Bukiewicz plans to keep building trades leadership role if elected

Dan Bukiewicz won’t be stepping down as president of the Milwaukee Building and Construction Trades Council if elected to the state Assembly.

Bukiewicz, also mayor of Oak Creek, during an interview following a short speech at his first campaign fundraising event on Feb. 11 in his hometown said he plans to stay at the helm should the race for the 21st Assembly District go his way.

He was less certain about being able to stay on as chair of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Council, a role he holds because he’s a mayor, because that depends on the outcome of the Assembly election.

So far two other Democrats have filed for the Nov. 3 election: Jessica Seawright, a social worker and disability rights advocate, and David Liners, former director of immigrant rights and former inmate advocacy group WISDOM.

Republican incumbent Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, of Oak Creek, who won election first in 2013, has not formally announced if she’ll run for reelection. Her campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Much of Bukiewicz’s speech focused on the support he’s received from fellow Democrats around the state and local union leaders of various trades, as well as his wife. So far Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, of Racine, and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson are among those who’ve endorsed him. But he also touched on his priorities if elected.

“It’s affordability issues,” he said. “Oak Creek’s a great place. I’ve been here over 30 years, I’ve watched it grow from where you couldn’t get a pizza to where we have fabulous places like Cubanitas. We’ve watched the schools grow, and we’ve done that all on property [taxes]. It’s getting to the point where we can’t support services.”

The state needs to look for new models to fund public services, he argued.

Ensuring schools are fully funded is another of his top priorities.

“We can’t have our schools going to referendum for basic educational classes, programming or additions,” he said. “Technology’s changing, schools need to change with them and a lot of them got to get reoutfitted to what the learning is today.”

He plans to use what he’s learned through his more than 15 years of local government and other leadership experience to help ease the financial pressure on local governments and taxpayers, he added.

Neubauer in a short speech ahead of Bukiewicz referred to him as “a true servant leader.”

“From being a dad, to his time as an electrician, and of course a union leader to mayor of Oak Creek, Dan shows up when it matters,” she said. “And he is the type of person who would never ask you to do something that he wouldn’t do himself.”

Republicans currently hold 54 of the Assembly’s 99 seats and Democrats have slowly been chipping away at their stronghold, which peaked at a near-supermajority 63 seats after the 2018 election.