Katie Gentry came in fourth place last month in a six-person race for Green Bay Area Public School Board. She finished with 15,653 votes, just 315 ballots behind the third-place finisher. The top three vote-getters were elected to serve on the board and lead Wisconsin’s fourth-largest public school district.
While the heated nonpartisan race featured political party endorsements and attack ads, Gentry fought the good fight and accepted the voters’ verdict.
But these days, Gentry says she can’t help but feel like she’s been robbed.
“It is quite sad,” she told me Friday on the Vicki McKenna Show. “It feels like a robbery to some extent.”
The people who backed her in a race dominated by leftist school board candidates are feeling the same way after revelations that a Democratic Party-endorsed school board member allegedly did not reside in the school district and listed an incorrect address on his candidacy forms while campaigning for the seat in April 2024. Board member Kou Lee resigned on Friday in the wake of an investigation by the Green Bay Post-Gazette.
“Lee told the Press-Gazette he’d ‘considered’ living at that address when he filed paperwork as late as six days before his election, but the current owner of the property said he didn’t know Lee,” the newspaper reported last week.
Under state law, school board members must live in the district for at least 28 days prior to filing to run.
Not Our Problem
Property records show Lee owns a home in Hobart, a bedroom community about 10 miles west of Green Bay. The Press-Gazette reported that he claimed his Hobart home as his primary address on his property tax records long after he swore that he resided at a home in the Green Bay School District.
Lee could not be reached for comment on Sunday. The school board has not released his resignation letter nor the embattled board member’s reasons for his hasty departure. Green Bay School Board President James Lyerly did not return two requests for comment. Lyerly reportedly told district staff in an email that the board isn’t in charge of verifying candidate residency information and does not have the authority to investigate board members or remove them from office.
“It is important to establish that it is not the Board’s or any Board Member’s role or within their authority to verify the accuracy of information contained in candidate election filings,” the school board president wrote in the email shared with the Press-Gazette. “That responsibility lies with each candidate for elected office. Likewise, neither I as Board President, nor any other member of the Board, nor the Board as a body has the authority to initiate an investigation to determine the facts or to forcibly remove any Board member from the Board of Education.”
‘This was a Deception’
The Republican Party of Brown County has called for a criminal investigation into Lee on allegations of residency fraud. In a press release on its Facebook page, the local GOP said it has asked the Brown County District Attorney’s office to look into the matter.
“Mr. Lee’s resignation is not enough,” the complaint states. “This was a deception of both the public and the candidates that follow the law and campaigned in good faith.”
Like Katie Gentry. She said had Lee resigned before last month’s election there would have been four open seats.
“I came in No. 4 in the election so I would have been elected if he had really just been honest and perhaps ran in the district he was eligible,” she said in the radio interview.
Lee told the Press-Gazette that he had “considered” living at the address he listed on his candidacy filing and that he ultimately resided at another address in the district. But he would not disclose to the reporter how long he has lived at that address, according to the investigation.
In a campaign post just before last year’s school board election, he implored district voters to cast their ballots for him and, ultimately, “a vision for a school board that values diversity, champions education for all and is committed to making a real difference in our community.” But Lee didn’t vote in the election in which he was on the ballot, according to the Press-Gazette.
‘Disenfranchises Voters’
His critics say Lee was the hand-picked candidate of teachers unions and the Democratic Party. The leftist reportedly received $35,000 in in-kind contributions from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to assist in his “nonpartisan” school board campaign. Lee unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 2022.
Lying about residency is no small matter. Former Milwaukee School Board member Aisha Carr faces felony fraud and misconduct in office charges on allegations that she lied about living in the district that she was elected to serve, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She, too, resigned without explanation.
In a criminal complaint filed last June, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office claims “multiple records, including phone data and utility payments, suggest Carr was living at an address outside the district she represented on the board. Carr told investigators she was using that apartment for work, according to the complaint,” the newspaper reported. Carr late last month also was charged with campaign finance fraud and misappropriation of campaign funds.
Carr has deep ties to Democratic Party politics and leftist causes. According to Ballotpedia, she worked as a legislative aide to former Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and once served as the “culturally responsive teacher leader” in Milwaukee Public Schools.
“Misrepresenting one’s residency undermines the integrity of the electoral process, erodes public trust, and disenfranchises voters who expect lawful representation,” the Brown County GOP said in its call for an investigation into Lee.
Democrat-led cities in Wisconsin, whose leaders often see voter suppression behind every election-integrity measure, sure have had a lot of problems with voter suppression of late. Last month, Madison’s city clerk resigned amid investigations into her office’s failure to count nearly 200 ballots in November’s election.
‘An Environment of Trust’
Lee campaigned for the school board on “accountability.”
“We must create an environment of trust and growth where everyone is accountable to each other,” Lee wrote in his campaign profile in the Green Bay Press Times. “We must demand high expectations from our leaders, educators, students and parents … Everything must be transparent and open to the public because great leadership comes from our community — not behind closed-door meetings.”
Gentry agrees. Leadership should come from the community. That’s why the mom of two kids in the district, endorsed by the Republican Party of Brown County, is looking to throw her hat back into the ring to fill the open school board spot left by Lee’s vacancy.
“I’m definitely planning to do what I can to get into that now-open spot, because I think I deserve it,” she said. “There should have been four open spots.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
