Nearly All County Supervisors Running Unopposed

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Supervisors on the Milwaukee County Board are up for re-election this year, and 15 of 17 incumbents and one newcomer are running unopposed.

Only three incumbents face a challenger, and in each case only one candidate has filed to run against them. There will be no county board primary elections on ballots this February.

County supervisors are elected to a two-year term. The nonpartisan position will pay $32,819 annually beginning in 2026. The County Board is the legislative arm of Milwaukee County government, tasked with financial oversight and approval of the approximately $1.3 billion Milwaukee County budget.

District 9 Sup. Patti Logsdon faces off against Maqsood Khan, a physician and treasurer of the Franklin School Board. Sup. Felesia Martin faces a challenge from Stacy Smiter, a real estate broker, in District 7. In District 11, perennial candidate Ryan Antczak will try to unseat Sup. Kathleen Vincent.

Antczak tried to run for county board in 2024 against Sup. Juan Miguel Martinez in District 12. But he used the wrong paperwork to collect nomination signatures and was tossed from the ballot.

A number of supervisors are running in districts they had a hand in drawing. In 2021, the Milwaukee County Board undertook an attempt at independent redistricting. A commission of retired judges was assembled to draw maps without regard to the political interests of supervisors and instead based on a set of redistricting principles, chief among them was honoring the intent of the Voting Rights Act.

Supervisors attacked the independently drawn maps and voted to take control of the redistricting process, redrawing the districts themselves.

In one instance, supervisors admitted on the record they were drawing a district explicitly to protect the incumbency of a colleague: Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson Bovell. During redistricting, former supervisor and current state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez proposed the district, which placed the chairwoman in a district by herself. The district stretches from W. Capitol Dr. and N. 35th St. in the north to the Menomonee Valley in the south, and it includes a small carve-out in the Historic Third Ward to include the chairwoman’s home. At the time, Nicholson denied involvement in drawing the district and voted against it, but a majority of the board nonetheless voted to include it.

Barring any write-in campaigns, Nicholson-Bovell, along with supervisors Anne O’Connor, Willie Johnson, Jr., Sheldon Wasserman, Jack Eckblad, Shawn Rolland, Steven Shea, Martinez, Priscilla E. Coggs-Jones, Sky Capriolo, Justin Bielinski, Steve Taylor, Caroline Gomez-Tom and Deanna Alexander will coast to re-election in April.

A first-time candidate, LeeVan Roundtree Jr. is also running unopposed in District 5, currently held by Sup. Sequanna Taylor. After successfully running for state Assembly, Taylor is not seeking re-election to the County Board, where she has served since 2016.

The spring election will be held on April 7, 2026.