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Evers, Holtz Advance to General Election
By Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance staff | February 22, 2017
Incumbent State Superintendent Tony Evers breezed to victory in yesterday’s primary election garnering 70% of the vote. Lowell Holtz advanced to the April 4 general election with 23% of the vote while John Humphries received the remaining 7% of the primary vote. Check out some of the major news media coverage below.
From WisPolitics.com …
State Superintendent Tony Evers says his primary victory can be chalked up to a focus on the state’s public school kids — and not on the “kind of weird politics and policies” that plagued his challengers.
Evers told WisPolitics.com in an interview last night that instead, his primary victory is a reflection of his campaign’s focus on the 860,000 public school kids in the state and their needs.
Evers easily won yesterday’s primary, with unofficial election results showing he gathered nearly 70 percent of the vote. He’ll face off against Lowell Holtz, who got around 23 percent of the vote, in the general election April 4. Eliminated from the race was John Humphries, who garnered around 7 percent of the vote.
Evers said he didn’t know if the news from last week of a possible deal between Humphries and Holtz affected the outcome of the primary. But he said “people in Wisconsin value trustworthiness and integrity.”
“I think this worked against both of them,” Evers said. “I never guessed this race would have that role in it.”
And he added that because both his primary opponents “engaged in untrustworthy behavior,” the issue could still dog Holtz as the two head into the general election.
Evers “fully anticipates” outside money will come in during the general election to help Holtz, especially from groups that support school choice, and “will play a role in this race.”
“We’ll be working twice as hard as we were going into this race” in anticipation of the challenge that money would pose, Evers said.
Meanwhile, Holtz in a statement thanked voters for their faith in him to “correct the extensive vulnerabilities” of the state’s “education bureaucracy.”
“I look forward to the campaign ahead, and anticipate a spirited and meaningful debate as I present an alternative vision for the future of Wisconsin’s students to that of Dr. Tony Evers,” he said.
Humphries urged voters to learn more about both Evers’ “track record and what he plans to do differently,” as well as Holtz’s proposals, saying “the status quo cannot stand any longer in Wisconsin.”
Read Holtz’s statement here.
See Humphries’ statement here.
Holtz continued to see a late surge of big-dollar donations from conservatives in the waning days of the primary.
Richard Wilkey, founder and CEO of the Fisher Barton Group, gave Holtz $5,000 this week, while Foster Friess, a multimillionaire mutual fund investor and top GOP donor nationally, gave him $1,000.
That pushed Holtz’s late contributions $25,000.
Evers collected $24,500 in late contributions, according to his latest filing, while Humphries had just $1,000.
Candidates are required to report donations of $1,000 or more received in the 14 days before an election.
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