In an exceedingly rare political maneuver, resigned Ann Arbor school board treasurer Don Wilkerson filed in June to run in the November special election called to fill the seat he vacated.
Wilkerson, who says he quit on May 4 to “address some pretty pressing issues,” was facing a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence. Now that Washtenaw County prosecutors have dropped the charge, stemming from the incident at the home he once shared with his estranged wife and their children, he says he wants to return to the board.
He asserts the allegation, which he declined to detail, was untrue and leveled in the heat of a bitter divorce. Prosecutors not only dropped the charge against him but agreed to “destroy the arrest record and all corresponding documentation and information,” he says. Since 2021, state law has allowed defendants to petition for this when a criminal charge is dismissed before trial or if they are found not guilty. He also has sued his former employer, the Rehmann Group, for wrongful termination on the grounds that state law bars companies from firing people charged but not convicted of misdemeanors.
While Wilkerson is correct that the arrest report, police body-cam footage, and 911 call audio are all now unavailable, the court docket regarding the matter that the Observer reviewed in early July explicitly states that he has not been exonerated. “This dismissal should not be used as evidence that violence did or did not occur,” reads a May 28 filing. It also indicates the personal protection order (PPO) preventing him from contacting his wife or being in her vicinity remains in place and warns that if Wilkerson “seeks to terminate PPO before its natural expiration in 2027, the People may seek to reinstate/reauthorize these charges.”
On June 3, the AAPS board voted 4–2 to appoint Steve Norton to serve until the end of 2026. The winner of the special election will be sworn in on January 1, 2027, to serve the remaining two years of the interrupted term.
Norton, in applying for the appointment, said he did not plan to run, but another applicant, John Benson, has filed for the partial term. As of press time, only Wilkerson and Benson were running.
Benson, a forty-nine-year-old senior manager of investment operations and governance for the United Auto Workers’ pension fund, hopes his finance background can be helpful as the district navigates its fiscal challenges. He understands that Wilkerson has the right to try to return to office but says the decision disregards the laborious process set off by his resignation. The board had to collect and vet applicants for his immediate replacement and then interview candidates who prepared materials for their applications—plus the instigation of a special election.
“It just doesn’t feel right to only have the person who just resigned running for it,” says Benson, explaining one reason he’s running. “Look, maybe he feels like things are in the past already, but when something comes along that could make someone resign and there are schools and the 16,000 kids and all the teachers involved, it’s worth asking: is there really no chance that something else could have them happen to need to drop out, you know, this year or next year, right?”
Wilkerson says he’s confident there won’t be a repeat of his departure. “I wanted to ensure that somebody was able to dedicate the time and focus to the district during this time of need,” he says. “I wasn’t sure how long I would need to be away or how long I would have to focus on competing priorities. If I had had a crystal ball, maybe I wouldn’t have resigned.”
The Wilkerson maneuver is highly unusual and, in terms of local politics, possibly unprecedented. An exhaustive search through more than a century of archives of the Ann Arbor News found nothing similar, and county clerk Lawrence Kestenbaum, who authors the historical website politicalgraveyard.com, could not recall anything like this in the forty-plus years since he first won an elected office.
Kestenbaum offers three historic examples of someone resigning a seat and then winning an election to replace themselves—all members of Congress.
Two of those cases, one from South Carolina in 1965 and one from Texas in 1983, involved Democrats quitting, changing parties, and then running in special elections as Republicans. In the third case, in 1856, South Carolina congressmember Preston Brooks beat an abolitionist congressmember at his desk with a cane nearly to death, resigned, and won his seat back two weeks later.