Photo by The Pearl Photography via Jonathan Brostoff - Facebook
Jonathan Brostoff
Jonathan Brostoff
Like many Milwaukeeans, I was shocked and saddened to learn of the death on November 4 of Alderman Jonathan Brostoff. Jonathan was a personal friend and someone who I met for coffee on numerous occasions. Our editorial board followed his political career and enthusiastically endorsed him whenever he stood for election. He leaves behind an admirable record of service to his constituents on Milwaukee’s East Side.
Sadly, when the voting was tallied for the nominating process, the first round of this year’s Shepherd Express Best of Milwaukee contest, Jonathan became a finalist nominee under the category of “Most Despised Politician” alongside Bob Donovan, Robin Vos and Ron Johnson. This was painful to see, and it added to the pain and grief we are all feeling about losing Jonathan and not something anyone at the Shepherd supported.
The Shepherd Express has been running the Best of Milwaukee for the past 35 years and the category “Most Despised Politician” was part of the first Best of Milwaukee. When I got involved with the Shepherd about 25 years ago, there were over 150 categories. Today there are over 370 categories.
The “Best Of” contest, as many of you know, is all reader generated. We supply the categories, the rest is all reader generated. It is a two-stage process. The readers nominate people, organizations or businesses in the categories where they want to express their preferences.
We use an out-of-state company, SceneThink, to manage and tabulate the process so there can be no questions of any kind of bias. The top four entries nominated move on to the finalists’ election. Most of the other alternative publications throughout the country use this company to insure we have a very honest election process. No one involved in tabulating the votes knows any or the individuals, organizations or businesses being nominated. From what we have learned, the groups supporting the Palestinians have been harassing Jonathan for the past several months and voted to nominate Jonathan for this category because of his very strong public support for Israel after the tragic October 7 attack.
The results of the nominating process were announced on October 30. As soon as we learned of Jonathan’s death, we deleted the category entirely because it was just the right thing to do recognizing that the world of politics has gotten so nasty. This category in the past made sense since it gave readers a chance to vent against elected officials that they strongly disliked, but the acrimony in our current politics needs to be tamped down.
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We cannot turn the clock back to eliminate this hurt. I and all the staff at the Shepherd are so sorry that this added some more sadness to the loss of Jonathan that going forward we are permanently eliminating the category.
I have been in contact with Jonathan’s father. We offer our sympathy to the Brostoff family and many friends of Jonathan Brostoff, who will be remembered as a man of conscience and conviction.
