Oneida County board takes a leap to the left

News analysis

By most traditional measures, conservatives maintained control of the Oneida County Board of Supervisors following this past month’s spring elections, with incumbent supervisor Scott Holewinski securing unanimous re-election as county board chairman and no apparent dramatic shift in ideological control of the board.

But if the conservative majority remained, it is also not as sizable as it once was, with two new members pushing the center line several degrees to the left, at the very least.

All totaled, four new members were elected as supervisors in April. Two of them — Andrea Sheppard and Sandy Hamburg — are less known in the public eye. However, the other two newcomers, former circuit court judge Mary Roth Burns and former congressional candidate Kyle Kilbourn, bring records and public positions that align not just with mainstream Democratic politics but also with the activist, more extreme wing of the progressive movement.

How those views will manifest in actual county governance remains to be seen. But their past statements, policy positions, and political activity offer a window into how they may approach issues ranging from natural resources and economic development to taxes and spending and the role of government itself.  

Burns: “Obvious” racism in Oneida County

Of the two, Mary Roth Burns enters public office with the most extensive — and controversial — record.

For example, as an Oneida County circuit court judge, Burns, whom Gov. Tony Evers appointed before she was defeated in her bid for a full term, drew sharp criticism for a ruling in which she asserted that “substantial” racial prejudice in Oneida County was “obvious,” making it difficult for a black person to get a fair trial.

The comment came in a decision involving whether to join two criminal defendants — one white, one black — in a single trial. The two individuals were both arrested on the same traffic stop and in the same car in 2022 and charged with various drug-related offenses. But Marcy Mains of Minnesota, who had been charged with three drug-related counts, one a felony, sought to have the court deny a state motion to join her case with that of co-defendant Baron Martin, also of Minnesota, who was charged with more serious offenses, including two felonies.

Court records listed Mains’s race as Caucasian; those records listed Martin’s race as “unknown,” though Burns referred to him as black in her decision. In her objection, Mains did not raise the issue of race or potential racial bias, but Burns did just that in siding with Mains and denying the state’s motion. 

“Moreover, although defendant has not raised the issue of racial prejudice due to Mr. Martin being black, the connection between race and substantial prejudice, at least in Oneida County, is obvious,” Burns wrote in her decision.

As such, and given other factors, including the more serious charges against Martin, the judge found “Ms. Mains would be substantially prejudiced should her case be joined with Mr. Martin’s case.”

The broader implication — that an entire county’s jury pool could not be presumed racially impartial — was viewed by opponents as both unfounded and damaging. The episode remains a defining moment in Burns’s public record, one that underscores a willingness to apply radical social justice theories and presumptions to local judicial decisions.

Burns’s record extends beyond the courtroom. For instance, she has run previously for the county board and was soundly defeated by former supervisor Diana Harris. During that campaign, she proclaimed on her Facebook page that she was “not a left-wing crackpot.”

That said, campaign finance disclosures and public records show a pattern of financial support for Democratic candidates and far-left figures, including contributions to Gov. Tony Evers and extreme candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

For example, Burns has been a reliable political supporter and Democratic Party loyalist who gave money to such candidates as Kirk Bangstad, the 2020 Democratic nominee for the 34th Assembly district, who recently posted comments on social media lamenting the failure of an alleged assassination attempt against President Donald Trump on April 25 and who promised a celebration with free beer if Trump is killed.

In addition to Bangstad, Burns donated to Democrat Ed Vocke in his bid to defeat Mary Felzkowski for the state Senate. She gave to liberal Democrat Lisa Neubauer in 2019 in Neubauer’s race for the state Supreme Court, in which she was defeated by Brian Hagedorn. In 2020, she donated to support liberal Jill Karofsky’s successful run for the high court.

Her activism extends beyond mere monetary support for political candidates. She has also been an activist for Democratic causes. For example, Burns actively urged the Pine Lake town board to place two referenda questions on the spring 2020 ballot, one to take legislative and congressional redistricting away from elected representatives and put it into the hands of unelected “independent commissions,” and another to denounce “corporate personhood” and cut off the ability of corporations to give campaign contributions.

The organizations aligned with the groups pushing the referenda were long-time Democratic Party cohorts, including the One Wisconsin Institute, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Citizen Action of Wisconsin, and the Center for Media and Democracy.

Another of her posts took aim at mining and excessive development in the county, and she proclaimed that she would support regulating water rights down to “trickles.”

“One of my campaign issues is protecting our waters in Oneida County,” she posted. “I LOVE our lakes, and I am determined to defend our water — lakes, rivers, streams, trickles — from all types of destruction. That includes mining, pollution (including PFAS), destruction (from over-development), and invasive species.”

In addition to mining opposition, which she affirmed during this election cycle, Burns supports legalizing small amounts of marijuana.

Kilbourn: More government

If Burns represents the judicial flank of activist progressive politics, Kyle Kilbourn brings a policy portfolio shaped by his unsuccessful run in 2024 for Congress in Wisconsin’s 7th District. Kilbourn’s positions spanned a wide range of issues, many of which point toward a more expansive role for government in economic and social policy.

For example, during his campaign of just two years ago, Kilbourn expressed support for stronger federal intervention in markets, including potential price controls during emergencies and more aggressive enforcement against large corporations. He also believes that a higher cost of living can be attributed, at least in part, to corporate price gouging.

“A lot of corporations during the pandemic did quite well,” he told The Lakeland Times in an interview during his congressional campaign. “They made record profits, their CEOs got their bonuses, their shareholders got their stock buybacks. And we must make sure that the market is operating fairly.”

Kilbourn said he had worked at two Fortune 500 companies. 

“I know how they work, but it doesn’t mean we have to let them do whatever they want,” he said. “We need to make sure that they are accountable, making sure we have a free market, and making sure there’s no price gouging. And so I think there’s some basic rules we can put in to say, ‘Hey, if it’s an emergency situation like a pandemic, maybe we have some caps on prices.’”

It’s the same with prescription drugs, Kilbourn told the Times. 

“We’ve successfully negotiated prices with prescription drugs for the first time, and there’s ways we can sort of do similar things to make sure that in emergency situations we don’t have price gouging,” he said.

As for farming and forestry, the region needs to consider new processes alongside traditional methods, Kilbourn said.

“We talk about the environment and climate change, and if you believe that or not — and I do — but if we think about our forestry products, there’s an idea called Biochar, that if you put Biochar into the ground, it actually helps the soil,” he said. “And how do we make sure that our forestry products could actually help our farmers create another industry that will sort of build on and add onto the industries we have today?”

Biochar is charcoal that is used organically, such as in soils.

Kilbourn said manufacturing related to renewable energy should not be ruled out in northern Wisconsin, either.

“If we start taking climate change seriously, there are a lot of incentives that have been built into infrastructure bills, and because we are not taking advantage of that, those manufacturing industries are going elsewhere,” he said. “We should be fighting hard to bring those renewable energies and those manufacturing practices up here.”

Kilbourn said in that interview that he supported a higher minimum wage, but he believed it must be done in a way that does not negatively impact small businesses, such as the government taking over child care and health care.

“It’s been decades since the minimum wage has gone up,” he said. “I know a lot of our small businesses, it would be a challenge to pay that. And I think part of that is how do we make sure that maybe health care isn’t something that private companies need to take on, and how do we make sure that if we’re raising the minimum wage, that it doesn’t put a burden on our small businesses.”

Kilbourn said that perhaps this could be accomplished by freeing businesses from the requirement that they provide it. 

“It’s the same with child care,” he said. “Is there a way to make sure that we can free up dollars so that child care is something that’s separate, that a business doesn’t need to worry about that for their employees? So I think we can raise the minimum wage while also thinking about how we make sure that it doesn’t impact small businesses.”

Kilbourn said attacking the federal debt would be a priority, but reducing the debt doesn’t necessarily mean cutting spending alone.

“There’s definitely two ways of looking at it,” he said. “One way is that we have to cut to make sure that we have a balanced budget and pay off that debt. It’s true that the interest payments are becoming a burden on our budget.”

But Kilbourn said there was another way to look at it.

“I think we can actually grow out of the debt,” he said. “And so if our economy becomes big enough, the debt becomes a smaller part of it. That is the other approach. How can we grow our economy so that the debt is a smaller part of our budget?”

Kilbourn said he would not commit to supporting a balanced budget amendment outright. He has also expressed support for continued U.S. nation-building and involvement in international affairs, including aid to Ukraine and support for democracies abroad.

“We are a democracy, and we should be supporting democracies around the world,” Kilbourn told The Times in his congressional run.  

Domestically, his suggestion that economic growth, rather than spending cuts alone, could be a path to managing the national debt, reflects a more liberal approach to fiscal policy than traditional deficit-reduction strategies. On abortion, Kilbourn said he supported codifying Roe v Wade, and he also supported having a binding ethics code for Supreme Court justices.

While many of Kilbourn’s expressed positions focused on federal policy given his congressional candidacy at the time, his underlying philosophy of favoring a more active government role in economic and social issues is likely to shape his approach to local decision making.

At the county level, that could translate into more restrictive positions on zoning, land use, and environmental regulation, including shoreland protection, while protecting public spending priorities. In his run for county board, he specifically stressed the need to “protect our landscape from metallic mining, PFAS contamination, and wake boating.”

Similarly, Burns’s record suggests a governing approach that may prioritize social justice and environmental protection, potentially influencing debates over development and resource management.

In sum, over the next two years, conservatives seem to have retained a small but shrinking county board majority while leadership remains unchanged.  That means any significant policy shifts would likely require broader consensus or incremental change rather than immediate transformation. 

But the defeat of more conservative candidates such as Mitch Ives by a left-wing politician like Kilbourn should be a red flag for conservatives, especially after conservative Mike Roach lost his seat to liberal Lenore Lopez in the previous election.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.