LAKE GENEVA ELECTION RESULTS: THE KING KEEPS HIS THRONE, THE GADFLY KEEPS HIS SEAT, AND THE MACHINE GRINDS ON
Unofficial complete results from the April 7, 2026 municipal election — Walworth County
LAKE GENEVA — Tuesday night the good citizens of Lake Geneva trudged to the polls in the cold Wisconsin spring and delivered their verdict on the men and women who govern them, and the verdict was, as it so often is in the quiet corridors of municipal power: more of the same, please, and hold the accountability.
Todd W. Krause will remain mayor. Joel Hoiland will remain on the council. Sherri Ames will remain on the council. And in two of the city’s four aldermanic districts, nobody even bothered to mount a challenge — a fact that should disturb anyone who believes democracy requires at least a minimal number of willing participants to function. It does not disturb the Lake Geneva political establishment, which has made an art form of running unopposed and calling it governance.
This is how it works in small American cities in the year 2026. The republic staggers forward. The incumbents cash their per diems. The public stays home.
THE MAYOR: A MAN WHO PROMISED LIGHT AND DELIVERED DARKNESS
Let us begin with the man of the hour. Incumbent Mayor Todd W. Krause defeated challenger Joel Hoiland 1,458 votes to 931 — a 61-to-39 margin across 2,445 ballots cast in four precincts. The machine held. The insurgency failed. The mayor poured himself a drink, metaphorically speaking, and watched the numbers roll in with the serene confidence of a man who has learned that in Lake Geneva, promises have a very short shelf life and voters have a very long forgiveness streak.
Because here is what the numbers don’t tell you — what the clean columns of unofficial election night totals cannot capture — and that is the spectacular, almost operatic gap between what Todd Krause promised when he was running for this office and what Todd Krause delivered once he had it.
He ran on transparency. He said the words out loud, in public, to actual human beings who were considering whether to give him power over their city. He promised that city meetings would be recorded and livestreamed — that the people of Lake Geneva would be able to watch their government work without having to take a Tuesday night off and sit in a municipal chamber that smells faintly of old carpet and unresolved grievances.
It was a beautiful promise. It was a popular promise. It was, as anyone who has covered local government for more than fifteen minutes could have predicted, a promise that evaporated the moment the gavel came down and the real business of being mayor began.
Once in office, Krause pulled the plug. The Lake Geneva Tourism Commission went dark. The Police and Fire Commission went dark. The Park Commission went dark. No recordings. No streams. No public record for the working parent, the night-shift nurse, the small business owner who cannot rearrange their life around a commission meeting schedule designed by and for people who have nothing better to do on a Wednesday evening. The mayor who campaigned on keeping the lights on reached over and flipped the switch himself.
This is not a minor bureaucratic footnote. This is a man who asked for the public’s trust on the specific grounds that he would make government more open, and then used that trust to make government less open. In any functioning journalistic ecosystem, that would be the story. It would be on the front page. It would be asked about at every candidates forum. It would follow him like the smell of a dead fish in a warm car.
Instead, he won by twenty-two points.
Krause also broke a 4-4 tie to sell city-owned land without competitive bidding — placing the city in the surreal position of acting simultaneously as seller and regulatory authority over the same transaction — and signed off on a $92,000 communications consultant contract. A $92,000 contract to improve communication for an administration that had just stopped communicating with the public. The audacity is almost admirable. Almost.
Thirty-nine percent of Lake Geneva voters saw through it. Sixty-one percent did not, or did not care, or decided that the devil you know beats the alderman you’re not sure about. Democracy is a blunt instrument. It rarely produces the precise result you were hoping for.
DISTRICT 1: AMES SURVIVES, SILVESTRI DOES NOT
Incumbent Alderwoman Sherri Ames was returned to the council in District 1 for another two-year term, defeating challenger Anthony Silvestri 308 to 203. It was not close. Silvestri will presumably return to whatever he was doing before this campaign, and Ames will return to the chamber she has occupied before.
This newspaper’s readers will recall that Ames was one of the parties in a March 18 altercation at an aldermanic candidates debate — the kind of civic spectacle that makes you realize local government is really just community theater with subpoena power. The incident prompted this publication’s open records request to the Lake Geneva Police Department, which — and credit where it is due, because credit is in short supply in this city — fulfilled that request promptly and professionally. The Lake Geneva Police Department, it turns out, understands what a public records law is for and acts accordingly.
The Lake Geneva city hall gang has not always shown the same enthusiasm for sunshine. There is a lesson there, somewhere, about which branch of local government actually respects the public it serves. Whether anyone in a position of authority absorbs that lesson is another question entirely.
The voters of District 1, having reviewed the available evidence, returned Ames to office by a comfortable margin. She’ll be back at the dais for the next two years.
DISTRICT 3: THE BALLAD OF JOEL HOILAND, A MAN WHO SWUNG FOR THE FENCES AND LANDED IN THE SAME DUGOUT
The most entertainingly complicated ballot of the evening belonged to incumbent Alderman Joel Hoiland, who executed a political maneuver that is either admirably bold or magnificently absurd depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing: he ran for mayor and for reelection to his own aldermanic seat simultaneously.
He lost one and won the other.
Hoiland went down to Krause 931 to 1,458 in the mayoral race — a loss that was clear enough by nine o’clock that there was no drama, only arithmetic. But on the other side of the same ballot, he turned around and defeated challenger Peg Esposito 356 to 285 to hold his District 3 seat for another two years. The man who tried to take the mayor’s chair will now resume his regular seat at the council table, approximately ten feet from the man who denied him the promotion.
If you are looking for a silver lining in Hoiland’s evening, it is this: he still has a platform, a vote, and presumably an opinion or two about how this city is being run. The next two years should be interesting.
DISTRICTS 2 AND 4: NOBODY SHOWED UP TO FIGHT
And here, ladies and gentlemen, is where we pause and stare into the abyss of Lake Geneva civic engagement, because in two of the city’s four aldermanic races — half of them, exactly half — there was no contest. No challenger. No choice. No democracy, strictly speaking, just a name on a ballot and a foregone conclusion dressed up as an election.
Mary Jo Fesenmaier ran unopposed in District 2 and collected 610 votes from citizens who showed up to the polls, saw her name alone on the line, and dutifully filled in the bubble. Cynthia Yager ran unopposed in District 4 and collected 270 votes under identical circumstances. Both will serve two-year terms against the fierce opposition of absolutely no one.
This is not a criticism of Fesenmaier or Yager. Running for local office is a genuine sacrifice of time and sanity, and they are willing to do it, which puts them ahead of the vast majority of their neighbors. The criticism belongs to the rest of Lake Geneva — to the residents who will spend the next two years complaining about their city government at the coffee shop, at the bar, at the marina, everywhere except the place where it might actually matter, which is the candidate filing office.
Two of four aldermanic races uncontested. In a city of this size, with this much going on — a controversial land sale, a mayor who killed public meeting access, a tourism commission that has been in institutional freefall — not a single additional citizen looked at Districts 2 and 4 and thought: I could do that. I should do that. Someone should.
Nobody did. The machine runs on apathy. It always has.
CITY ATTORNEY: DRAPER RETURNS, ALSO UNOPPOSED
Dan Draper was returned as City Attorney with 1,814 votes, running unopposed. See above notes on contested elections.
BADGER SCHOOL BOARD
In the Lake Geneva-Genoa City UHS-Badger School Board race — City of Lake Geneva seats, vote for 2 — Barbara Krause led with 3,081 votes, Jeffrey Buntrock followed at 2,781, and Steven Bartos trailed at 1,848. Krause and Buntrock appear to claim the two available seats across 6,156 ballots cast.
WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT: TAYLOR WINS BIG STATEWIDE, WALWORTH COUNTY DISSENTS AND IS IGNORED
The marquee race on Tuesday’s statewide ballot was the contest for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and it was — in a political environment that has begun to feel like a permanent emergency — almost refreshingly decisive.
Democratic-backed state Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor defeated Republican-backed state Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar in a rout. With 93% of the statewide vote reporting, Taylor held 59.6% to Lazar’s roughly 40% — an overperformance of nearly 20 points compared to 2024’s Democratic presidential results in Wisconsin, and 10 points better than the last Supreme Court race, which was also won by the Democratic-backed candidate. The AP called it less than 40 minutes after the polls closed. It was, in the clinical language of political professionals, not close.
Walworth County, as is its custom, went the other direction. Lazar edged Taylor here 13,303 to 13,073 — a margin of 230 votes out of 26,376 cast, roughly 50.4% to 49.6%. A hairline fracture of a margin. A rounding error in the context of a statewide blowout. Walworth County cast its protest vote and the rest of Wisconsin shrugged and moved on.
Taylor’s victory expands the court’s liberal majority from 4–3 to 5–2, secured until at least 2030. Another conservative justice retires in 2027, putting 6–1 liberal control within reach. The court that has already redrawn the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps, restored absentee ballot drop boxes, and struck down Wisconsin’s 19th-century abortion ban will now do all of that with a roomier majority and considerably less suspense about the outcome.
Taylor — former Democratic state lawmaker, former Planned Parenthood policy director, the latest in a string of liberal victories on a court that had only two liberal members six years ago — addressed her supporters in Madison and declined to name the president of the United States while making perfectly clear she was talking about him. “Politics has no place in the judiciary, and the judiciary is not a rubber stamp for any party, group or branch of government — including the federal government,” she said, to the kind of cheering that echoes differently in an era when that statement requires courage to make.
She outspent Lazar by nearly 8-to-1, which in the current landscape of Wisconsin judicial elections counts as a modest, almost quaint campaign. Last year’s race burned through more than $75 million in television advertising alone. This one came in well under $10 million total — a reminder that when the court’s ideological majority is not actually on the line, the billionaires find other things to do with their money.
Lazar conceded from a subdued watch party in Pewaukee, moving from supporter to supporter, telling them “don’t be sad” and that “when a door closes, a window opens.” There were reportedly more reporters in the room than supporters. The country music played softly overhead. It was the kind of ending that deserves a better night than it got.
All local results are unofficial complete election night totals from Walworth County, 42 of 42 precincts reporting as of 9:33 p.m. April 7, 2026. Statewide Supreme Court figures are unofficial AP results at 93% reporting. All results subject to canvass and certification.
LakeGenevaNews.com covers Lake Geneva municipal government and Walworth County civic affairs. Tips and records requests welcomed.
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