Liam Beran
City council candidate Lisa Veldran watch party April 1, 2025
Supporters of council candidate Lisa Veldran, in the black vest, gathered at Vitense Golfland for an April 1 watch party.
About a half hour before the polls closed Tuesday night, Val Schend, Janice Bauman and Mark Bauman were chatting and sipping drinks at Lisa Veldran’s watch party at Vitense Golfland. Residents of District 10 on Madison’s west side, they supported Veldran in her challenge of the incumbent alder, hoping for new representation and a new approach from the council at large.
“Change is good,” says Schend, who has lived in the district for more than 30 years. She says she’d like to see more “responsible housing” as her top priority. “I think we're overdue. It seems to me like [the] city council is stagnant, and everybody's kind of a yes man.”
Veldran, who served as city council administrator for more than three decades, says she decided to run because of the city’s decision to push a $22 million operating budget referendum to voters and because the district needed a more engaged representative.
But Ald. Yannette Figueroa Cole, president of the city council, held on, beating Veldran by six points.
Incumbents in two other high-profile races weren’t as lucky. District 9 Ald. Nikki Conklin, endorsed by Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, lost to Joann Pritchett (48%-51%), a former assistant dean at UW School of Pharmacy, who campaigned on fiscal responsibility and was endorsed by former Mayor Paul Soglin. East-side District 12 Ald. Amani Latimer Burris lost her race to progressive challenger Julia Matthews (46%-53%).
Matthews, who also ran against Latimer Burris in 2023, says she entered the race with more knowledge this time around. She says she was motivated to run in part by the ongoing federal turmoil, and construction of a number of projects in and near District 12.
Matthews says she’s looking forward to helping “facilitate the opening of all these new projects coming to the district, like the Imagination Center [at Reindahl Park] and the [Madison] Public Market.”
In other races, William Ochowicz, founder of pro-housing group Madison is for People, garnered 60% of the vote in defeating Matt Egerer to fill outgoing Ald. Juliana Bennett’s campus-area District 2 seat. Longtime downtown District 4 Ald. Mike Verveer faced perhaps his toughest challenge yet, beating opponent Elias Tsarovsky with 53% of the vote. Badri Lankella beat Abdirahman Siad (54%-46%), husband of Ald. Nasra Wehelie, to fill Wehelie’s seat.
Clockwise from top left: Julia Matthews, Joann Pritchett, William Ochowicz and Badri Lankella.
New faces for the Madison city council, clockwise from top left: Julia Matthews, Joann Pritchett, William Ochowicz and Badri Lankella.
The result of one hotly contested race is still up in the air. Ald. John Guequierre retained his west-side District 19 seat by only nine votes over challenger and former Ald. Anthony “Nino” Amato, who was also endorsed by Soglin. Given the race’s closeness, Amato is entitled to a recount — City Attorney Michael Haas says under state law, he’ll have until 5 p.m. on April 9 to request one.
Amato says in a statement that “with only a nine-vote difference in the outcome of [Tuesday's] election, we will be filing for a recount in the 19th aldermanic district.”
The results of another race — one that initially seemed guaranteed — are also uncertain. Ald. Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford, who represents District 15 on the east side, remained on the ballot though she announced in January she was dropping out of the race. On Tuesday she won 52% of the vote over Ryan Koglin, whom she had endorsed. Haas says that Martinez-Rutherford can accept the seat or decline to take the oath of office. If she declines, the council’s executive committee would conduct interviews and recommend one or more candidates to the city council for a vote.
Asked whether she plans to take or decline the seat, Martinez-Rutherford says she's "honored that District 15 reelected me [and] at the moment I have no further comment."
Citywide turnout was at 68% as of 8 p.m. election night, according to the city clerk’s office. That’s even higher than in April 2023, the last election with city council candidates and a Supreme Court justice on the ballot, when citywide turnout was 63%.
This was the first council election under the city’s new staggered term limits, created by an ordinance change 2023. This year, candidates in even-numbered districts ran for one-year terms. Starting in April 2026, all races for city council will be for two-year terms — even-numbered candidates will run in even years, and odd-numbered candidates in odd ones.
In other local government news, incumbent Dane County Executive Melissa Agard handily won her race against challenger Stephen Ratzlaff. Agard, who initially won a six-month term in November 2024, won’t face another election until 2029.
The results of other contested races are:
District 5: Regina Vidaver (I)
District 13: Tag Evers (I)
District 14: Isadore Knox Jr. (I)
District 16: Sean O’Brien
District 17: Sabrina Madison (I)
District 18: Carmella Glenn
District 20: Barbara Harrington-McKinney (I)
[Editor's note: This article was updated with a response from Ald. Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford.]
