Complaint filed against Milwaukee council candidate over false statements in pre-election mailer

A south side aldermanic race has taken a nasty turn in the final days before Tuesday's election, with a challenger leveling false and nebulous charges against the incumbent in last-minute campaign literature.

It took no time for Ryan Antczak to acknowledge in an interview with the Journal Sentinel on Friday that his mailer erroneously stated that incumbent Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa "actively fired" former Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales. Only the city Fire and Police Commission has the power to dump a Milwaukee police chief, and it was the commission's missteps in ousting Morales in 2020 that led the city to pay a $627,000 settlement to the former chief.

"That is a mistake," Antczak said of his claim. "That is."

Zamarripa said she was knocking on doors in the Silver City neighborhood Thursday when she came across the piece of literature that is in both English and Spanish.

“I’m very concerned because there is no black and white here, he is absolutely lying in these waning days leading up to the election with very damaging falsehoods,” she said. “And I have to try to correct the record as much as possible with four days leading up to election day.”

Zamarripa's attorney, Michael Maistelman, filed a complaint with the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office Thursday night accusing Antczak of distributing campaign literature with "patently false" claims.

In addition to the claim about Morales' firing, Antczak also accused Zamarripa of supporting raising city officials' salaries and "defunding the police."

"These statements are all demonstrably false," the complaint states. "Even a quick Google search would reveal each of these accusations to be patently untrue. There are no two sides to an argument here, or a misrepresentation of the circumstances. These are straight up false representations that are being peddled in the last few days to affect the votes in an election."

Zamarripa said the false statement about her firing Morales was offensive because it was untrue and could impact how Latino voters cast their ballots. Not only did she not fire Morales, but Zamarripa also noted that he was not Milwaukee's first Latino police chief.

"The fact that it was a bilingual piece, I am happy to see that he recognizes he is running an anti-immigrant, anti-Latino campaign in a super-majority Latino aldermanic district," she said. "But he's putting out bilingual Iit, so I guess I'll give him credit for that."

Antczak stood by the other allegations in the flyer, including one that said Zamarripa "supported giving herself a 15% raise." Zamarripa actually voted against the pay raise proposal adopted by the Common Council earlier this year.

Anczak said he knew how she voted but that he had concluded she did so only because the council didn't need her vote to approve the raises.

"I'm not saying that she voted for it," he said. "I'm just saying she's supported it."

As for his claim that she wanted to defund the police, Antczak said he was basing this statement on Facebook posts on this issue from 2020. He said he would email the Journal Sentinel a copy of the social media posts but had not done so early Friday.

Zamarripa said she has supported the police "at every turn," including voting to accept the controversial federal COPS grant in 2020 to hire 30 new police officers.

She also noted that she was endorsed by the Milwaukee Police Association.

"He knows there's never been a defund the police vote before the council, but ... I just don't think he cares," she said. "He's willing to lie his way into office, if possible."

This marks the second complaint that Zamarripa has filed against her general election opponent.

Earlier this month, she filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission accusing Antczak of soliciting contributions above the campaign finance limit for the race. She also said he failed to include on campaign literature the name of the campaign committee that had paid for the literature and improperly had two candidate committee accounts.

The complaint asked that Antczak be fined $500 per violation and that the Ethics Commission forward the complaint to the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office.

Antczak said at the time that he had not seen the complaint but intended to abide by campaign finance laws.

Alison Dirr can be reached at adirr@jrn.com.

Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on X at @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Complaint filed against Milwaukee candidate over false claims in mailer