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Milwaukee Chooses First Black Elected Mayor in 176 Years

Cavalier Johnson, 35, won the contested race in a rout.

Milwaukee made history by choosing its first Black mayor in the cityโ€™s history on Tuesday. Voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Cavalier Johnson, a 35-year-old former alderman who was already serving as the cityโ€™s interim mayor. Johnson, a Democrat, will now serve out the remaining two years of former mayor Tom Barrett, who resigned in December after 18 years in the job to become the Biden Administrationโ€™s ambassador to Luxembourg. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Johnson overwhelmed his challenger, former Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan, by a 72% to 28% margin. Now he faces the challenges of governing between now and the cityโ€™s next election in 2024.

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From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Just 35, Johnson is Milwaukeeโ€™s first millennial mayor, his triumph confirming his swift six-year rise from Common Council freshman to the seat of power in Wisconsinโ€™s largest city.

โ€œThis city for the first time in our 176-year history has elected its first Black mayor. We did it,โ€ Johnson told supporters at the Hilton Milwaukee City Center.

Accompanied by his wife and their three children, Johnson said โ€œwe want our city to be loving, nurturing and stable. Thatโ€™s why I ran for mayor.โ€

Johnson said โ€œweโ€™ve got a lot to do,โ€ adding the city has to stem violence, restore its neighborhoods, create jobs and repair the broken relationship with state government.

Tuesdayโ€™s vote makes Milwaukee at least the second major city without a majority Black population to install its first Black mayor this year. In January, Pittsburgh inaugurated Ed Gainey, a former state legislator, as the first Black mayor in that cityโ€™s more than 200-year history.

Both Johnson and Gainey are Democrats who won mayorโ€™s races in cities that favor their party despite being in states considered battlegrounds in the last presidential election. Both cities are former blue-collar, manufacturing hubs that have looked to modernize their economies.

But the cities have a stark difference in their racial makeup. Milwaukee is about 42% white and 38.8% Blackโ€“only a 3.2 percentage point difference, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Pittsburgh is 66.4% white and 23% Black, a 43.4 percentage point difference.

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