MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich says a legislative committee hearing attended only by Republicans that featured testimony from invited conservative critics of how his city ran the November election was a “Stalinist show trial and a three-ring circus.”
Genrich told WLUK-TV on Thursday that neither he nor any city employees were invited to the Assembly Campaign and Elections hearing held at the Capitol on Wednesday. No one from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which is charged with running elections, was invited to testify either.
Instead, a conservative attorney who sued to block Green Bay from being awarded grant money to help run the election, the Republican former county clerk and a Republican state representative all testified.
They and other election observers made a litany of complaints about Green Bay’s use of the $1.6 million in grant money to hire a private consultant who helped with the election.
“Quite honestly, what we saw at the Capitol yesterday was some combination of a Stalinist show trial and a three-ring circus,” Genrich said. “There is a lot of nonsense that is being spread.”
Some Republican lawmakers have called for Genrich, a Democratic former state representative, to resign. But he’s rejecting those calls, saying the election was run fairly and legally.
