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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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2020-01-01 |
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| Name | Vincent Bobot |
| Address | 1919 W. Henry Ave
Milwaukee, Wisconsin , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
00, 1953
(71 years)
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| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Last Modifed | Ashley
Feb 19, 2020 06:33am |
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| Info | Vincent J. Bobot was a 23-year-old Milwaukee cop on the day a suspect pointed a gun at his face. In the ensuing struggle, the gun went off, and, fortunately for the young officer, the bullet only grazed his cheek and burned his face.
That experience in 1976 forced Bobot to ask himself "What do you want to do?" And in the years since, the incident has prompted him to reflect on the course his life has taken.
Change the bullet's path by a few inches, and "my wife would have been a widow, my daughter would never have been born, I would never have gone to law school, become a city attorney, or been a municipal judge," he says. "It shows what a homicide does. It just erases somebody from the face of the earth."
That knowledge and perspective have shaped the man running a decidedly dark-horse campaign for mayor.
Bobot, the 51-year-old son of a police officer and a waitress, emerged as one of the more surprising candidates among a field of 10 to succeed Mayor John O. Norquist. He brings to the race more than 30 years of experience in the law, first as a police officer, then an assistant city attorney and most recently as a judge in Milwaukee's Municipal Court.
"I think it started about three years ago," he says of his interest in running for mayor. "I got calls from people urging me to think about it, and I told them I'd take a look at it."
What drove his decision to run was "the health and welfare of the city of Milwaukee," he says. "I want to restore Milwaukee back to a place of prominence in the United States."
To do so, he says, the next mayor will have to tackle such challenges as the city's declining population, loss of jobs, a stubborn violent crime rate and pollution in Lake Michigan.
Unorthodox campaign
At times, Bobot has followed an unusual road map in mayoral politics, spending the night under the 27th St. viaduct with some of the city's homeless, driving a toilet to the offices of the Milwaukee sewerage commission to oppose increased sewer taxes and pledging to lose weight at the same time he prescribes ways to slim down the city budget.
He also devoted a news conference to the city's rat situation, which he termed a "massive infestation." But to many in Milwaukee, Bobot is perhaps best known for having launched an unsuccessful challenge to keep Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. off of the mayoral ballot based on questions about the signatures on his nomination papers.
The tactics appear to address a weakness Bobot had when he entered the campaign. As a Municipal Court judge, he lacked the high-profile office of others on the mayoral ballot, says Jeff Fleming, vice president of public relations for Zizzo Group Advertising and onetime communications director for former Mayor John O. Norquist.
"What's interesting about Vince, unlike the other candidates, is the volume of things he throws against the wall to see if they'll stick," Fleming says. "The guy just makes enormous effort to draw public attention to his campaign. It's a campaign tactic that has not been tried much in Milwaukee. Our campaigns are more traditional."
As with his previous jobs, Bobot believes his experiences on the campaign trail have taught him valuable lessons.
"I'll tell you one of the things I've learned," he says when asked about the night he spent under a bridge with the city's homeless. "The first thing is how big of a problem this is. When I went there, there were as many as 100 people scattered throughout the hillside in plastic sheets. It was very cold. I didn't realize there was such a problem with raccoons. There were dozens of them scavenging."
While his campaign props may seem unorthodox, those who have worked with Bobot see a serious, practical man.
"Vince, I describe him as a Milwaukeean, in all senses of the word. He is very hard working and dependable. You get what you pay for," says Ricardo Diaz, who was executive director of the Milwaukee Housing Authority during the period when Bobot served as lead counsel for the authority.
Re-evaluating future
When Bobot re-examined his life after the 1976 shooting incident, he began to think about law school "because I wanted to elevate myself in the criminal justice system and in the community," he says.
After law school, he considered working for the district attorney's office but decided the city attorney's office would be a better fit. In that office, he worked on municipal ordinance violations, contagious disease enforcement for the Milwaukee Health Department, legal counsel for the public library system and finally counsel for the Housing Authority.
"I learned how a large corporation operates, and how it's supposed to operate," he says.
Diaz credits Bobot with aggressively enforcing rules and helping to evict hundreds of Housing Authority residents who were not paying rent, or who were ignoring rules and making life difficult for other residents.
"The quality of life in public housing, as a result of his work, improved dramatically for seniors and for others," Diaz says.
In 1999, Bobot was picked from a field of 18 applicants to succeed John Siefert as Municipal Court judge. He stepped into a court system weighed down by a heavy volume of cases and introduced night court sessions, special sessions to handle delinquent parking violations and a youth development boot camp to work with juvenile offenders.
"Every time I was in his court, he was fair, thoughtful and listened to both sides," says Michael Bishop, a Milwaukee lawyer who appears in Municipal Court often. "He definitely handled the volume in the courtroom and gave the cases the attention they deserved. He was always on the bench at 8:30 a.m. and moved cases out and did it with courtesy."
Bishop credits Bobot with streamlining the workings of Municipal Court.
Today, Bobot says, "People in Milwaukee are going to have to make sacrifices." He says one program he would institute as mayor would encourage residents to work with seniors, mentor young people and pick up litter.
"My (leadership) style is to get people on the same page," he says, "to keep your eyes on the prize. If the city does well, special interests and our own self-interests, they do well, too."
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