Dora Drake Defeats Myers For State Senate Seat

Dora Drake. Photo from the candidate.

Dora Drake is the newest member of the Wisconsin State Senate. But due to the truly unusual nature of the election, she’ll also immediately face a rematch.

Drake won by a nearly two-to-one margin over LaKeshia Myers in a special election to replace Lena Taylor in the Wisconsin State Senate. The district encompasses the northernmost portion of Milwaukee and surrounding suburbs. In an 8% turnout election (7,149 votes according to unofficial Milwaukee County results), Drake earned 65.8% to Myers’ 34%.

She will serve the remainder of Taylor’s term, which runs through the end of the year, but she will not leave the campaign trail.

Drake and Myers are both giving up their State Assembly seats to run for a full four-year term in the Senate. The Democrats will square off again in the regularly scheduled Aug. 13 partisan primary.

Because the only two candidates in the partisan race are Democrats, Drake will need to wait until the July 30 special general election, where she will be the only candidate on the ballot, to win the remainder of Taylor’s term formally. Similarly, the winner of the Aug. 13 primary will need to wait for the Nov. 5 general election to win a full term.

Taylor resigned in January after Governor Tony Evers appointed her to a vacant Milwaukee County Circuit Court judgeship. She had held the 4th District Senate seat for 19 years.

Wisconsin’s senate districts are formed by three assembly districts, with Myers representing the western portion of the 4th District, Drake the middle and Darrin Madison Jr. the eastern portion.

As a result of redistricting, the district stretches southeast from Milwaukee County’s northwestern tip at N. 124th Street and W. County Line Road to E. Locust Street and N. Humboldt Boulevard in Riverwest. In addition to a large chunk of Milwaukee, the district includes portions of suburban Brown Deer and Wauwatosa and all of Glendale and Shorewood.

More than half of the votes cast in the election were cast as absentee ballots, which includes in-person early voting.

The majority of the votes in the race came from Milwaukee and Drake won nearly every ward across the entire district, but she fared exceptionally well in two of the suburbs. She won 82.1% of the vote in Shorewood and 69.3% in Glendale.

Drake was first elected to the Assembly in 2020 and previously worked at JusticePoint and the Center for Self-Sufficiency. She is a graduate of Marquette University.

Myers was first elected in 2018. Before being elected, Myers worked as a teacher at Milwaukee Public Schools. Since being elected, she’s worked for MPS, as an assistant principal in Madison and, most recently, as the dean of students for a Wauwatosa middle school, from which she resigned after an investigation.

Myers, in a statement, thanked voters and said she is committed to campaigning in August. “While today’s election was important to fill the remaining four months of Senator Taylor’s term, August 13th is and has always been my campaign’s primary focus.”

Observer Issues

Polling places and absentee ballot processing weren’t without issue.

Two observers at Glendale polling places were removed by police following warnings for hovering too closely or disrupting procedures. Several observers were warned. All of the observers removed were from outside of Milwaukee County. Among those that appeared on observer logs were Harry Wait, a Racine County resident who was charged in 2022 with fraudulent ballot requests and Peter Bernegger, a New London resident who was sent to prison for mail fraud in 2009, fined by the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) in 2022 for filing frivolous complaints and served a warning by Wisconsin Capitol Police in 2023 to cease “stalking behavior” of WEC administrator Meagan Wolfe and other WEC employees.

Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy called the observers’ behavior Tuesday “despicable.”

When asked about his viewpoint at Milwaukee’s central count facility by Fox 6 reporter Jason Calvi, Bernegger informed city officials he was challenging Calvi’s questions to him.

You Voted, But Not For a Candidate?

Some residents of the 4th Senate really love democracy, and their political party.

The two Democrats were the only candidates on the primary ballot, but because it was a partisan primary, voters were still given the choice of selecting a political party. Selecting a party (which doesn’t bind one to join the party) other than the Democratic Party rendered the voter unable to cast a ballot for either candidate. Hundreds did that.

In more than 250 cases, voters selected a different political party. The Republican (232), Libertarian (14), Constitution (12) and Wisconsin Green (7) parties all attracted voters. At least 14 people elected to vote in the Democratic primary, then wrote in another name.