Liz Sumner Wins County Comptroller Race

Liz Sumner. Photo courtesy of Friends of Liz Sumner.

Sup. Liz Sumner will be the next Milwaukee County Comptroller.

With a majority of wards reporting, unofficial results showed Sumner carrying 64.8% of the vote, defeating entrepreneur and venture capital advisor Michael Harper (34.4%). She will replace outgoing Milwaukee County Comptroller Scott Manske who has served as the county’s top financial officer since 1994.

Sumner did not seek re-election to the county board in order to run for comptroller, setting her sights firmly on that office. She declared her candidacy before the longtime incumbent Manske announced his decision not to run for re-election.

Comptroller did not become an elected office until 2012. The comptroller serves a four-year term and earns $130,000 annually.

Sumner was first elected to the county board in 2020, and spent her last term serving on the board’s powerful Committee on Finance. She is the owner of SHOP, a women’s boutique in Whitefish Bay. When she launched her campaign, Sumner said she had already begun reorganizing her business so that it can operate relatively independently, allowing her to focus on her duties as comptroller.

Sumner is a graduate of Marquette University, where she double majored in political science and French. She went on to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business where she received a Master of Business Administration.

Harper is an advisor at the venture capital firm Midwest Capital Partners. He is a Milwaukee native with a bachelors degree from Miami University in Ohio and a master’s degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology in financial markets and trading. Harper served as chair of the county’s pension board, but was removed from the position by County Board Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson for violating the county ordinance for pension board members: his mother is a beneficiary of the county’s retirement system.