Yesterday I stopped at Shirley Simonis office (Portage County Clerk) and got the list (at 4:50 p.m) of who’s running for Portage County Board.

Contested Districts look like this:

District 9 (Bo DeDeker moved out of District)
Andrew Boden
“Chai” Moua–our first Hmong CoBoard candidate

District 13
Donald Jankowski (Incumbent)
James A. Carpenter

District 17 (Jerry Walters non-candidacy)
Dennis Raabe
Linda S. Weitz

District 19
Dale O’Brien (Incumbent)-employed by one of the largest potato-growing agri-business companies in county.
Melinda Osterberg (Our Wisc. Revolution)

District 20
Charles Gussel (Inc.)
Ron Becker

District 21
Tim Corcoran
Jeanne Dodge (Inc.)

District 22
Justin Isherwood–Subject of the sudden demolition of a restored trout habitat stream on his farm by the Drainage Board, which set one large potato/vegetable grower against the potato/veg grower majority supporting the Drainage Board.
Matt Jacowski (Inc., also County Exec. candidate)
–one of the more “interesting” races this time

District 25
James Zdroik (Inc.)-associated with Wisc. Potato & Vegetable Growers Assoc.
Anne Abbott (one of the “New Hope Clean Water Ordinance” citizen group trying to get an ordinance that will protect against nitrates and other pollutants from large-scale agri-business in our county)
Robert Lord

Some recognition should be given to Ray Cal, who put a lot of effort into getting new “progressive” candidates to step up and run for these seats on County Board.

Seven people, minimum, will be new faces on the County Board at swearing-in time.