Second Cop Refutes Claim He Endorsed Wisconsin Democrat Mandela Barnes

Two out of two active police officers whom U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes touted as having endorsed his campaign do not actually support his bid, WDJT CBS reported Tuesday in an embarrassing sequence of events for the Wisconsin Democrat.

The Racine County Sheriff’s office told WDJT CBS that Deputy Sheriff Malik Frazier cannot publicly support Lieutenant Gov. Barnes in the Senate race against Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), noting it was a “mistake by the Barnes campaign to list his name along with his employment as a deputy sheriff.”

According to federal laws, officers cannot publicly endorse a candidate. “[Frazier] was unaware they were going to use his title and he is not professionally endorsing Mandela Barnes,” Lt. Michael Luell, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, told WDJT CBS.

Frazier is the second active officer in two days to retract his alleged endorsement of Barnes, who has pushed for defunding “over-bloated” police departments and allowing felons to retain the right to vote. He also believes police do not prevent crimes from occurring.

Two active officers endorsed the radical candidate last week out of 13,400 law enforcement officers who are currently on the job in Wisconsin.

A spokesperson for the Barnes campaign claimed it removed Frazier’s name from their short list of endorsements out of an abundance of caution. “Because he is a non-elected active duty officer, when we announced our expanded list, we removed him out of an abundance of caution,” Maddy McDaniel told WDJT CBS.

Spokesman for Johnson’s campaign Alec Zimmerman said in a press release that Barnes “can’t even tell the truth about who is endorsing his campaign – voters shouldn’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.”

“His repeated lies are an attempt to distract from his support for defunding the police and abolishing ICE. Now his endorsement scandal continues to grow,” he added in a press release.

The first officer to retract his alleged endorsement was La Crosse County Sheriff’s Capt. John Siegel. “I had no idea on Friday my name had been up on a press release,” Siegel told the publication. “Finally got a hold of somebody operating their campaign and said, ‘Hey, I didn’t ever agree to put my name on anything or be added to a list.'”

Speaking with Wisconsin Right Now, Siegel explained he found out Friday that Barnes’ campaign added him to the list of endorsements:

I found out on Friday that I was on his endorsement list, and I was not supposed to be on his endorsement list. I talked with one of his staffers and agreed to talk with them when they were in town sometime, which I’ve done with everybody. They said there was a mistake within the clerical part of things. Somehow I got added to the list.

The deeply embarrassing sequence of events for Barnes comes as he is trying to shore up support among Wisconsin voters who are likely worried about Barnes’ soft-on-crime track record. “Police don’t prevent crimes from happening,” Barnes falsely stated in 2020 in an unearthed video. “We don’t live in a surveillance state, nor would you want to.”

According to a MacIver Institute, between 2019 and 2020, murders increased 62 percent, and violent crime rose 8.85 percent in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Department of Justice reported that in 2021, there were 57,000 offenses of theft, over 29,000 offenses of assault, over 18,000 offenses of motor vehicle theft, over 13,000 offenses of aggravated assault, over 10,000 offenses of burglary, over 2,300 offenses of rape, and 70 offenses of human trafficking.

A Tuesday poll found Johnson is surging in the polls against Barnes by four points. Just weeks ago, Barnes was leading Johnson by a moderate margin. But Barnes’ radical record seems to be working against him.

Barnes believes in abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), permitting driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and giving in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants. He has derided small business owners as “selfish” for wanting to serve customers during the pandemic. Barnes also favors an entirely government-run healthcare system, eliminating the Senate filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, and passing the Green New Deal, which would destroy the American economy to reshape it into a socialist utopia.