County executive race
Deadlocked election panel rejects complaints
An election panel keeps two Milwaukee County executive candidates on the spring ballot despite a blunder.
A divided Milwaukee County Election Commission on Tuesday rejected complaints aimed at knocking two candidates for Milwaukee County executive off the spring ballot.
On a 1-1 vote, the panel split on whether to bounce Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy and former state Sen. Jim Sullivan for breaking state rules by using some of the same people to collect signatures on their nomination papers.
In the case of a tie, a complaint is dismissed by the election board. Both commissioners — Rick Baas and Tim Posnanski — were appointed by outgoing County Executive Chris Abele. A third commissioner, Nancy Penn, was absent.
Milwaukee County Board Chairman Theo Lipscomb, who is also running for county executive and filed the complaints, left it open as to whether he will appeal the split decision to the state Election Commission.
“It’s hard to see what the (election) statute means if it doesn’t mean what it says,” said a frustrated Lipscomb. “Lawyers can see gray when everyone else sees it’s clear.”
Both Sullivan and Kennedy said they believe the issue is now resolved.
“I understand the legal argument that was made, but this clearly is a decision that should be made at the ballot box,” he said.
“This whole challenge is really just another illustration of what’s broken about county government,” Kennedy said.
Lipscomb argued in his two complaints that Kennedy and Sullivan’s campaigns had violated state law by using the same people to collect signatures as had state Rep. David Crowley.
A total of six candidates are vying to replace Abele, who announced last fall that he was not seeking reelection. The deadline for turning in signatures was last week.
State Sen. Chris Larson, who ran and lost to Abele in 2016, is considered the favorite, but there is likely to be a scramble for the second spot on the primary ballot. The top two finishers will square off in the April 7 general election.
Lipscomb asked the commission to invalidate 844 of the 2,684 signatures collected by Kennedy and verified by the county. His complaint challenged 1,101 of Sullivan’s validated signatures.
A candidate needs 2,000 signatures to make it onto the ballot.
At the hearing, it became clear that Kennedy and Sullivan’s campaigns outsourced the task for gathering signatures, something that is standard practice in bigger campaigns.
They both ended up giving part of the job to community organizer Simon
Warren, owner of the Sweet Black Coffee shop and an associate of Jerrel Jones, owner of the Milwaukee Courier and WNOV-AM (860).
Warren then paid the same individuals to go out and collect signatures for the different campaigns. Warren did not return repeated calls.
“That’s the risk they assumed when they subcontracted,” said Lipscomb, who acknowledged that he also used a private vendor to collect some of his signatures.
“This was an honest mistake and should be treated as such,” said Jeffrey Mandell, the attorney for Sullivan.
Mandell and Kennedy’s lawyer, Matthew O’Neill, both cited a state Supreme Court case that found most state election laws should be seen as discretionary, not mandatory. They also said no one involved in the blunders by the two campaigns was trying to defraud anyone.
They concluded that the election panel should consider the snafu an “irregularity” not significant enough to override the will of those voters who signed the nomination petitions.
Mike Maistelman, the lawyer for Lipscomb, dismissed the argument that much of election law should be viewed as advisory.
“That’s going to open a whole new can of worms,” Maistelman said.
Posnanski and Baas split on the issue at the end of the hearing, which ran for nearly four hours.
Posnanski said it’s clear that circulators are not supposed to work for more than one candidate in an election. But he said state law tasks the commission with enforcing the will of the electorate even if a candidate doesn’t fully comply with election laws.
But Baas said he was bothered by the fact that other candidates had no problem abiding by the rules when gathering signatures. He also said he was reluctant to simply set aside the state law pertaining to circulators.
“If you put it in the law,” Baas said, “it’s law.”