County Board Campaign Derailed by False Nomination Signatures

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

A hasty effort to mount an electoral challenge to controversial county Sup. Steve Taylor has fallen apart and potentially created legal consequences for the fledgling campaign.

The City of Franklin has long been known for dysfunctional internal politics. In recent years, most of that has revolved around the controversial Rock Sports Complex development and the nuisance noise that Franklin officials have failed to address.

And with this latest election snafu in the race for District 17 on the Milwaukee County Board, all roads lead back to the Rock.

In December 2023, Danelle Kenney, a real estate agent from Franklin filed to run against Sup. Patti Logsdon. Kenney’s campaign is viewed by some followers of Franklin politics as a political proxy for the developers of the Rock Sports Complex and their ally Taylor, who is executive director of the ROC Foundation, a nonprofit tied to The Rock. Kenney denies that her campaign is affiliated with Taylor or the Rock.

Around the time Kenney’s campaign began collecting signatures, residents that oppose Taylor and the Rock developers began working to support a candidate in a run against Taylor. That challenger was Andrew Matias, a real estate agent from Oak Creek.

But Matias will not appear on the ballot this spring opposite Taylor. He did not file enough valid signatures with the Milwaukee County Election Commission to get on the ballot. The real trouble for Matias, though, are the conflicting statements regarding who collected what signatures.

There was some confusion among the people helping Matias. In three instances, a person collected one signature for Matias, then signed off as the circulator and handed the paper back to Matias, who then, allegedly, collected the rest of the signatures on the page. One page was signed by a Michael Dudzik, the other signed by Elizabeth Doty.

This was brought to the attention of the election commission, which moved to invalidate all but the original signatures. But Matias needed the signatures to gain ballot access. So he attempted to fix the situation by signing affidavits saying he collected the rest of the signatures.

But someone else turned in additional affidavits to the commission signed by the original circulators — Dudzik and Doty — stating they had circulated the papers.

“At no point did I authorize any affidavits, other than the ones I submitted to [Election Director Michelle Hawley], to be submitted on my behalf,” Matias said at a meeting of the election commission Tuesday.

The additional conflicting affidavits were signed incorrectly, Matias said, stating that he believes the signers didn’t understand what they were signing.

Taylor’s campaign, represented by Attorney Michael Maistelman, was prepared to challenge the Matias signatures Tuesday. But he withdrew their challenge once the commission decided it would not accept the signatures Matias needed to get on the ballot due to the conflicting affidavits. The commission then went into closed session for nearly an hour to discuss the affidavits before adjourning.

“Our opponent has bigger problems to worry about than getting on the ballot,” Maistelman told Urban Milwaukee. “Falsifying a nomination paper can get you 3.5 years in prison.”

Update: Story has been updated to reflect that the Matias campaign began collecting its first signatures the same week the Kenney campaign began collecting signatures. And to include that, as Urban Milwaukee has reported, Kenney denies that her campaign is tied to Taylor or the Rock.