'Where do you live?' Up north DA's race is a tale of
two states
Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel
Doug
Muskett says the first thing many voters asked him when he began running to be
district attorney in Iron County was, "Where do you live?"
Questions
of residency have dogged incumbent DA Matthew Tingstad ever since he was
elected in 2016. Wisconsin law allows nonresidents to run for district
attorney, as long as they live in the jurisdiction if and when they take
office.
Tingstad
lived and practiced in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just across the Montreal
River from Hurley, and defeated a Hurley native (who's consolation was
being named circuit judge a year later) to become DA.
Though
Tingstad got a Wisconsin law license after he was elected, some wonder if he's ever
really moved to Iron County. Detractors have found
that his dismissed Michigan divorce and property tax records suggest he
continued living in the U.P. years after he took office, and the place he
lists as his local residence appears to be a pole barn at an oil company
lot in Kimbell, Wisconsin.
Muskett,
a Wisconsin native with a law office in the U.P. who practices in both states,
said he'd been renting in Ironwood but moved to Hurley within a week after
he decided to run in the August primary. He needed at least 200 write-in votes
in order to get on the Nov. 3 ballot as a Democrat to challenge Tingstad, a
former professional snowmobiler, who holds the office as a Republican.
Even
with the short notice, he got closer to 300 votes. "Two hundred is a lot
of votes in Iron County," he said, where only between 600 and 700 were
cast in the primary.
Tingstad,
44, said anyone can question his residency but noted that the state has
not because he's "legit," with a state law license, driver's license,
voter registration and kids in Hurley schools.
He said
he didn't want to give a specific address to protect his wife and children and
said he still owns his home in Bessemer, Michigan, as an investment property.
"It's
not a contest to see who can live closest to the courthouse," Tingstad
said. He considers himself a native of the area, while Muskett moved here from
Missouri and decided to run just weeks before the Aug. 7 primary.
"Is
he in it for the long haul?" Tingstad said. "I've been
a consistent part of the area about 40 years."
Muskett,
36, already does some public work for Iron County, acting as corporation
counsel for civil commitments and guardianships. He said what really convinced
him to run was some officials' concerns that Tingstad wasn't devoting
enough time to termination of parental rights, or TPRs, and children in
need of protective services cases, known as CHIPS petitions, in juvenile court.
Opal
Roberts chairs the human services committee of the Iron County Board
of Supervisors. She said the committee proposed the county hire a private
attorney to handle the TPRs and CHIPS cases.
Roberts
said human services felt it would save the county money in the long run, since
it must pay to keep children in foster care while their cases languish in court
and hold up permanent placements for the children.
But the
full county board did not approve the request, instead waiting to see the
outcome of the election, as Muskett says he would get those cases done,
and it would be covered by his DA's salary.
Tingstad
said there've only been three TPRs in Iron County in the last 20 years, and
he's done them all, and has more pending.
Muskett
said after a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about Tingstad in July,
people were pressing him to run. The story focused on Tingstad's
fraud prosecution of a retired Iron County sheriff's deputy and Hurley
firefighter over the use of a credit card, and the defense's claims that
Tingstad had acted unethically — even criminally — in pursuing the case.
A special prosecutor has since determined Tingstad should not be
charged with misconduct in office, or simulating legal process, and a
judge declined to issue a criminal complaint.
The
defense still wants Tingstad disqualified, but that motion is pending before a
judge from another county, and the underlying case, filed in 2017, doesn't have
a current trial date.
The
defendant in the fraud case, Darrell Petrusha, had also filed a complaint with
the Wisconsin Attorney General's Office about Tingstad's apparent continued
Michigan residency, with several documents to back his suspicions. But the
state declined to investigate, and Tingstad told the Journal Sentinel in July
he didn't want to talk about where he lives.
"Not
a single person I know believes (Tingstad) lives in Iron County," Muskett
said. If you're the DA, he said, "your answer shouldn't be
'I don't want to discuss that,' it should be 'Come on over for
dinner.'"
Tingstad
said if Muskett is making an issue of where Tingstad lives, he must not have
any issues with how Tingstad's performing his job as DA.
Muskett grew
up near Manitowoc, went to UW-Eau Claire and got his law degree at Washington
University in St. Louis. He practiced a while there before joining his uncle
and cousin's U.P. law office where he does both criminal and civil cases
in Michigan and Wisconsin
Tingstad
was raised not far from Hurley in Bessemer, Michigan, played junior
hockey out west before college at Northern Michigan University, and made enough
money as a freestyle snowmobiler to help pay for law school at the University
of Wyoming. After graduation, he returned to the U.P. to practice law.
In
some rural areas, district attorney is one of the few steady jobs for a
lawyer that doesn't involve lots of travel. It pays more than $100,000 a
year in Iron County. Across the Michigan border in Gogebic County, with
about three times Iron County's 5,600 population, the prosecuting attorney
earns less.
There
are no TV ads and little news coverage about the race, and with COVID-19, not
even much traditional door-knocking going on in the campaign. A week from the
election, an estimated 1,400 votes of an expected 3,500 or so have already been
cast, said Iron County Clerk Mike Saari.