“I thought it was ridiculous,” Latino newspaper publisher Victor Huyke said of the criminal complaint against state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez. “It was vague. I couldn’t understand what the charges even are. It sounds like a fight between two schoolkids, and the police were called to handle it instead.”
Victor Huyke, the editor of the most prominent Latino newspaper in Milwaukee and a long-time community leader, is slamming the criminal charge filed against Democrat state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” Huyke said in an interview with Wisconsin Right Now. “I think (prosecutors) even filing it seems like political motivation, retaliation. The fact is that Sylvia has been working hard for the community. She’s brought a lot of legislation, more legislation than most Democrats.”
Huyke is an independent voice in the community who is not part of either political party. He organizes many community events for the Latino community (trick-or-treating for kids, local festivals, Quinceañera events) and runs a well-read Spanish and English-language newspaper called El Conquistador Latino Newspaper, which is distributed throughout the Milwaukee metropolitan area and into other counties.
Thus, Wisconsin Right Now thought it would be interesting to get his perspective on the charge but also on the work Ortiz-Velez has done on Milwaukee’s south side, where her district lies. Huyke said there is growing concern in the Hispanic community about the charge being lodged against Ortiz-Velez, a Democrat, which he believes is based on complaints made by other Democrat legislators, including Minority Leader Greta Neubauer and state Rep. Kalan Haywood.
Although she is a member of the Democrat Party who votes with Democrats most of the time, Ortiz-Velez is considered a rare legislator with an independent streak who occasionally crosses over to vote for Republican bills. Huyke said he believes she crosses over when she believes a Republican bill is in the best interest of her community and constituents. He also said she worked to get Republican support for a DACA bill supporting people who came illegally to this country as kids when they weren’t old enough to make that decision themselves. He believes that angered some Democrats (he didn’t name them in this instance) who have turned the immigration debate into a profitable cottage industry, in his view.
Ortiz-Velez also lodged accusations against Democrat Gov. candidate David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, which Crowley denies. Wisconsin Right Now has learned that at least two of the unnamed people mentioned in the complaint are Democrat legislators who endorsed Crowley.
The office of the Milwaukee County DA, a Democrat, socked Ortiz-Velez with a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge, accusing her of saying she would tell the news media about unspecified and alleged “inappropriate personal actions” of state Rep. Priscilla Prado because she was upset Prado and some other Democrat lawmakers allegedly excluded her from a resolution honoring Latino veterans when her late husband was one. Bizarrely, the vague criminal complaint did not say what those alleged personal actions were or name Prado; the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel named Prado as the legislator involved, and we confirmed that. The DA declined to comment.
Wisconsin Right Now asked Prado, Haywood, and Neubauer for comment. Response will be added to this story if it’s received.
Read the complaint here:
Criminal Complaint_2 – Ortiz-Velez, Sylvia N; 2026CM000557; Ortiz-Velez, Sylvia N_29035346_1
Right before she was hit with the bizarre speech-based criminal charge, which appears pretty unprecedented in Wisconsin political history, Ortiz-Velez spoke out on the Assembly floor and alleged that she was told to go home by Democrat leaders and not vote on some bills; it’s believed some Democrats don’t want Republicans to be able to say some bills are bipartisan. Again, we asked the three Democrats for comment on this as well.
“I thought it was ridiculous,” Huyke repeated of the criminal complaint. “It was vague. I couldn’t understand what the charges even are. It sounds like a fight between two schoolkids, and the police were called to handle it instead. This is like he said, she said, she said, and now all of a sudden it has to go to the police.”
He noted that the previous accusation made by Democrat leaders, including Neubauer, D-Racine, that Ortiz-Velez threatened to sh**t people (which Ortiz-Velez denies), is not even mentioned in the criminal complaint, nor was she ever charged with that. “They tried to discredit her with it, insult her with it, and in the end, nothing is there,” remarked Huyke. “Now they (prosecutors) are bringing some other charge against her.”
He claimed she is “in a den of snakes.”
“If they feel they can’t control you, they allegedly send you home,” he said. He argued that “the party allegedly sending a legislator home could be a civil rights violation of the individual as a legislator. To me, it disenfranchises the whole district.”
He questioned whether Ortiz-Velez’s being a Hispanic woman is coming into play in any way. “Is it a Latino vs. white thing? It’s starting to feel that way,” he said.
“They’ve been picking on her,” he said of some Democrats. According to Huyke, some of the tension derived from redistricting, when Ortiz-Velez wanted to create districts with greater Latino voter turnout, but then Gov. Tony Evers came out with his own map proposal, which she ultimately supported.
On the resolution honoring Latino veterans, Huyke noted, “Sylvia took that very personally. Her husband who passed was a U.S. Army veteran. For her to be excluded was probably upsetting, a direct shot at herself, her life, her husband.”
He added, “Sylvia is a person working not for the interests of a party but for the interests of the community, the whole south side. She has been voting for health, housing, everything that people need. They’re saying she’s voting Republican sometimes. Are they trying to say the Republicans worry more about health and housing?”
He noted: “She’s been a tremendous legislator. Sylvia does so much. She visits people. She goes door-to-door. She brings up legislation. She authors stuff. She will sit down and write it and put it together.”
On her accusations against Crowley, he noted, “She’s bringing up stuff that affects the public.”
Huyke believes the case won’t go to trial because “by filing these charges against her, those accusations would come out.” He believes the public “has a right to know” what they are and that Ortiz-Velez is going through a nightmare right now.
