Incumbent Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne easily beat challenger Bob Jambois in last night’s primary.
With all 235 precincts reporting, Ozanne received 45,931 votes, which is 73 percent of the vote, while Jambois received 16,917 votes for a total of 26.9 percent. By becoming the Democratic nominee for November, Ozanne will be the next district attorney as there is no one running as a Republican in the race.
Ozanne thanked his mother, Gwen Gillon, who was the youngest member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1964 Freedom Summer.
“My mom just retired with 39 years of service working as a teacher at Wright Middle School,” Ozanne told the crowd at this victory speech at the Edgewater Hotel. “She taught me to never give up. She taught me how hard it is to learn but that it didn’t matter … you just had to do it, and there wasn’t an excuse not to.”
Jambois, a former Kenosha County District Attorney, worked as a prosecutor in Ozanne’s office for the past year and a half and had said he believed the county needs to make a change. He criticized Ozanne for running what he calls a “dysfunctional” office.
This was Ozanne’s first electoral challenge for the office since he was appointed by Governor Jim Doyle back in 2010, and ran unopposed in 2012. Ozanne was an assistant district attorney in Dane County for about 10 years before he left for a job with the state Department of Corrections where he later became its deputy secretary.
