Journal Sentinel Story on Mandela Barnes Is Irresponsible

330 Kilbourn, where the Journal Sentinel offices are located. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

What in the world were the Journal Sentinel editors thinking?

Last week the newspaper did a story on Mandela Barnes‘ withdrawal from the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor. The Thursday story reported that “The decision by Barnes came amid reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel into allegations that Barnes was taking advantage of his role in the party to have sexual encounters with young adult women.”

The implication was that this reporting had so scared Barnes that he decided to drop out of the race. The next day the JS published an article with the headline “Sources detail concerns about Mandela Barnes’ behavior toward women.”

As the headline suggests, the newspaper had no on-the-record comments to prove anything nefarious was going on. Indeed, it really had only one source to talk about this “behavior,” but she offered no evidence of any abuse or mistreatment, or of favors offered or denied. They had sex after a night of heavy drinking back at the state Democratic convention in 2018, when Barnes was running for lieutenant governor and held no political office.

So two consenting adults had sex after drinking at a convention. If that was newsworthy, the paper could be doing thousands of stories a year on this. Ah, but Barnes was a “rising star” in the party and she drank enough that she “could not have been of sound mind for an enthusiastic yes,” the anonymous woman carefully explained. Was Barnes just as inebriated? The story doesn’t say. But if this was so “insidious,” as she says, why did she continue to date Barnes for months?

The story also says the reporters interviewed two other women who were aware of Barnes’ “behavior.”

What behavior? The story doesn’t say and offers not one quote from these women, who are speaking anonymously, but even with that protection apparently had no details of any kind to offer.

The story’s big bombshell — the lead graph — is that “Democratic Party of Wisconsin officials in 2025 hired an outside law firm to review allegations of inappropriate behavior” by Barnes. But that falls apart upon close examination.

For starters, the newspaper has no comment of any kind from the state party confirming this, and it apparently hasn’t seen any documentation of this. It tells us an “anonymous” person sent a letter to the party claiming inappropriate behavior by Barnes. Was this anonymous person the same woman quoted by the newspaper about that night of sex?

The story says then–party chairman Ben Wikler “flagged it [the letter] for the party’s human resources and in-house counsel to look into,” but it has no confirmation or denial of this from Wikler. Nor, apparently, did the paper see any documentation of this. It took the word of “a person familiar with the party’s response to the letter.” Was this the woman who had that night of sex with Barnes, or perhaps a friend of hers? Or did the source have some other ax to grind? Since they are given anonymity, we will never know.

The letter damning Barnes then “recirculated in the months before Barnes launched his campaign for governor in late 2025” and was mailed to new Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Devin Remiker. Who mailed it to Remiker? The story doesn’t say. Was it the same person who previously mailed it to Wikler? The story doesn’t address this.

The party then launched a “probe,” the story claims, but its source is not any official with the party, but that anonymous person.

The story claims the party hired an outside firm to “review allegations of inappropriate behavior” by Barnes. How does it know an outside firm was hired? The story does not say. What was the name of the firm? It does not say. What were the allegations? It does not say. Why hire an outside firm when the party has an in-house lawyer? Never addressed.

If there actually was an investigation, wouldn’t Barnes have been interviewed? The newspaper doesn’t address this. But Darby O’Connor, campaign manager for Barnes, says he was never interviewed about this. Barnes offered the newspaper a definitive comment: “I want to be very clear. I have not nor am I being accused of any misconduct or wrongdoing.”

The story reports that the letter sent to Remiker was also sent to county party leaders and to the campaigns of Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, but that, too, amounts to nothing. “It is not clear if they actually received the letter, nor what they did with it if they did,” the story reports.

All of which tells us somebody was out to get Barnes and sent the letter to a flock of people, but tells us nothing about Barnes nor whether any of the people receiving it saw it as anything more than a crackpot’s complaints.

The story also claims “concerns about Barnes’s relationships reached a fever pitch in recent weeks.” That’s a very dramatic claim, but the story offered no evidence of this, not even an anonymous comment.

This is simply not a story and never should have been published.

Yet as bad as this story is — and it could be used in journalism classes to exemplify yellow journalism — the newspaper compounded this unjustified attack on Barnes with its article the day before teasing this story, suggesting it was so damaging it led Barnes to withdraw from the race. This led media across the country, including NBC News, The Washington Post and Politico, to reference the JS story and jump on the claim of a state probe of Barnes in their reports.

But Barnes’ statement withdrawing from the race says he did so because it’s clear that the frontrunner in the race, Democratic Rep. Francesca Hong, is going to be the nominee and Democrats should focus on defeating Republican Tom Tiffany. If the JS report wasn’t a factor, then the newspaper was simply inflating its role in the race. If the story was a factor, then the newspaper’s irresponsible reporting has wrongly caused a candidate to drop out.

Either way, Journal Sentinel editor Greg Borowski owes his readers an explanation for why this story was published. Borowski has not responded to questions sent by Urban Milwaukee. If he does, our story will be updated.