Meet the Candidates for City Offices

Packed spring election features 46 candidates for 19 city offices.

By Jeramey Jannene - Jan 15th, 2020 10:55 am

Milwaukee City Hall. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Voters will see packed ballots when they head to the polls for a February 18th primary and April 7th general election.

The City of Milwaukee’s Election Commission certified its portion of the ballot on Tuesday afternoon, placing 46 candidates on the ballot for 19 offices in the upcoming elections. The city races will be joined by races for Milwaukee County offices, a state supreme court seat and a partisan Presidential primary.

City races with three or more candidates will be included on the February primary. The top two vote getters will advance to the April general election.

To get to this point, candidates submitted 47,210 signatures to the Milwaukee Election Commission. Four candidates were rejected for failing to submit the necessary number of signatures, 1,500 for a citywide race and 200 for a council seat.

Five candidates will run unopposed: Common Council members Cavalier Johnson, Robert Bauman, Jose G. Perez, Chantia Lewis and Russell W. Stamper, II. The latter two were beneficiaries of candidates failing to submit the required number of valid signatures. Antonio Torres filed to run against Lewis in the Ninth District, but the election commission only validated 113 of his 282 submitted signatures. Stamper benefited from Keith Martin having 119 of his 258 signatures rejected. Stamper also had three candidates, Derek Anderson, Taniesha Daniels and Jameelah Love, submit the initial paperwork to run, but no signatures.

Mayoral candidates David King and Ramone Williams were not approved after each submitted less than 1,600 signatures. In each case the election commission struck over 80 signatures.

On average the commission rejected 11 percent of submitted signatures. Executive director Neil Albrecht said the commission checked for legible, properly filled out forms and valid addresses. Signatures are not checked for valid voter registrations.

Urban Milwaukee will have more coverage of the candidates in future articles. Here are the candidates, including for all 15 aldermanic districts:

Mayor

City Attorney

Comptroller

Treasurer

Spencer Coggs
Brandon Methu

1st District

2nd District

Cavalier Johnson

3rd District

Nik Kovac
Jacob Marek

4th District

Robert Bauman

5th District

6th District

Milele A. Coggs
Tory Lowe

7th District

8th District

9th District

Chantia Lewis

10th District

Richard Geldon
Michael Murphy

11th District

12th District

Jose G. Perez

13th District

Patty Doherty
Scott Spiker

14th District

Jason Auerbach
Marina Dimitrijevic
Paul Rasky

15th District

Russell W. Stamper, II

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