Milwaukee County Supervisor Eyon Biddle Sr. announced Monday he’s giving up his County Board seat to challenge Common Council President Willie Hines in the April election.
Biddle, who has held his county post for just nine months, said he wanted to run for City Hall because the problems of Hines’ central city district were so great.
Biddle cited problems with widespread poverty and unemployment as reasons for his decision to challenge Hines, saying “I don’t see anything happening.”
Having served as an alderman since 1996 and as Milwaukee’s Common Council President since 2004, Hines will be a formidable opponent for Biddle, who says he’ll run a strong grassroots campaign as a counter to Hines’ ability to outspend him.
Another county seat we can downsize?
No, another seat Marina Dimitrijevic can find a candidate to fill.
Yup. Let’s just downsize the south and west suburbs without redistricting them. They hate Milwaukee, anyway, so give them what they want!
No offense to Zach, of course!
Barrett muddling in other campaigns to try to take down a potential rival.
. .
For it.
I don’t think the Mayor needs to ‘find’ a candidate to run against Alderman Hines…and certainly the alderman has been open about wanting to be mayor but I don’t think he’s ready to take on Mayor Barrett.
I can’t imagine what Supervisor Biddle is thinking…I don’t think he can unseat Alderman Hines…
But thinking along Zach’s lines, this does leave a hole at least temporarily in the progressive coalition that Supervisor Dimitirjevic is building, and one less vote toward her goal of County Board Chairperson.
Let’s be frank here Ed – the board is pretty progressive as a whole as it is. At least as progressive as you could expect (I’d argue slightly more so if anything) given the makeup of the county as a whole. Point being, when there’s constant talk of Dimitirjevic “building a progressive coalition”, the “progressive” portion is really a constant in that equation, so what’s really being talked about is Dimitirjevic building a personal coalition beholden to her, having nothing to do with ideology. Nothing more or less.
Yeah, JCG hit the nail on the head; this isn’t about a “progressive coalition,” because the way the districts are drawn up we’re bound to have a group of progressives on the board.
This is about Marina having folks on the board who owe her a favor, so that she’s assured of becoming County Board Chair, which she’s made clear is her goal.
Having a majority of progressives doesn’t necessarily make it a coalition…sometimes someone actually needs to be in charge of it! LOL!