Judicial panel chooses members of new redistricting commission

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A panel of three retired judges have chosen the members of a group charged with drawing nonpartisan maps of Wisconsin’s congressional districts.

Gov. Tony Evers announced Justice Janine Geske, Judge Joseph Troy and Judge Paul Higginbotham’s selections for the People’s Maps Commission on Thursday.

Evers signed an executive order in January that established the committee. The order said membership would be nonpartisan and forbade lobbyists, political candidates, state or local officials, or officers or members of the governing body of a political party from participating.

In July, Evers opened the application process for potential members and announced Geske, Troy and Higginbotham as the application review panel.

The judges chose the following nine people from a pool of 270 eligible applicants:

• Elizabeth Tobias, of Racine, will represent the 1st Congressional District. Tobias is the executive assistant to the Board of Education for the Racine Unified School District. Tobias is a member of the Wisconsin Association of School Superintendents and the American Society of Administrative Professionals.
• Ruben Anthony, Jr., of Middleton, will represent the 2nd Congressional District. Anthony is the current President and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison and previously served the Wisconsin Department of Transportation under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
• Annemarie McClellan, of Menomonie, will be representing the 3rd Congressional District. McClellan is currently enjoying her retirement after a career in manufacturing and clinical research. She is currently the Co-President of her local chapter of the League of Women Voters and has served as a poll worker and election observer.
• Christopher Ford, of Whitefish Bay, will represent the 4th Congressional District. Ford is an emergency physician serving one of the one of the highest COVID-19 prevalence populations in the state. He is a member of the American Board of Emergency Medicine, Emergency Medicine Residents Association, and an advisory board member of the Wisconsin Emergency Medical Services for Children.
• Benjamin Rangel, of Milwaukee, will represent the 4th Congressional District. Rangel is a high school teacher in Milwaukee, teaching government and history. He is the managing editor of Bridge the City and previously worked as a development coordinator for City Year Milwaukee AmeriCorps.
• Susan Ranft, of Wauwatosa, will represent the 5th Congressional District. Ranft is the Vice President, Global Human Resources for Manpower Group, previously served as the President and member of the Governance Board of the Wauwatosa STEM Elementary School, and is an active member of TEMPO Milwaukee.
• Melissa Prentice, of Sheboygan, will represent the 6th Congressional District. She is a librarian and public services manager for the city of Sheboygan at Mead Public Library. Prentice has been involved with the Wisconsin Library Association, her local chapter of the League of Women Voters, and was the library representative for the city of Sheboygan DIEB initiative working on diversity and inclusion.
• Jason Bisonette, of Hayward, will represent the 7th Congressional District. Bisonette is the Dean of Students for a small K-12 tribal school on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation and the Board Chair for the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe College.
• Anthony Phillips, of Appleton, will represent the 8th Congressional District. Phillips is a physician with ThedaCare Hematology and Oncology and has been involved with several grassroots organizations working on election and campaign issues, including Fair Maps Wisconsin and Voters First WI.

Members are set to draw up maps next year using 2020 census data.

In April, Evers said he hoped the commission’s maps would push lawmakers to consider less partisan maps, even though they won’t be forced to vote on them, and make the process more public than it had been in 2011. At the time, Republicans met in secret to come up with the current maps and released them with little time for public review.

In 2015, a group of Democrats challenged the maps as being illegally gerrymandered to favor Republicans. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case but ruled in similar lawsuits last year that states are free to draw their electoral borders as they please, shutting down challenges in federal court.

The Wisconsin Constitution gives the Legislature authority to approve maps every 10 years and draw new boundaries for the state’s congressional and legislative districts. Evers can sign them into law or veto them. Follow @“WLJreporter”