A mayoral showdown shaping up in Racine ahead of Tuesday's election
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A mayoral showdown is shaping up in Racine. With just four days until Election Day, incumbent Cory Mason and his challenger Henry Perez are making their final pitches to voters.
It's a nonpartisan race with party politics creeping in, and commercials supporting Mason are hitting the airwaves.
"I'm a progressive Democrat. I was a Democratic legislator before I was the mayor," Mason told 12 News this week. "My opponent is a MAGA Republican guy."
The most recent campaign finance reports show Perez has raised $20,569 this period. That's compared to Mason raising $537,559. That finance report shows most of that campaign money for Mason has come from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
"I don't have any commercials out myself. I can't afford it," Perez said. "But what I've seen happen is that Cory and the Democrat Party are afraid of the change here in town."
With a police department facing an officer shortage, both candidates have made safety a top priority.
"I'm going to reinforce the community policing houses, the COP houses," Perez said, "I'm going to get cops back on the street with just walking the beat downtown, making comfortable for people to come up and say hi to them, you know, giving them permission to interact with the community."
"People want to know they're going to have safe and healthy neighborhoods," Mason said. "People care very much about the gun violence that we saw and the work that we've done with the Violent Crime Reduction Initiative to make over 600 arrests and bring gun violence down almost 20% in the first year that we've been doing it."
Both candidates said they would spend the final days making voters know where they stand.
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