Last week’s city and county election results were historic, even if they weren’t surprising.
Calling a halt to a four-year parade of scandals, voters hurled Milwaukee City Attorney Tearman Spencer out of office by a larger margin than any other incumbent chief legal officer in at least four decades.
They re-elected County Executive David Crowley by the biggest margin of any contested race in the 64-year history of his office, and handed Mayor Cavalier Johnson the second-largest re-election victory of any Milwaukee mayor in at least that many years.
Voters also elected the county’s first female comptroller and first majority-female County Board, along with the city’s most diverse Common Council ever, with an unprecedented Black majority and new highs for women and openly LGBTQ members.
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Most of the drama in this election came from the Milwaukee Public Schools referendum, in which MPS leaders notched a narrow victory despite a big-spending advertising campaign by business opponents of the $252 million property tax increase.
But with little real competition in the presidential primaries or in the general elections for mayor and county exec, turnout was down from the last two comparable elections. Countywide turnout Tuesday was 34 percent of previously registered voters, a drop from 41 percent in the COVID-plagued balloting of 2020 and from 58 percent in 2016. Voters showed up at the polls for Wisconsin Supreme Court races in both prior years, contested Democratic and Republican presidential primaries in 2016 and a close county exec race in 2020.
The three races that did have competition this time were for city attorney, where state Rep. Evan Goyke mounted a successful challenge to Spencer, and for city and county comptroller, both open after incumbents chose not to seek re-election.
Those are all important jobs, crucial to the proper functioning of local government. Yet they’re usually not highly visible, as evidenced by how many votes dropped off from the higher-profile but less-competitive contests.
Crowley’s uneven match against community activist Ieshuh Griffin drew 10 percent more votes than the wide-open competition to be the county’s chief financial officer. Similarly, the number of voters weighing in on Johnson’s lopsided contest against pastor David King was 8 percent more than those deciding Spencer’s fate and 15 percent more than those determining who would watch over the city’s books.
The vote total in the city attorney’s race might well have been lower had Spencer not raised the office’s profile in the least desirable way. Any list of the controversies he created would necessarily be incomplete, if only because a full accounting would take too much space in any article that touches on other topics.
Among the most serious allegations were that Spencer sexually harassed female staffers and created a toxic work environment; that he failed in his ethical duty as a lawyer to represent the police as his clients; and that he colluded with Deputy City Attorney Odalo Ohiku to cover up Ohiku’s work for private legal clients on taxpayers’ time. All that led to investigations by multiple city and state agencies and the district attorney’s office, and to Ohiku’s resignation.
Spencer responded by denying the allegations, blaming his troubles on racial and political bias against him, distorting his record and avoiding the news media. Near the end of the campaign, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported a stunningly brazen falsehood: Spencer claimed to have single-handedly ended police-involved deaths – ignoring the grim reality that citizens continued to die in encounters with officers throughout his term.
The council never acted on City Inspector General Ronda Kohlheim’s recommendation to remove Spencer from office. But the public did, voting 63 percent to 36 percent to fire him. Goyke’s 27-point margin of victory exceeded both Spencer’s 22-point defeat of predecessor Grant Langley in 2020 and Langley’s eight-point edge over his boss, Jim Brennan, in 1984.
Those were all close races compared with the way Crowley and Johnson demolished the perennial candidates who opposed them.
Crowley steamrolled Griffin, 85 percent to 15 percent, to win a second term. Of the 13 previous contested elections for the position, the next-highest margin for an incumbent was then-County Exec Tom Ament’s 60-point victory over former Shorewood Village Board Member David Schall in 2000. That excludes the five times when incumbents won re-election without opposition — the first county exec, John Doyne, in 1964, 1968 and 1972; his successor, Bill O’Donnell, in 1984; and Crowley’s predecessor, Chris Abele, in 2012.
But even in her overwhelming defeat, last Tuesday was a night of personal bests for Griffin. The 20,611 votes that she received in her first appearance on a countywide general-election ballot were more than two-and-a-half times her combined total vote in her nine other unsuccessful races, including her simultaneous loss for an East Side council seat. And the 16 percent of the vote that she picked up against Ald. Jonathan Brostoff was her highest losing percentage ever.
In the mayor’s race, Johnson crushed King, 81 percent to 18 percent, to win his first full four-year term. That was the most dominant performance by an incumbent since then-Mayor Henry Maier rolled up an all-time record of 86 percent to lawyer David Walther’s 14 percent in 1968. It was another historic win for Johnson, whose 44-point margin over former Ald. Bob Donovan in the 2022 special election was the biggest victory for an incoming mayor since at least 1900.
For King, the 14,639 votes that he received Tuesday was his highest total in six losing races for local, legislative and congressional office. He’s also lost statewide races for secretary of state and lieutenant governor.
The vote margins were more typical in the two comptroller races. Supervisor Liz Sumner, chair of the County Board’s Finance Committee, defeated former Pension Board Chair Michael Harper, 66 percent to 34 percent, to replace departing three-term incumbent Scott Manske.
Sumner will be the first woman comptroller, while Harper would have been the first Black comptroller. That was the same kind of choice that city voters faced in 2020, when they picked Aycha Sawa, then deputy comptroller, over state Rep. Jason Fields.
Now, with Sawa leaving office after a single term, her own deputy, Bill Christianson, won the race to succeed her, 64 percent to 36 percent, against former firefighters union leader Greg Gracz. It was exactly the same margin by which Gracz lost his only other campaign to then-Mayor John Norquist in 1992.
Also Tuesday, City Treasurer Spencer Coggs, the first Black man to win a citywide election for a non-judicial post, was elected to a fourth term without opposition. But with the departure of Sawa and Tearman Spencer, the city’s elected administrative offices will be somewhat less diverse.
Milwaukee’s Black neighborhoods turned out to be the last stronghold for the first Black city attorney. Spencer carried five of the city’s 15 aldermanic districts, all on the predominantly Black north side, according to an analysis by John D. Johnson, research fellow at Marquette University’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education (and no relation to the mayor). Goyke ran strongest in the eight districts currently represented by white and Hispanic alders.
However, the council grew more diverse as two veteran alders retired from office. Nonprofit leader Sharlen Moore’s win to replace longtime west side Ald. Michael Murphy brought the 15-member body to a record eight Black and six female members. And the election of Supervisor Peter Burgelis to replace southwest side Ald. Mark Borkowski gave the council a second openly LGBTQ member, joining south side Ald. JoCasta Zamarippa.
Celebrating the new numbers, 10 current alders issued a joint news release, saying, “This is significant in Milwaukee, which is a majority-minority city. It is wonderful to see that over time, the city and county leaders who represent the people continue to increasingly reflect the populations they serve.”
Similarly, marketing manager Sky Capriolo’s unopposed victory to replace Burgelis increased the number of female supervisors to 10, the first time that men have been in the minority on the 18-member County Board.
In another first, Crowley and Cavalier Johnson, the first people of color to hold their respective offices, won re-election against other Black candidates.
Yet in other ways, this election was a lot like its predecessors.
Incumbents continued to have a strong advantage. In addition to Johnson and Crowley, every incumbent alder and supervisor who sought re-election won, many without opposition. No incumbent mayor has lost a re-election bid since Carl Zeidler upset six-term Mayor Daniel Hoan in 1940, while O’Donnell’s 1988 defeat by Dave Schulz was the only similar occurrence in that office.
This year’s exception, of course, was the city attorney’s race. But that wasn’t new, either. Goyke will be the third consecutive Milwaukee city attorney who won his office by beating his predecessor, after Langley and Spencer. However, Langley did win re-election a record eight times — including six times with no opposition — becoming the epitome of an entrenched incumbent himself.
Also not new was the influence of money and establishment support. Johnson, Crowley, Goyke and Sumner all outraised and outspent their opponents, although the city comptroller’s race was more evenly matched financially. Most of Spencer’s money came from himself. By contrast, Gracz was backed by some big-name donors, including two former governors (Republican Tommy Thompson and Democrat Martin Schreiber), two former Assembly speakers (Republican Scott Jensen and Democrat Wally Kunicki) and four of his fellow failed mayoral candidates (now-Rep. Donovan, former Ald. Tony Zielinski, former Municipal Judge Vince Bobot and Schreiber).
Most endorsements from other political leaders and labor unions went to the citywide and countywide winners. Spencer, Gracz and Harper didn’t list any endorsements on their websites, even though Harper said he had some that he chose not to publicize.
Seeing those trends continue even as new people take office calls to mind a French proverb: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
