Ernst-Ulrich Franzen

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

It's still well more than a year away but it appears that the 2018 race for Milwaukee County sheriff could get interesting — and that's good news for county residents. Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. has become an embarrassment to the county and needs to go.

Clarke's social media posts reveal a bully who prefers to use his position to denigrate and threaten, and his conduct is unbecoming for anyone in public office. But the bottom line is he simply isn't doing the job he promised county voters he would do, spending much of his time flitting around the country on book tours or stumping for the Trump administration. He's ignoring the challenges Milwaukee faces and he refuses to be held accountable for the four deaths that occurred last year in the jail he runs.

In a particularly (and typical) classless post, Clarke recently berated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett for being bludgeoned with a tire iron while protecting a 1-year-old and her grandmother near State Fair Park in 2009. As columnist Christian Schneider noted, "it takes a special kind of moral coward to hide behind a keyboard while criticizing a 55-year-old man for protecting a child and grandparent from an attack."

The good news for county residents is that Clarke may face three opponents in the Democratic primary for sheriff next year, including a former Milwaukee police captain who is now a vice president for Major League Baseball. Earnell Lucas is planning to challenge Clarke, Lucas' campaign adviser told columnist Daniel Bice.

"Earnell hasn't announced, but he's decided to get into this race," said Sachin Chheda, a political strategist at Nation Consulting. "Earnell is in the process of getting organized." Chheda described Lucas as "a dignified man with gravitas, as opposed to what we have now."

Lucas, 58, is the MLB's vice president of security and facility management. A graduate of Marquette University with a degree in criminology and law studies, he also is a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy and the Northwestern University Traffic Institute School of Police Staff and Command.

Also thinking about running against Clarke are Milwaukee County Circuit Judge John Siefert and Milwaukee Police Lt. Chris Moews, but as Bice noted, Moews has lost twice to the sheriff in the 2010 and 2014 Democratic primaries, and Siefert, a former officer, received the lowest marks of any circuit judge in the state in a survey conducted by the Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team in 2015.

Lucas' experience in Milwaukee and with MLB security make him an impressive candidate, and his formal entry into the race would be welcome if only to add to the serious debate about how to properly run the Sheriff's Office.

Of course, there's no guarantee that Clarke will run. He interviewed with the Trump administration for a job in Homeland Security and there has been a lot of talk that he's being pushed to run for the Senate against Tammy Baldwin in 2018. But if he does run for sheriff again, it appears he'll have some heavy duty opposition, and that can only be good for Milwaukee County.

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