Foxconn Land Homeowner Narrowly Loses County Board Race

The Board of Supervisors in Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ home county stays conservative.

Kim Mahoney, the sole remaining homeowner in Area 1 of Foxconn’s Mount Pleasant development who successfully fought an eminent domain claim against her house, narrowly lost the race for a vacant seat on the Racine County Board, according to unofficial results published Monday evening by the county.

With all precincts reporting, she lost to a current Village of Sturtevant trustee by just 62 votes out of 2,098 cast in the county’s 14th District, which includes the entire Foxconn project area and Sturtevant.

“I am obviously disappointed with the outcome, but I am also very proud at how close I came in my first election,” Mahoney said in a statement Monday evening. “I was not the handpicked candidate, but my narrow loss demonstrates that people in Mount Pleasant and Sturtevant want more transparency and accountability in their local government.”

Mahoney is a Democrat, though County Board seats are nonpartisan. She is a vocal opponent of how the local, state, and county governments handled the Foxconn project, though is not against the project itself. She ran on the promise of more accountability and transparency in county government.

Mahoney was one of six Democrats running for five open seats. Two others, including Joel Jacobsen, who previously ran for Assembly against Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, were defeated in their districts. 

Results were pending on one other race between two Democrats as of 7 p.m. Monday.

If Democrats had won each seat up for grabs, the board would have had a Democratic majority for the first time in the county’s history, said current County Supervisor Fabi Maldonado, a stringent supporter of former Democratic-socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont.