GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – For the first time in 16 years, the city of Green Bay has a new mayor.
Former state representative Eric Genrich came out victoriously in the polls on Tuesday, overcoming his challenger, Brown County Supervisor Pat Buckley, 58-percent to 42-percent.
Genrich is replacing outgoing mayor Jim Schmitt who decided against running for re-election after spending four terms in office.
Genrich and his supporters gathered at the Tarlton Theatre in Downtown Green Bay for election night.
He took time to deflect a lot of the praise away from himself and onto his campaign team, which has been hard at work in the past handful of months.
“We were very well organized and deliberate,” says Genrich. “We had an army of volunteers, folks knocking on doors and making phone calls and I think that really was the difference in this race.”
While Tuesday was a joyous occasion for those gathered in his camp, it didn’t go unrealized that the transition phase will be a fast one.
“Obviously it’s very abrupt, we kind of have like a two-week turnaround,” he says. “I know I’m going to be in touch shortly with Mayor Schmitt to kind of ease that process.”
And for Genrich, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
He says he’s ready to get to work and start the process on a number of objectives he’s identified for his tenure.
“We’re going to try to hit the ground running as soon as possible,” he says. “We have some significant challenges associated with infrastructure and budgetary and otherwise, the budget cycle really begins pretty rapidly.”
And one of the things that he’ll be looking at addressing sooner than later will be deteriorating road conditions in the city.
“We’ve got to have a long-term capital improvement plan and program that takes a five-year snapshot and ten-year snapshot and really gives people an understanding of what those needs are and then we can get our arms around it,” he explains.
While not every story has a happy ending and in the head-to-head race to become Green Bay’s next mayor there had to be one candidate that fell short.
It didn’t have the ending that Brown County Supervisor Pat Buckley had wished for.
Looking back, he says that it should have been pretty obvious that he had a tall task facing him.
“You know, I look at my opponent [and] it’s a machine behind him with the Democrats,” says Buckley. “And we were trying to run a non-partisan race.”
Because of that sentiment, he thinks that maybe he should have gone into the campaign with a different strategy.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have taken that route,” he explains. “Maybe I should have come out as being more of a conservative right from the get-go, I don’t know.”
Nonetheless, Buckley is trying his best to remain positive in defeat.
“It was a good run,” he explains. “Between my family and some of the people that helped me with my campaign, it’s been a real positive experience.”
Not only was the internal effort an enjoyable experience, but the process of venturing out to meet and talk with others was positive as well.
“I spent a lot of time talking to different people and it was very interesting to get their thoughts on what they felt was important in the city,” he says.
Buckley is a former Green Bay alderman and also served as a police officer in the city for fifteen years.
Coming into the race he represented Green Bay’s west side district 11 by serving as a five-term supervisor on the Brown County Board.
He also has more than 700 employees as the owner of 57 Subway resturants throughout Northeast Wisconsin.
With all those components in-play, he says he’ll be able to stay plenty busy moving forward, despite the loss suffered on Tuesday.
“Well I’ve been looking at a couple of other businesses to get into, just by chance it didn’t go the way that I wanted,” says Buckley. “So maybe I’ll follow-up with that [and] if not, I have plenty of other things to keep me busy.”
