David J. Cieslewicz

Cieslewicz—Mayor Dave to Madison—won the capital’s top job in 2003, lost it in 2011, and spent eight years trying to make a university city behave like a neighborhood. Allies still call him the bike mayor. He did not become famous by running the city that named him; the West Allis Polish block that raised him is the part most Madison profiles skip.

He was born in West Allis on February 17, 1959, and grew up in a Polish neighborhood there—name pronounced chess-LEV-ich—before leaving for the University of Wisconsin–Madison and staying. The résumé is land-use nerd, not factory floor: he staffed the Legislature, lobbied for the Nature Conservancy, sat on the Dane County Board, and co-founded 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, the group that pushed the state’s Smart Growth planning law. In 1992 he lost an Assembly race to Tammy Baldwin. In 2003 he beat Paul Soglin for mayor; in 2011 Soglin beat him back.

As mayor he was among the first U.S. mayors to sign the Climate Protection Agreement, bought hybrid buses, opened Goodman Pool after roughly sixty years of civic argument, and kept an Aaa bond rating. His sustainability plan was titled “Building a Green Capital City.” After the 2011 loss he ran the Wisconsin Bicycle Federation. He lives in Madison’s Regent neighborhood; twice a month, he has said, you can find him playing Sheepshead at the Memorial Union. Birth and childhood belong to West Allis; public life belongs to Madison.