Shelia Stubbs


Shelia R. Stubbs is an American politician, pastor, and former probation and parole agent. She is a Democratic member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, elected in 2018, representing the south and west parts of Madison, Wisconsin. She is also a member of the Dane County Board of Supervisors, since 2006; she is the only African American on the County Board and is Dane County's first African American representative in the Wisconsin Legislature.

Background

Stubbs was born in Camden, Arkansas, but moved to Beloit, Wisconsin, as a child. She graduated from Beloit Memorial High School and attended Tougaloo College, earning a baccalaureate degree in political science. She went on to study at Mount Senario College, earning a second baccalaureate, in criminal justice management, and then earned a master's in management at Milwaukee's Cardinal Stritch University. She had worked for eight years as a probation and parole agent with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections before first being elected to the Dane County Board in 2006. She and her husband, Godfrey Stubbs, have one daughter. The Stubbs' are co-founders of End Time Ministries International Church in Madison. Her mother, Linda Hoskins, is a former president of the Madison chapter of the NAACP.

2018 race

Democratic incumbent Terese Berceau announced on February 2, 2018 that she would not be running for re-election from the 77th Assembly district, and Stubbs announced her own candidacy the same day. With the Democratic nomination tantamount to winning in this heavily-Democratic district, she acquired three opponents. In the primary election, she achieved a plurality of fractionally under 50% of the votes, with 7,758 to Shabnam Lotfi's 5,611, John Imes' 1,222 and Mark Garthwaite's 968. Unopposed in the general election for the 2019–2020 Assembly term, Stubbs became the first African-American woman to represent a Dane County district in the legislature, and was the only African-American woman in the Assembly.

Police call

Stubbs's campaign attracted national news coverage when during her canvassing in a predominantly-white neighborhood, a call was made to the Madison Police Department reporting her and her family as "They are waiting for drugs at the local drug house — would like them moved along." An anonymous letter purporting to be from the person who made the call, and emphasizing "but I never called the police on you, on a woman of color in the neighborhood... I called on a car, not you" has been received by a local television station.

Electoral history