Hartland-Lakeside School Board chooses Adsit to fill seat left by Harter resignation
An unsuccessful candidate for the Hartland-Lakeside School Board is getting a second chance to serve on that board.
The school board on April 24 selected Chris Adsit to fill the board vacancy left by the resignation of John Harter, who stepped down the day after the election. Adsit narrowly lost the election to Amy Harker-Murray, 2,076 to 2,061 votes. Adsit was supported in that election by the Waukesha County Republican Party's WisRed Initiative.
His appointed seat carries a one-year term. He will have the chance to run for the seat again in April 2024. If he wins that election, Adsit would serve another year, until April 2025, which would fill the remainder of Harter's original term.
Harter was charged April 14 with election fraud, accused of using his father, Tom's, home address in the town of Delafield as his own, despite having his own address outside the district. Harter's father is Hartland-Lakeside School Board member Tom Harter.
The board chose Adsit over five other candidates: former Hartland-Lakeside School Board member Val Wisniewski and district parents Niels Peterson, Sarah Sallman, Matt Schwab and Miyoshi Zuehl. The board interviewed each candidate and discussed the candidates before voting by paper ballot.
Board members Tiffany Hawley, Jeffrey Pfannerstill Jr. and Tom Harter voted for Adsit, while Harker-Murray voted for Wisniewski.
"He chose to put himself out there as a candidate. He spent money, his money, campaigned and was hoping to have a three-year term. He lost by a small amount of votes, and you cannot tell me that if the situation was flipped around, that we would not be screaming for us to put Amy (Harker-Murray) on this board and if we didn't, everyone in this room who did vote for Amy would be incredibly upset and disheartened," Hawley said about why she supported Adsit.
"For us not to choose Chris (Adsit) I think (would be) absolutely crazy, and it does not mean any of the other candidates or interviews are diminished in any way. Next year we have two seats up. You can run, but I think that Chris is the person that should fill the board vacancy. It appeases two sides, and in what situation do we have an opportunity to make every single person in the community happy because both candidates get to sit on the board and work together?" she added.
Pfannerstill said he knew where he stood on the issue, also referencing the close vote. "I think that it's a clear choice and that it's the right choice to vote for Chris Adsit," he said.
Tom Harter also spoke in support of Adsit.
Harker-Murray supported Wisniewski because of Wisniewski's past board experience, the board's overall inexperience and the board's need to find a new superintendent. The meeting was Harker-Murray's first as a newly elected board member; her term began April 24.
Current Hartland-Lakeside School District superintendent Nancy Nikolay announced in January her resignation from the district, effective at the end of the school year. Nikolay declined at the time to comment on her reasons for resigning.
Six of the nine speakers who spoke during public comment also spoke in favor of Adsit, while two supported Wisniewski and one supported Zuehl. While one of the speakers who supported Wisniewski said she thought Wisniewski was "the obvious choice," she also said she would support Peterson, Sallman, Schwab or Zuehl as well.
Contact Alec Johnson at (262) 875-9469 or alec.johnson@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AlecJohnson12.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Hartland-Lakeside School Board chooses Adsit to fill vacant seat
