KENOSHA, Wis. — Conservatives scored several major victories in Kenosha County’s spring election Tuesday night, although a number of liberal incumbents were able to hold onto their seats in county board, city council and school board races.
One of the closest county board races of the night came in District 3, where Riki Tagliapietra defeated Annette M. Flynn 616 votes to 584 in an open-seat contest. Tagliapietra, who previously used the name Richard W. Schneider Jr., has been associated with more progressive political views and is expected by critics to support left-leaning policies on the county board.
In District 6, Dave Tarzon defeated Duane O’Keefe 576 votes to 391 in another open-seat race. O’Keefe, a Native American business owner, fell short despite mounting a competitive campaign.
District 10 produced one of the bigger upsets of the night, as David Lux defeated incumbent Felix Garcia 412 votes to 293. Lux, who has aligned with Democratic politics, won despite controversy during the campaign related to an OWI warrant. Garcia, a sheriff’s deputy, had represented what was previously Sgt. Hard’s district.
Incumbent Guida Brown retained her District 11 seat with a second straight victory over Zach Stock, winning 763 votes to 496. Brown, who is viewed as a liberal member of the county board, again defeated Stock, who despite serving as an officer with the Republican Party of Kenosha County, has drawn criticism from conservatives who view him as more moderate or liberal on some issues.
Incumbent John Franco cruised to reelection in District 13, defeating Dan McKnight 781 votes to 350. Franco, who is aligned with Democratic politics, won easily in the district. Both he and his wife have previously served on the board of the Democratic Party of Kenosha County.
Perhaps the biggest county board win of the night came in District 15, where conservative incumbent Dave Geertsen defeated Lee H. Broadway Sr. by a wide margin, 1,276 votes to 550. Geertsen hosted an election watch party at the Kenosha Country Club, while Broadway ran a far quieter campaign that critics noted did not even include a sign in his own yard.
District 16 saw Jeff Cologna defeat Andreas Mamalakis 981 votes to 781. Cologna was relatively unknown to Kenosha County Eye readers entering the race, but he secured a comfortable victory with more than 55% of the vote.
In District 17, newcomer Luke Pollock won without opposition, receiving 1,307 votes while write-in candidates received 40 votes.
The Kenosha Unified School District board race delivered one of the more surprising outcomes of the evening. Robin Cullen and incumbent Bob Tierney won seats on the board, while incumbent Yolanda Santos Adams and Patrick Juliana were defeated.
Cullen, who is aligned with Democratic politics, finished first in the race. Tierney told Kenosha County Eye, “I think voters like that I am a common-sense leader who challenges the status quo. I put our children first.”
The defeat of Santos Adams was among the biggest surprises of the night. She had served on the board for years and was at one point board president.
In the Bristol Grade School board race, incumbent Danielle Whitaker received 691 votes while challenger Kevin Weeks received 491 votes. Whitaker, who is viewed by critics as a liberal activist, retained her seat.
In the Wheatland J1 School District race, Rachael Crane received 686 votes while Erik Zavacke received 567 votes.
In the Randall J1 School District race, Melissa Grochowske received 746 votes, Jeff Swanson received 589 votes and Steven Calderwood received 353 votes.
In the Silver Lake J1 School District race, Vickie Galich received 504 votes, Luke Hamilton received 420 votes and Jordan Oliver received 411 votes.
In the Twin Lakes #4 School District race, Andy Dohse received 446 votes while Steven Turner received 376 votes.
In the Wilmot Union High School District race, Wayne Trongeau received 2,248 votes, Michael Matz received 2,136 votes and Matt du Chemin received 2,041 votes.
The Salem Lakes trustee race also drew attention. Longtime incumbent Dennis Faber won another term, joined by retired pilot James Woodke and former village employee Amanda Procknow. Steven Dunn Jr., Kerry Verenski and Adam Miller were defeated.
In Pleasant Prairie, liberal incumbent James Kedrow retained his trustee seat, defeating Sammie Lancia 2,407 votes to 1,992.
In Paddock Lake, incumbent Mike Jansen finished first with 379 votes, followed by R.J. Howard with 322 votes and incumbent Ronald Statz with 308 votes. All three were elected.
In Twin Lakes, Robert Livingston finished first with 696 votes, followed by incumbents Ken Perl with 614 votes and Barbara Andres with 609 votes. Bill Kaskin and Bryan Neal were defeated.
Several Kenosha aldermanic races also drew interest. In District 3, progressive incumbent Jan Michalski retained his seat, defeating Josh Maglasang 670 votes to 416.
District 4 incumbent Rex Davenport, a former Kenosha News writer aligned with Democratic politics, defeated Craig Sadur 571 votes to 448.
In District 6, progressive incumbent Brandi Rose Ferree retained her seat, defeating Red Arnold 746 votes to 317.
In District 9, progressive incumbent Keith Rosenberg held onto his seat by defeating Nicholas Prorok 448 votes to 383.
District 14 saw former alderman Daniel Prozanski Jr. make a political comeback after Kenny Harper did not seek reelection. Prozanski won without opposition, receiving 913 votes while write-in candidates received 17 votes.
One of the biggest aldermanic wins of the night came in District 15, where newcomer Julia Metallo defeated former alderman and failed mayoral candidate Jesse Downing handily, 821 votes to 337.
Voters also weighed in on several referendums. Wheatland J1 School District voters approved their referendum 621 votes to 435. Twin Lakes #4 voters narrowly rejected their referendum 355 votes to 332. Trevor-Wilmot voters rejected their referendum 567 votes to 418.
42 Responses
What a great WIN in getting one old hag, Yolanda Santos Adams off the KUSD Board!! Let’s pick off all the old timers one election at a time!! Voters are tired of all the BS on that board!!!
can’t stand that lib Robin Cullen, but I agree at least YO YO was removed
James Kedrow is not a liberal incumbent. The good ole boys put up a candidate against him and failed.
Correct. Kedrow walks around town with a MAGA hat. He’s factually incapable of being liberal.
Trevor wilmot needed that. The entire upstairs of the school was not useable when I visited due to plumbing issues. Also they advertise for open enrollment but say they don’t have spots this year or next year….. why?
Sure it’s a shame. But that school building is not that old.
Not old enough to have to redo the plumbing.
Maybe that’s something that needs to be explained.
How does union installed plumbing fail so soon ?
We all know why.
Idiots in Salem.
That or the good ol Badger Books did their job. 🤔
It’s good that Juliana lost he is like a caveman with no place in politics in this century.
he would have been a lot better than cullen
Very nice to see Adams go . It would be nice to get rid of Rebecca Stevens and socialist Mary Modder.
Kenosha is over run with libtards.Im moving to wilmont
bye bye Thanks for leaving 🙂
*Wilmot
Not much change at the city level the same old rhinos
RINO 😉
Not much changed at the city level besides the same old rhinos
I’m an openly gay man and these days I only vote conservative. Democrats are so anti-American it’s disgusting. It has me voting for the people that picked on me in high school, but it’s worth it for a better America. Also, I have nothing to do with ppl that want to change their gender. I have enough problems.
Welcome to the common sense party, we are glad to have you.
Welcome aboard
How’s that working out for you now? Democrats fight for people like you. Republicans want to burn you at the stake. You deserve every physical assault and harassment you have coming your way.
That was funny, say some more stupid s***. Democrats claim they fight for a whole bunch of special groups, but at the end of the day they only fight to get themselves power and money and everybody else can just go f*** themselves as collateral damage.
And THIS comment is why people are leaving your party!
Credit to Kevin for acknowledging the many wins by progressive candidates in last night’s election. However, the headline could use some work because it doesn’t correctly align with the story. Regardless, a big thanks to KCE for coverage of last night’s election and making the story available to non-subscribers as well.
Yes, I was scrolling through the article looking for the “major wins” from the headline and didn’t see them. Santos Adams is gone but replaced by Cullen, so if you only care about party alignments, that’s breaking even.
I’d looked through the election results earlier, and the chief conservative wins seem to be in races where they didn’t have an opponent.
Thank you so much for election results. Knews nothing. Zero😖
You don’t know how to google?
Democrats won EVERY open County Board seat. Maybe our Republican party Chairman should have paid more attention to those races instead of posturing for her run against an experienced/conservative lawmaker….or maybe the Kenosha republicans need to see her for what she is…a very poor leader.
Geertsen is the only conservative (and only sort-of) that won a contested county board seat.
The RPKC failed miserably.
RPW failed to get a solid conservative for the court seat, I know many pro-life individuals left it blank because of Lazar being pro-choice.
True, moral conservatives are completely abandoned, only the gullible party-line losers remain, and they’re contested elections because they’ve disenfranchised a lot of their base.
*they’re losing contest elections because they’ve disenfranchised a lot of their base.
Exactly and they will keep losing them as long as they don’t have the common sense to read the room and stop being the party of anti-abortion in a state where the Democrats could run Jeffrey Epstein for Supreme Court Justice and when, so long as he promised to 100% support any court case dealing with abortion rights.
I get it !
On moral grounds you made your decision. You can sleep tonight because you held your standard high. Very high.
Yup. You sure showed everyone what it means to be pro life !!!!!’
But do you think she wouldn’t have come around if and when votes of that nature came in front of her ? Maybe ?
And what about 99% of all the other decisions that we need on our side ??
For lack of a better saying,
“You threw the baby out with the bath water”
If you don’t know what that means just Google it. AI will give you an accurate answer.
Just another sad day for the GOP in Wisconsin.
So, how far are you willing to sacrifice your beliefs? First, it’s a pro-choice judge. People voted for her, so next they put up someone who will work to repeal WI concealed carry. The RPW tells you that’s your “conservative” choice, so you drool, nod, and vote for them because at least they don’t want men in women’s sports. Maybe they will come around and believe concealed carry is necessary, right? Although, then maybe the next one says that men in women’s sports isn’t terrible- but the GOP has told you that’s the conservative candidate, so you vote for that person, too. Pretty soon, you’ve worked your way straight into what the uniparty wants you to do.
Congratulations, you’ve done what party leaders tell you to do. You’re a good little republican who can’t think for yourself. Goooood job.
At least you didn’t throw that baby out with the bathwater.
We have to take what we can get !
No I’m not giving up or being soft or wishy washy.
But 90% of something is better than zero % of nothing.
We need a better Republican Party in this state. We put up Crap for Governor. Michels. We put up RINOs for Supreme Court. Hagedorn. We’re stuck with Sam Kerkman.
We can’t even convince voters on our side to vote for the head of DPI !!
Yes our choices Suck. But even a bad republican is better than a viscous liberal.
It’s a battle of survival.
One RINO at a time.
Yes her view is wrong but ….
No… we don’t have to take what we can get.
Stop voting for the trash they put out there, and tell them WHY. Stop donating money to RPKC, RPW, and their garbage candidates. When they knock on your door to hand you flyers, tell them to do a better job.
Sandy has a Facebook post about having more work to do. Sandy should be announcing that she’s stepping down because she failed Kenosha County.
It should be the same at the state level, but instead, there’s talk of democrats cheating, democrats outspending, and democrats doing better campaigning.
Maybe it’s time that Conservatives stop shrugging and voting for who they tell us to vote for and get loud about the fact that these people are losing because they’re GARBAGE CANDIDATES.
This Country was founded on each state can decide for themselves which laws to make.
Roe v Wade was wrong on the constitutional aspect. Not if it was right or wrong to abort baby’s.
Abortion is an individual decision. Yes it is murder. The murder of Pregnant women gets two counts charged against the perpetrator.
Yes we would all like to see EVERY CHILD BORN but until we fix the mindset of sex without marriage we are going to have babies killed in the womb.
These are issues that would be easier to solve if we were able to make life in general better for all citizens and taxpayers.
A better quality of life will remove the desperation felt by so many young women and men who can’t figure out how to be productive members of society. Able to support a family.
The Republican Party is for the betterment of every individual. And if we can make people’s economic lives better maybe, just maybe they will see a future raising children.
Abortion will never go away. But we can try to make overall life better so it happens less and less
Exactly correct on all points. Lazar was correct when she said roe versus Wade was a good decision, because it was a constitutional decision that overturned a bad decision upholding a law that didn’t even exist. Even Ruth bader Ginsburg smugly admitted that it was judicial overreach by the original Supreme Court that ruled on roe versus wade. It did have to be thrown out for that reason and finally was, which returned the right to decide to the states. Republican leaders in Wisconsin decided that they wanted to lose every seat in the Supreme Court
Hope they are happy.
Exactly, the Democrats figured out a year ago that all they have to do is put up a female Supreme Court Justice candidate who campaigns by saying over and over again that she will approve abortion. They didn’t even spend much money in this recent campaign to do it again. Now we only have two justices left on the state supreme court that actually care about law instead of advocating and making law from the bench. Shame on the Republican Party for losing the Red Wave and pretty much every important election afterwards because they just won’t let go of the biblical demands regarding abortion. Even when they see crowds of people who call themselves Catholic or Lutheran protesting with signs and demonstrating for Democrat candidates, they still think that somehow the Republicans have to be a religious party. I hope they’re happy that they’ve pretty much ruined real rights in Wisconsin for the next decade.
Exactly, the Republican Party can Pat itself on the back until their elbows break for willingness to lose the state supreme court but grin in a smug moral belief that they “did good”.
The Wisconsin Republican Party could do well if they could get their mental abilities
above that of third-graders.
What a bunch of complete jokers ……. it’s sad.
It’s not Republican vs Democrat anymore! It’s good vs evil! Look at how many people are coming together against these Data Centers! BOTH parties!
Now we need to get the absentee Sheriff Zoerner (D) voted out in August! Beller (R) and Tony Gonzalez (R) are far better options than the current “done-nothing” sheriff. I heard he gave himself a $20,000 per year raise. I think KCE should check into that.