County executive race
Appeals court denies two candidates’ request to remain on ballot.
With a ruling by the state Court of Appeals on Monday, two Milwaukee County executive candidates lost their fight to get back on the spring election ballot.
The joint appeal in the District 1 Court of Appeals by former state Sen. Jim Sullivan and Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy was filed and decided Monday.
Sullivan and Kennedy appealed a ruling Friday by Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Kevin Martens that denied their request to restore their names on the Feb. 18 primary ballot.
Martens upheld an order by the Wisconsin Elections Commission that their names be removed from the ballot for both the primary and the April 7 general election because of a problem with their nomination papers.
They said they were disappointed with the verdict. Kennedy said there are no candidates left who bridge the political divide, adding he got into the race because he can work with members of both parties. He said he will probably endorse another candidate in the coming days.
Kennedy said it was a tough appeals process after an initial 1-1 tie at the Milwaukee County Election Commission left them on the ballot.
“Yes, we won in the Milwaukee County Election Commission, but it was a gut punch from the Wisconsin Elections Commission and then yet one more body blow from Judge Martens,” he said.
Sullivan said he thinks there was “significant statutory and case law” on their side.
“It was important for us to push this forward in order to stand up for the rights of thousands of Milwaukeeans who signed the nomination papers and who deserve to be able to make a choice from a full field of candidates,” he said.
He said he is not endorsing any other candidates at this time.
Theodore Lipscomb Sr., the Milwaukee County Board chairman who is also running for county executive, had challenged signatures filed by Sullivan and Kennedy and pushed for their removal from the ballot.
“We followed the rules and with our challenge ensured that election laws were applied equally and fairly to all candidates,” Lipscomb said in a statement. “We also showed, once again, that grassroots support and the power of people is more powerful and enduring than what Big Money and high priced political operatives can do for their candidate.”
Ballots were sent to the printer Monday.
The Milwaukee County Clerk’s Office asked its printer to run a first set of 25 ballots per reporting unit — a total of more than 11,000 across the county — so municipalities will have enough to hand out Tuesday, the deadline for municipal clerks to send absentee ballots to voters who have a valid request on file.
The full order will arrive to municipalities by the end of the day Friday, said Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson.
In-person absentee voting in Milwaukee begins Feb. 3.
“We felt this was the best approach to get ballots in the hands of the voter in compliance with the statutory deadlines,” Christenson said.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission struck enough signatures to put Sullivan and Kennedy below the threshold of 2,000 valid signatures needed to get on the ballot.
The campaigns of Kennedy, Sullivan and state Rep. David Crowley had outsourced the task of gathering signatures, all giving part of the job to a vendor who paid the same people to collect signatures for the different campaigns.
Circulators collected nomination papers for Crowley’s campaign first, so a complaint was not filed against him.
The law says if a circulator collects nomination papers for two candidates for the same office, the papers with earlier signatures are considered valid. The later ones are rejected.
The three-judge panel found that the statutory language did not require further inquiry.
Kennedy and Sullivan’s appeal states that the legal issue in the case is whether the state law designating signatures collected later as invalid is mandatory or discretionary and within the scope of a state law that says the “will of the electors” overrides a “failure to fully comply” with the state’s election laws.
The law “expressly provides that all provisions of the election statutes, except for those expressly saying otherwise, ‘shall be construed to give effect to the will of the electors,’” the appeal states.
Kennedy’s and Sullivan’s campaigns said they had been assured that the people collecting signatures for their campaigns had not collected signatures for any other candidates in the race. There is no evidence of fraud and this was an honest mistake, they argued.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission, represented by the state Department of Justice, pushed for the Court of Appeals to not grant the review Sullivan and Kennedy sought.
“Accepting appellate review on the day that ballots are being printed would cause uncertainty at minimum and may disrupt the election timing,” Assistant Attorneys General S. Michael Murphy and Clayton Kawski wrote.
The case requires a simple interpretation of state law, the attorneys wrote.