Campaign finance totals are in from the spring election on April 7, and the District 11 race was by far the most expensive of the 12 elections for Wauwatosa Common Council seats.
Melissa Dolan, a one-term incumbent on the council, defeated fellow incumbent Mike Morgan, 708-524, in the race for the newly drawn District 11, under a reconfiguration of the council and its district boundaries intended to reduce the governing body from 16 to 12 members.
On April 14, Morgan told Tosa Forward News he had filed an ethics complaint with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission related to Dolan's campaign, which had missed a key campaign finance filing deadline.
Dolan's new term will be two years, as the council transitions to its new structure. She logged 57% of the vote in her victory, while financial disclosures in the show she had a much larger edge over Morgan in campaign, mostly thanks to a Washington, D.C.-based spending big in support of Dolan's candidacy.
A database of filings maintained by the Wisconsin Ethics Commission shows that State + Local Election Alliance spent $8,384 on the race in the past month, including through pro-Dolan mailers, online advertising and phone-based appeals. That includes $843 in expenses listed as "phones/texting" and "phone bank" in the final days of the campaign.