the vote. Herrera was a tough-on-crime candidate who got almost all of his votes from the white, southeastern end of the district. Whitt is going to need a bunch of white Vallas voters from Ukrainian Village to go with the more progressive candidate in their race.
Ward 43 (Lincoln Park)
Round 1: Timmy Knudsen (i) 27% / Brian Comer 24%
Timmy Knudsen has been on the Council for all of 5 months. He was appointed by Lori Lightfoot (bad), considered using his discretionary ward dollars to hire a private security firm for the ward (bad), and was a cryptocurrency lawyer before the appointment (bad). [...] Brian Comer is a neighborhood association president who, for absolutely baffling reasons, was endorsed by the Chicago Tribune.
Any way they can both lose? Now that any possibility of a progressive member has been foreclosed on, it’s probably better to get establishment crony Knudsen in over one-man anti-Kim Foxx crusade Comer, but the difference is minimal.
Ward 45 (Jefferson Park, Irving Park)
Round 1: Jim Gardiner (i) 48% / Megan Mathias 17%
Jim Gardiner was elected as the reactionary, white suburban backlash candidate before it was cool—2019. He took down Ald. John Arena in an upset, with backing from the cop unions and running on a platform that you would recognize as what every conservative cottoned onto in the post George Floyd era. The old 45th was a tug of war between Irving Park, a thoroughly urban, somewhat progressive neighborhood, and, to its northwest, the much more conservative Jefferson Park. Redistricting shifted the 45th north, making it even whiter, more Republican (about ⅓, quite high for Chicago), and, of course, conservative. Despite all that, Gardiner may still lose. He is: under FBI investigation for bribery and battling a civil suit for using his position to arrest a ward resident under false pretenses, but at least the Chicago Board of Ethics investigation into him using his office to retaliate against political enemies finished because he paid the fine before the new investigation into him harassing opposing volunteers began. He’s also been in non-legal trouble as well, such as the time troves of misogynistic text messages from him were released, and he responded by apologizing to the one man he insulted, and only that one man. [...] Megan Mathias is [moderate seeming but actually pretty progressive candidate Susanna] Ernst if Ernst weren’t a bit better than she was letting on; she’s endorsed by the Chicago Tribune, Rep. Mike Quigley, and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.
Oh, we so badly want Gardiner to lose, but we know how unlikely he is to lose after winning the first round 48%-17%. Still, we’re going to give you the elevator pitch for why he could: Gardiner is the most controversial figure on the Council, and regardless of how much they emphasized it, every other candidate was an anti-Gardiner candidate. Gardiner has given up even responding to the press, which, yes, is a sign of confidence, but could also be a marker of overconfidence. We know we’re reaching, but goddamn it we want him to lose.
Ward 46 (Uptown)
Round 1: Angela Clay 36% / Kim Walz 26%
After nearly losing to progressive scientist Marianne Lalonde in 2019, conservative Ald. James Cappleman got the message and retired this cycle. You almost have to feel a little bad for Lalonde, because despite a progressive platform and proven campaigning ability, she’s not the candidate progressives have rallied around this time. That would be housing activist Angela Clay, backed by DSA, CTU, United Working Families, the SEIU, and…you get the picture. The entire Chicago left is quite excited to elect Angela Clay. [...] Kim Walz has some politicians and a whole lot of money
The moment this runoff was called, Kim Walz decided her path to the Council was going as negative as possible, as fast as possible. The combination of Walz's day job as a lobbyist for Walgreens and the looming spectre of socialism haunting Uptown Chicago has convinced business interests to go all-in for her. Her central campaign message, mirrored by the >$100,000 worth of mailers the Realtors PAC has run for her, is that Angela Clay will defund the police, and Chicago will immediately become a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Clay has mostly stayed positive and focused on her massive ground game operation. She also claims to have internal polling showing her up by 10%.
Ward 48 (Edgewater)
Round 1: Joe Dunne 26% / Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth 23%
[T]here’s real estate developer Joe Dunne, who is backed by outgoing incumbent Harry Osterman, as well as organized labor, with the exception of the unions that are backing Ward.[...] A self-proclaimed progressive who’s at least trying to back up that claim is Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, who cofounded Indivisible Illinois, and remains active in running her local chapter to this day. She kind of, sort of, wants to defund the police a little, supports just cause eviction laws, and has serious interest in expanding public transit and the housing opportunities near it.
Chicago DSA fumbled this one—an open district, that Brandon Johnson won, and they wound up not making the runoff. That’s good news for progressive Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, who can probably count on the 19% of voters who chose DSA endorsed Nick Ward in the first round. Not to mention, Brandon Johnson has made a rare Council endorsement for her. The only fly in the ointment is that Dunne has somehow won over organized labor, and they’re actually trying to elect him.
Elgin Mayor
Dave Kaptain (i) vs. Corey Dixon
Dave Kaptain became mayor in 2011 by unseating a long-tenured Republican incumbent, but Elgin has changed a lot since then: suburban Republicans are on the wane in Chicagoland, and Elgin is increasingly diverse as well as increasingly blue, with non-Hispanic whites comprising less than 40% of the population and no racial or ethnic group comprising a majority. Instead of a Republican, Kaptain faces a fellow Democrat this year, City Councilman Corey Dixon. In the past, Kaptain and Dixon haven’t clashed much publicly; Elgin politics is a pretty genial affair, normally. Dixon might be a tad to Kaptain’s left, focusing on police reform and affordable housing, but both men broadly agree on most issues. The race has gotten negative in its final days, with Kaptain criticizing Dixon for the $6,000-plus in fines he had to pay for late campaign finance filings, and Dixon criticizing Kaptain for what he characterizes as sluggish action on replacing Elgin’s lead water pipes, which have caused some water quality scares recently. Dixon is outraising the incumbent (whose campaign war chest is mostly made up of a single $27,000 donation from his wife) with some labor support, but it’s hard to tell whether Kaptain is struggling to keep up or simply coasting, confident he’ll win even if Dixon spends a little money.
Joliet Mayor
Robert Patrick O'Dekirk (i) vs. Tycee Bell vs. Terry D'Arcy
Robert Patrick O'Dekirk has been the mayor of Illinois’s second largest city since 2015, when he won on the slogan of “Joliet Can Be Great Again,” which he hasn’t repeated since that year, for some reason. O'Dekirk is a moderate liberal with a low-key administration, but has spent his second term dogged by a personal scandal, specifically allegations that he had blackmailed a member of the council with nude photos. Just recently, the city’s Inspector General released a report not only coming to the conclusion that O’Dekirk did not engage in blackmail, but that the whole thing was a conspiracy from rival politicians looking to damage O’Dekirk's reputation. The entire story is insane. Joliet is the second largest city in Illinois, counting over 150,000 residents, and yet there apparently was recently a harebrained scheme by a member of the city council to explain the leaks of his nudes by pinning it on the mayor, and planned everything with a newspaper reporter and the chief of police.
The new news about O’Dekirk’s biggest scandal is bad news for his two rivals. Republican-supporting businessman Terry D'Arcy is questionably to O’Dekirk’s left, and is supported by the nurses' union and the Joliet FOP. That the FOP is backing a competitor should come as no surprise given O’Dekirk’s tense relationship with the city’s police department, though those disputes are personally motivated, not matters of political differences; O’Dekirk was a police officer with the department for a decade. In fact, the D’Arcy camp (via an apparently connected PAC) is making hay of his spotty and violent disciplinary record as a Joliet cop in the 1990s. Speaking of which, O’Dekirk’s response to Black Lives Matter protests was pretty fucking bad—he was caught on video in a physical altercation with two protesters and ultimately settled a lawsuit filed against him by the two men. So, uh, there’s definitely room to his left. Right now that room is being occupied by Tycee Bell, the only one trying to run as a progressive, though she is unfortunately woefully underfunded. Surprisingly, there have been two public polls of this election. One, conducted by PPP, was paid for by the D’Arcy campaign. That poll shows D’Arcy leading O’Dekirk 38%-21%, with Bell in third at 10%. This election is conducted by first-past-the-post rules; there are no runoffs. The other poll, run and paid for by COR Strategies, found D’Arcy leading O’Dekirk 49%-20%, with Bell at only 6%.
Naperville Mayor
Tiffany Stephens vs. Scott Wehrli vs. Benny White
Naperville, the third largest city in Illinois, currently has a Republican mayor, a living hangover from the Obama years when the Chicago suburbs were still amenable to Republicans. However, he’s retiring this year; Republicans are trying to hold on to City Hall, but their candidate, cop and businessman Scott Wehrli, has to go without the benefits of incumbency. Elections are technically nonpartisan, but Wehrli is running as the candidate of the police unions, is not a fan of Naperville’s new ban on the sale of assault weapons, and hails from a prominent Naperville Republican political family—his cousins Grant Wehrli and Mary Lou Wehrli served as Republicans in the state House and on the DuPage County Forest Preserve Board, respectively, until both lost reelection to Democrats in 2020. (Side note: DuPage County has an elected forest board? What the fuck?)
Naperville City Councilman Benny White, who would be the city’s first Black mayor, doesn’t shy away from the fact that he voted for the assault weapons ban. White and Wehrli’s platforms are vague and not particularly ideological (this is, after all, a technically nonpartisan, suburban mayoral election) but the names on White’s endorsement list are further reminder that he’s a Democrat and Wehrli is a Republican. (Naperville gave Joe Biden 62% of the vote.) A third candidate, Tiffany Stephens, survived a residency challenge to make the ballot but isn’t making much of a dent. According to the only publicly released poll, this is a tight race: GOP-aligned firm COR Strategies found White leading Wehrli by just one point, 44% to 43%.
Wisconsin
Madison Mayor
Round 1: Satya Rhodes-Conway (i) 60% / Gloria Reyes 28%
There’s not much suspense here. Incumbent Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway won 60% back in the February primary, which had very high turnout thanks to the concurrent Wisconsin Supreme Court race; former Madison School Board President and police officer Gloria Reyes, who ran to the mayor’s right, is going nowhere.
Wisconsin Court of Appeals District 1 (Milwaukee County)
William Brash (i) vs. Sara Geenen
This race is a walking advertisement against nonpartisan elections. Incumbent Bill Brash is the chief judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, a 16-member appellate court elected by district. He’s also a conservative Republican originally appointed by Scott Walker in a district coterminous with deep-blue Milwaukee County, something his campaign accidentally admitted in a fundraising email which urged supporters to give Brash money to help “turn out the conservative vote” and “keep [...] the [Wisconsin] Supreme Court in conservative hands.” We think that effectively makes the case for labor lawyer and former Democratic Party field organizer Sara Geenen; so does Geenen, who even read excerpts from that email aloud at a candidate forum. Brash has some nominally liberal backers, but the only one who isn’t a fellow judge or attorney is former Sen. Herb Kohl. Liberal judges and attorneys are often unable to see their conservative colleagues for what they are and hopelessly wedded to norms of decorum, while Kohl is just one of the richest men in Wisconsin. (We’re shocked—shocked—that a gazillionaire cofounder of the Kohl’s department store chain isn’t a huge fan of putting a labor lawyer on the bench.)
Milwaukee Common Council District 1
Round 1: Andrea Pratt 34% / David Bowen 33%
Andrea Pratt, an equal rights specialist employed by the city of Milwaukee, is best known as the daughter of Marvin Pratt, the first Black mayor of Milwaukee, though he only served for a few months in 2011, and in an acting capacity. David Bowen is a former County Supervisor and member of the state Assembly, as well as the son of Jamaican immigrants. The ideological angle here is unclear, though Pratt is endorsed by state Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde and the Milwaukee Education Association, both of whom are generally on the progressive side of Milwaukee politics.
Milwaukee Common Council District 5
Round 1: Lamont Westmoreland 29% / Annette Jackson 18%
Nonprofit leader and business lender Lamont Westmoreland is running on a platform of more cops and longer sentences. He’s also the favorite here thanks to his strong first round showing and financial advantage over small business owner Annette Jackson.
Milwaukee Common Council District 9
Round 1: Odell Ball 24% / Larresa Taylor 21%
Odell Ball is an anti-drug city employee, and is married to one of the city’s top cops. He’s running a mostly self-funded campaign, and gives every indication of being a moderate. Larresa Taylor, a special education teacher who ran for this seat in 2016, is harder to read but, at minimum, doesn’t seem worse.
Milwaukee Municipal Court Branch 2
Molly Gena vs. Lena Taylor
Lena Taylor has represented North Milwaukee in the Senate for two decades, and has been one of the most frustratingly Republican-friendly members of the body since then. In 2016, she even had a primary scare because of that, facing down and ultimately defeating none other than Mandela Barnes. Ominously for someone running for judge, she was recently the only Democrat to side with Republicans on the state’s police reform efforts and is trying to gin up support for more police funding. Her opponent is Molly Gena, currently the managing attorney of Legal Action of Wisconsin, a nonprofit providing free legal services to low-income Wisconsinites, which she began working with immediately after law school. Gena has also worked for the ACLU and volunteered for Amnesty International and Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinic. Overall she has the impeccable record of support for civil liberties and underprivileged legal clients that you would normally expect from a public defender.
The differences in judicial philosophies on the ballot couldn't be much starker, but even so, it's astounding that campaign finance records show half of Taylor's campaign money coming from Youssef Barrada, a notoriously eviction-happy slumlord who owns thousands of units in the city and is responsible for over 10% of Milwaukee's evictions. Gena is backed by labor unions, including the AFL-CIO in this race, while Taylor isn't campaigning much at all. Unfortunately, with turnout unusually high this year, and driven by the Supreme Court election, a large number of voters may walk into the booth unaware of this race, and vote the name they know: Lena Taylor, the senator of 20 years and previous candidate for mayor and county executive.