Milwaukee County Executive elections: Ryan lost his own community in early returns Tuesday

Ryan lost his own community in early returns Tuesday

Hales Corners Village President Jim Ryan lost his own community as early returns Tuesday night showed Scott Walker leading in the race for Milwaukee County Executive.

Ryan lost Hales Corners by a margin of 50 votes with 47% of eligible voters in the community turning up to vote.

Early results showed Walker, a Republican member of the State Assembly from Wauwatosa, with a nearly 300-vote edge over Ryan. As of 8:30 p.m. River Hills, West Milwaukee and Hales Corners all went for Walker.

With 10 of 463 precincts reporting, Walker had 2,736 votes, or 54%, while Ryan had 2,362, or 46%, according to unofficial returns.

Voter turnout appeared to be at least as strong as in the primary and probably heavier, according to election officials.

Walker and Ryan are vying to replace F. Thomas Ament, who resigned in February amid public outrage over generous pension changes proposed by his administration and approved by the County Board.

The election has been a rapid-fire event - eight weeks from registration to runoff. Walker and Ryan emerged as the top finishers April 2, after a six-person primary that featured 14 major forums. Since then, the two have squared off at least 28 more times, an average of one a day. Though attendance waned at some of the final forums, in the past two months several thousand voters have seen the candidates side by side in person.

On April 2, more than 139,000 people voted, with turnout in Milwaukee at 22%. In the suburbs, turnout was between 30% and 40%. That day, however, there were other races on the ballot that helped draw voters to the polls.

Turnout Tuesday was one measure of the public's interest in county government and the changes that are taking place. Like the executive's race today, upcoming recall votes against county supervisors will take place on days when no other election is on the ballot.

Barring a recount, the new executive likely will be sworn in May 9 or 10, county officials said.

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Milwaukee County Executive
REPORTING 86%
Scott WALKER - 96,734 - 58%
Jim RYAN - 71,444 - 42%

Dumas has announced that he would not run for the mayor's office in deference to Council President Marvin Pratt.

I did not know that. Well, he's going to be a good soldier and do whatever he can to get his man (Pratt) elected to the Mayor's office. Then the big, fat paycheck will come.

If Dumas is successful in demonizing Walker, he may just get it. But I think that with the little revolution that happened Tuesday, most of the people of Milwaukee County are tired of this kind of crap. It's just a matter of how tired the people of the City of Milwaukee are. Something tells me the city proper will continue to be the mushrooms they've become (i.e., they flourish when kept in the dark and fed bull$#!+). Not all of them, just a majority.

First, I'll explain my "behind the times" comment. 8 years ago, the Democrats found themselves out of power in both New York City and Los Angeles (well, in the case of LA, the incoming mayor was someone who realized that it was much easier to win a general election than try to run in the primary where he belonged). While LA reverted to type, NYC is still being run by someone who calls himself a Republican (though I don't know just how Republican Michael Bloomberg is).

As good as Tuesday's election was for the county as a whole, I honestly don't see any hope for the city of Milwaukee. This was the "perfect" election for a conservative candidate. It was caused not by the end of a term, but by 181,000 citizens (countywide; I don't know the split between the city and the suburbs) who took matters into their own hands. One candidate (Walker) adopted the platform of wholesale change that this outpouring of dissatisfaction with the status quo suggested, and ran a masterful campaign that included the active pursuit of the one group of voters that was perceived to not have really participated in the recall Ament effort. The other candidate (Ryan) ran a horrid campaign with the message that all the discredited status quo needed was a massage and some more money to spend. As neither candidate was from the city of Milwaukee, there was no "hometown" bias. Walker lost the city by 3,383 votes, or 51.9%-48.1%.

Bear in mind that this vote total was in a virtually-fraud-free election. The Milwaukee Machine has demonstrated that they can come up with 3,000 votes out of whole cloth, so in reality, a conservative (or even a RINO) would start off with about a 6,400-vote hole in a "perfect" campaign, where he had the issues and a discredited status quo to run against. I honestly don't see how, unless the discredited politician himself runs, this can be overcome.

Unless Norquist decides to reverse course and run in 2004, I don't see the conditions for the "perfect" campaign coming together again. I hope I'm wrong, because I don't want to see Milwaukee continue down the spiral to decay.

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