Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 62. Sunrise is 5:53 and sunset is 7:52 for 13 hours 59 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and five crewmates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to demonstrate that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.
Embedded above is a map of Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. The Walworth County portion of Whitewater is within the district. (The Jefferson County portion of Whitewater is in Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District.)
The incumbent representative for the 1st District is GOP Congressman Bryan Steil. Several Democrats have been running in the August primary for the district (among them Miguel Aranda of Whitewater), and now there’s another — Peter Burgelis.
If readers in the district haven’t heard of Burgelis, that’s understandable, because he’s Milwaukee Alderman Peter Burgelis:
Milwaukee alderman Peter Burgelis is launching a campaign for Congress to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who immediately made his residency outside the district an issue in the race.
Burgelis was elected to the Milwaukee Common Council in 2024 and represents District 11, which roughly borders Greenfield and West Allis.
See Hope Karnopp, Milwaukee alderman Peter Burgelis launches run to unseat Bryan Steil, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 26, 2026.
One doesn’t have to be a cartographer to see that Milwaukee is not within the 1st Congressional District.
There’s no reason to doubt that Burgelis has represented his Milwaukee constituents well; the obvious objection is that his current constituents are in Milwaukee.
In this regard, Burgelis is like GOP Assemblyman Scott Johnson, who ran in 2024 for the 43rd Assembly District while living elsewhere. Johnson’s carpetbagging was objectionable then, as Burgelis’s is now. See In the 43rd District Race, Scott Johnson’s Disqualifying Situation.
Over at the Wisconsin Examiner, Erik Gunn has reporting on how Burgelis was recruited:
Burgelis said he was first approached a few months ago, by “a number of people,” including former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate.
[…]Asked about his role in recruiting Burgelis, Tate said in an email message, “Peter asked me about running a while back and I encouraged him to do so. He’s a hard worker, a good progressive, and we need a strong candidate to take on Steil. I don’t have any other color or the like to add.”
Burgelis said his review of past election results gave him confidence that the seat could be flipped to the Democrats.
“The residency thing, I think, is certainly something that a GOP campaign ad is going to harp on in November and October,” Burgelis told the Examiner. “But right now, the goal for Democrats is to get the best candidates through the primary.”
See Erik Gunn, Milwaukee alder enters 1st CD race to challenge Steil, frustrating another Democrat’s backers, Wisconsin Examiner, April 28, 2026.
(Mike Tate was the chairman of Wisconsin Democrats from 2009 to 2015, the period immediately before and during Wisconsin Republicans’ political rise under Scott Walker.)
There’s a way for Burgelis to get ahead of the ‘residency thing’ long before the November election: he need only become a 1st District resident before the June 1 candidate filing deadline.
The district has many beautiful communities, the City of Whitewater first among them. It is not too much to ask candidates to live where they wish to serve before running. On the contrary, asking anything less would be asking too little of them.
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Particular Species of Democrat, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, ‘What Ails, What Heals’ Reviewed, and Outcome Driven Argumentation.
Sumatran orangutan uses canopy bridge to cross a road in Indonesia: