Michael Chernin, the lawyer for Democrat state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee), is blasting a new filing by the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee seeking to kick the incumbent off the ballot.
He says the filing, by ADCC’s Executive Director Morgan Hess, will fail, in part because Hess failed to realize that Ortiz-Velez turned in enough supplemental signatures meaning that, even if Hess’s attack succeeds, Ortiz-Velez would still have the 200 signatures needed to get on the August primary ballot. In the filing, Hess demanded that the Wisconsin Election Commission “bar” Ortiz-Velez’s candidacy. (Update: After this story ran and criticism of Hess erupted, she withdrew her filing, according to Ortiz-Velez.)
Assembly Democrats’ own campaign committee has now aggressively moved to challenge the signatures of their own incumbent Democrat Sylvia Ortiz-Velez.
In other words, Democrats are trying to stop voters in a Democrat majority district from having a chance to vote for a Democrat… pic.twitter.com/yKpMc9wXta
— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) June 5, 2026
Hess acknowledged that ADCC is the “logistical hub” for Democratic incumbents in the state Assembly. Since Ortiz-Velez is an incumbent, it’s highly unusual that the organization that is supposed to help her is trying to get her booted from the ballot. However, establishment Democrats have been aggressively targeting Ortiz-Velez because she occasionally votes with the other side when she thinks it benefits her district, including on the surplus deal and budget. Assembly Democrats even got Ortiz-Velez charged with an unconstitutional misdemeanor crime for saying she would tell the media about their alleged wrongdoing, which the governor’s administration then redacted from police reports.
Chernin told WRN that he believes the aggressive Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee attack against the Democrat incumbent’s nomination papers is a “continuation of their attempts to undermine her because of two votes, one for the governor’s maps and the other one for the budget. She didn’t vote along with what the Democratic caucus was trying to support. It’s part of the same effort. It’s highly unusual. I’ve never seen them do this to an incumbent.”
He believes that the attack on her signatures will fail. He said he’s never seen Democrats target their own incumbent this way, since at least 1978.
This is Morgan Hess, who is behind the filing.
Another great day to talk to voters in the 24th about sending Bob to the Assembly! pic.twitter.com/gOMABb3WBY
— Morgan Hess (@morgandiane) July 16, 2023
“It’s unbelievable. The Democratic Party is literally saying to the Latino community who you can vote for and who you can’t vote for,” said Milwaukee Latino newspaper publisher Victor Huyke, who supports Ortiz-Velez because he believes she has pushed good legislation to help her district, on topics like affordability, housing and immigration.
Why will the attack fail?
“It appears that Morgan Hess did not see that there were supplements filed, and actually those supplements are already on the website (of the Wisconsin Election Commission), so even if she is absolutely correct that there are 39 bad signatures, there are ample signatures necessary to cover the 200,” Chernin said.
Hess, who filed the signature challenge, is executive director of the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee.
The supplemental signatures brought Ortiz-Velez to 246, Chernin said. So even with 39 knocked out, she would have 207, enough to get on the ballot. He said one of the challenges Hess made is also easily disputed and was an issue that also affects Ortiz-Velez’s primary opponent, Ismael Luna, but Hess only targeted Ortiz-Velez.
In her filing, Hess claimed that 39 of the 217 signatures submitted by Ortiz-Velez are not valid. She raised claims of allegedly illegible names, printed names not matching signed names, and other issues, and openly admitted that ADCC prefers a different candidate to the Democratic incumbent.
