Hillsboro voters will see only one contested citywide race when they go to the polls at City Hall April 5 to vote in the spring primary election.
Four candidates are vying for two open seats on the Hillsboro School Board.
Current Board President Jenny Hynek is trying to retain her seat. The other seat opened when incumbent Jan Levy declined to run for re-election.
The three other candidates running are Randy Seeley, Stacy Sosinsky and Jill Stekel.
Seeley also serves on the Hillsboro City Council.
Sosinsky is the founder of Cub Packs, a program that provides free bags of nutritious food to children who go without adequate meals during weekends and extended breaks when school is not in session.
Jill Stekel’s husband, Robert Stekel, was defeated last year in his bid to return to the Board.
Other local races
Whatever the outcome of the School Board race, Seeley is guaranteed of winning one race on election night.
He and the other Council members up for election–Rick Hanke, Garth Hitselberger, Mark Lankey, and Elizabeth Parish–are all running unopposed, as is incumbent Mayor Greg Kubarski.
Also of local interest, Hillsboro resident Bobbi Richardson, wife of Police Chief Tom Richardson, is running a write-in campaign for the open District 28 seat on the Vernon County Board.
There are no declared candidates for that seat, as well as the seats in Districts 2 and 10.
With the exception of District 7, where Mary Bringe and John Audetat are facing off, all other supervisors are running unopposed.
Statewide contests
The two statewide contests on the ballot are the presidential preference primary and the state Supreme Court election.
In addition to the five candidates still in the running–former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democrats, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and businessman Donald Trump for the Republicans–candidates who have dropped out of the race will be on Wisconsin ballots, including Democrat Martin O’Malley and Republicans Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum.
The Wisconsin Presidential Preference Selection Committee chose the names appearing on the ballot in early January, when the now-former candidates were still running. Under state law there is no way to remove the name of candidates who dropped out after Jan, 26, when the presidential ballot was finalized.
In the Supreme Court race, incumbent Rebecca Bradley–who was named to the Court last fall by Republican Gov. Scott Walker following the death of Justice Patrick Crooks–faces a challenge from Appeals Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg, who is making a second run for a seat on the high court.
Though the race is officially nonpartisan, conservative groups have aired television ads attacking Kloppenburg, while the progressive group One Wisconsin Now recently unearthed writings from Bradley’s college days in the early 90s critical of homosexual AIDS victims, feminists and abortion. Bradley has apologized for the writings.
