State panel urged to bounce two candidates for Milwaukee County exec over campaign snafu

Milwaukee County Board Chairman Theodore Lipscomb Sr. is not giving up his fight to oust two opponents from the race for Milwaukee County executive over a campaign snafu.

Lipscomb filed two appeals Friday with the state Elections Commission, urging the panel to remove former state Sen. Jim Sullivan and Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy from next month's ballot.

The state board is expected to vote on the complaint next week to give the county time to print ballots for the Feb. 18 primary election. Six candidates are currently competing to replace outgoing County Exec Chris Abele.

"We are confident the Wisconsin Elections Commission will uphold the law and our challenges," said Lipscomb's attorney, Michael Maistelman.

But Kennedy spokesman Josh Kilroy suggested the appeals were a waste of everyone's time.

"How sad for Theo that his campaign has been reduced to this," Kilroy said. "There is no reason whatsoever to believe the state Elections Commission will reverse the decision."

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Last week, the Milwaukee County Commission deadlocked, 1-1, on Lipscomb's original complaint. In the case of a tie, a complaint is dismissed.

Lipscomb is arguing that regulators should toss nominating signatures submitted by Kennedy and Sullivan that were gathered by the same circulators in violation of state law.

Lipscomb wants the state to invalidate 844 of the 2,684 signatures collected by Kennedy and verified by the county. His complaint challenges 1,101 of Sullivan's 2,495 validated signatures.

If his complaint is upheld, both candidates would fall short of submitting the 2,000 signatures needed to run for county executive. The deadline for turning in nominating signatures has already passed.

But attorneys for Sullivan and Kennedy's campaigns have made the case that most of the state election laws are discretionary. They say the one on overlapping circulators should not be invoked because no one involved in the matter was trying to dupe the system.

Attorneys for the two campaigns say both camps simply erred by using the same people to collect signatures.

The snafu occurred because Kennedy and Sullivan's campaigns outsourced the task for gathering signatures, something that is standard practice in bigger campaigns.

Both ended up giving part of the job to community organizer Simon Warren, owner of the Sweet Black Coffee shop and an associate of Jerrel Jones, owner of the Milwaukee Courier and WNOV-AM (860).

Warren then paid the same individuals to go out and collect signatures for the different campaigns. Warren did not return repeated calls.

The state Elections Commission is made up of three Republican and three Democratic appointees. Kennedy, Sullivan and Lipscomb are all Democrats.

Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.