Racine mayor Cory Mason won’t run for reelection

Racine Mayor Cory Mason won’t run for a fourth term, he announced Friday, making room for new leadership in Wisconsin’s fifth-largest city.

Mason made the announcement Friday, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of his first election, when he won the race to represent the city in the state Assembly Nov. 7, 2006.

Mason, a Democrat, left the Assembly in 2017 after running in a special election to succeed John Dickert as mayor of Racine, a nonpartisan office. Dickert left in mid-term to take another job. Mason went on to win a full four-year term in 2019 and again in 2023.

“After 20 years, it’s time to pass the torch of leadership to the next generation,” Mason said in an interview.

Mason said he will remain in office until his current term ends in April. The  decision not to run again was one he and his family made recently, he said. Mason and his wife, Rebecca, a Racine estate planning and elder law attorney, have three children in high school.

“It’s important to have work-life balance, and I’m looking forward to the next chapter where I can have a little bit more of that moving forward,” Mason said.

Mason will leave office in the first months of unified Democratic control of the governor’s mansion and both houses of the state Legislature for the first time since Republicans won all three in 2010. That could open the door to policies that Democrats have advocated for years to no avail, such as sending more shared revenue dollars to cities including Racine.

It’s a contrast to most of Mason’s tenure in the Assembly, dominated particularly by the fight over Act 10, the law that then-Gov. Scott Walker introduced early in his first term stripping most collective bargaining rights from public employees except for police and firefighters.

Reflecting on his tenure as mayor, Mason identified nearly 20 accomplishments, leading with the completion of a community center and health clinic to serve a northwest side district of Racine. That same district is also the site of a major affordable housing project. 

Mason also listed a city work internship for young people, a jobs program to connect potential workers with construction trades and reductions in gun violence.

Still in progress is a longer-term project that he hopes will get picked up by the next mayor: establishing commuter rail service connecting Milwaukee and cities to the south, Racine and Kenosha.

Federal funds provide the bulk of the financing, which Mason said is a slow-moving process. Two decades ago, a similar commuter rail project for the corridor foundered when Republican state lawmakers balked at the plan.

“You need a muscular and robust partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to make a project to this scale go forward,” Mason said. “So we’re very excited about Gov. David Crowley for many reasons,” including his openness to improved public transportation, “and then having a Legislature that cares deeply about it.”

Trevor Jung, who won his race for the state Senate on Tuesday, is currently Racine’s transit director. “I know he shares my passion for this project and I’m really excited for him to advocate for this up in Madison,” Mason said.

Mason didn’t discount a return to politics, but turned aside speculation about possible races in the next four years.

Asked whether he might join the incoming Crowley administration, he said, “I don’t have anything definitive lined up, but I’ve not ruled anything out either.”

There’s one exception — becoming a lobbyist. “I did rule that out as the next thing that I would do,” Mason said. “But that notwithstanding, you know I’m excited to figure out what the next chapter of my life looks like.”