Steve Osness is challenging incumbent Chris Marlowe for Lincoln County Clerk in the Wisconsin Partisan Primary on August 13th.
Osness has been in local politics since 2018, when he ran for Merrill City Council.
He won that race and held that position for four years, before becoming a member of the County Board in 2022.
Now, Osness has his sights set on a new goal- Lincoln County Clerk.
“I had multiple municipal clerk's reach out to me in ads that everyone they have, I'm not sure they were displeased with how the county clerk was running things. So I did some investigation,” he said.
That’s when Osness said he realized he’d run into his own election integrity issues in Lincoln County.
“I actually had similar problems with the county clerk when I was on Common Council for Merrill. The ballots got screwed up when I was on common council. So it was an election year, myself and another person, I was in District Four. And the other person was in district five, he was not running against me, we were both running against other opponents. And we got phone calls on election day that we were not on our ballots. So, I was on ballot five, which I should have been a ballot four for district wise and he was reversed also. So this started getting me thinking that there was a problem,” said Osness.
He said that he called the county clerk and resolved the ballot issue at that time.
“Things like that shouldn't happen as a county clerk,” said Osness.
Marlowe, who has been County Clerk for the past 12 years, said that Lincoln County’s elections are diligently secured.
“Citing a small error on a municipal race, I can tell you that, I am not the filing officer for municipal races or municipal clerks are the filing officers or for their municipalities and they are tasked with oversight over what gets on their ballot,” he explained.
“If that was my only mistake in 12 years, I'm good with that. I can assure you it was not my only mistake, it was not a major mistake, if it was my mistake, but you know, all things that come out of my office, I take, I want to say, take credit for it, but I don’t point the finger at other people” he explained.
He said there has been a lot of turnover in the clerk’s office and that his expertise is particularly needed now.
“I am considered a leader amongst my peers,” he said.
Marlowe was chair of the Wisconsin County Clerk’s Association for a number of years and is the current president of their Legal Defense Fund.
The winner of this election will advance to the November race without a challenger from other primaries.
