Peter Burgelis: seizing his seat at the table

Alderman Peter Burgelis grew up in Wauwatosa and graduated from Marquette University High School in 1996. He has seen Milwaukee grow to embrace its queer population.

Burgelis made Wisconsin history twice.  

First, when he was the first out LGBTQ person be elected to the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors in 2022.  And second, when he was the first out gay man (and second out LGBTQ person) elected Alderperson in the City of Milwaukee in 2024. 

He continues to uplift the LGBTQ community, righting wrongs of the past and representing individuals who have felt left behind.

His political career is marked by a commitment to fiscal efficiency, public safety, holding departments accountable, and lifting the voices of those who have gone underrepresented. Burgelis has a history of supporting LGBTQ inclusion in Milwaukee and has worked tirelessly with community leaders to contribute meaningfully to queer issues.

He got his start in politics at George Washington University, during an internship where he worked the media credentials tent for Bill Clinton’s Second Presidential Inauguration. The job was far from glamorous, and the future alderman spent most of his time cleaning up coffee cups from reporters.

At the end of the long day, they asked the group of volunteers if any of them could continue working media credentials late into the night at the Presidential Inaugural Committee headquarters.

“Well, I never go to my 8 a.m. class anyway, hey, I’m in,” he said.

Rising to the challenge

A year later, Burgelis had heard from some friends of his at the LGBTQ Community Center that the ordinance to ban gay conversion therapy in the city of Milwaukee was up for the vote. He had just moved to the south side of Milwaukee, so he saw it as a good opportunity to meet his alderman, Mark Borkowski, for the first time as well as support an ordinance his friends had been lobbying for.

He was disheartened to find out that Borkowski was one of two members of the council who voted against the ordinance. Burgelis was disappointed that the person trusted to represent him and his community in City Hall did not reflect his values.

He asked Borkowski why he was against the ordinance, and he said he believed that government should not legislate how parents raise their children. 

Burgelis responded by saying, “Well, I think government has an obligation to protect children that can’t protect themselves.”

At that moment, Burgelis resolved to run against Borkowski in the next election. He challenged the 28-year incumbent in a hard-fought, year-long campaign. Burgelis was unable to campaign in the thirty days preceding the election due to COVID and was defeated by Borkowski.

Nonetheless, he garnered forty-one percent of the vote in the general election, which was the slimmest margin Borkowski had won by in his time as alderman.

Making Milwaukee County history

Two years later, in 2022, Burgelis ran for the position of Milwaukee County Board Supervisor of District 15. He received candidate training from the Victory Institute, an international organization helping LGBTQ community members prepare for campaigns and successfully run for office.

Using what he learned from the Victory Institute, he won the race, unseating the twenty-two year incumbent in what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called “a landslide victory.” Burgelis said,

“Frankly it was kind of embarrassing for him. He underestimated me.”

While a member of the Milwaukee County Board, Burgelis accumulated a long list of legislative accomplishments for the city’s LGBTQ community. Burgelis sponsored a resolution that began the process of rebranding single-user gendered restrooms in Milwaukee to accommodate transgender, gender-nonconforming, and intersex individuals.

“Not being uncomfortable when you have to go pee is a pretty basic human need, and the County has plenty of single-user restrooms labeled for men or women where there is really no need for gender distinction.”

The County recorded the number of single-user restrooms they had and replaced signage to be more inclusive. Additionally, Burgelis helped introduce a resolution to fly the intersex pride flag at County buildings during the month of June. Not one department denied the resolution. Even his conservative colleagues, such as District 9’s Patty Logsdon who had been bombarded by emails to vote against this resolution, voted in its favor after Burgelis explained its significance to her.

Burgelis said, “Based on feedback they received from the Pride ERG at the County, and some intersex members of that ERG, we made the decision to go as progressive and inclusive as possible and adopt the intersex pride flag.”

Making a commitment to visibility 

Beyond these external accomplishments that work to make LGBTQ individuals feel seen by their county officials, Burgelis also felt it was important to improve the mechanisms for LGBTQ progress that the public does not see.

He said that the County’s Department of Human Resources does a great job at creating a comprehensive dashboard for their employees that lists information about race, gender, and social status. However, this dashboard does not include information about sexual orientations, and fails to properly represent LGBTQ individuals in its data collection. To fix this, Burgelis helped ensure that the county is required to track the voluntary self-identification of LGBTQ and non-binary employees in its dashboard, which almost every large private-sector employer already voluntarily does.

“Without these metrics, you can’t report on what you don’t record, and having those statistics available makes for better decision-making in the process of governing.” Burgelis profoundly recognizes the ways in which the county has failed to properly respect and protect LGBTQ individuals, so he continues to advocate for increased representation in local government.

The first year he took office, the board held a meeting to discuss plans to bring attention to the LGBTQ community during the month of June. The county chair asked Burgelis if he would like to write citations for two individuals, recognizing them for the contributions to the LGBTQ community in Milwaukee County. The following year, he was interested in writing additional citations.

He asked one of his aids to find him a list of people who the county board had already recognized. There had been only two other citations written prior to the ones he had just written the year before. Burgelis was shocked.

“There has to be more people that have made a meaningful impact here in Milwaukee County, in the history of Milwaukee County, than two people. Frankly, it pissed me off.”

Initially, he could think of at least ten individuals who deserved recognition, but he wanted to go even further. Burgelis and his team spent months writing a total of forty-three citations honoring the work of LGBTQ community members, allies, and activists in the county.

That June, the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors held an event to present the citations and congratulate the recipients for the work they have done to uplift the queer community. They recognized everyone from an ER director at Froedtert who led a nationwide effort to mandate HIV testing for incoming patients to a Milwaukee resident who led a Pride-at-home effort amidst the pandemic.

“I am very proud of that moment. It was making up for lost time, and I am glad I had the support from my colleagues on the County Board to do that.”

A voice that will not be silenced 

Unfortunately for Burgelis, he did not have the opportunity to talk at length to the recipients because his jaw was wired shut due to injuries he sustained after being assaulted at Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa.

The then-supervisor was called a homophobic slur and struck in the face following a dispute in the parking lot. The suspect’s identity has not been disclosed to the public and the investigation is still ongoing. Burgelis was seriously injured but made a full recovery.

In a statement he issued following the attack, he said, “I will never be silenced, nor will I allow this act of violence to detract from our ongoing efforts to secure acceptance and equality for the LGBTQ community…If anything, this assault serves as a stark reminder of the pervasive challenges we continue to face.”

Reflecting on the journey

Burgelis deeply understands the friction that queer individuals must face on a regular basis.

While he describes his family as very loving and accepting of him, he still found that coming out as gay was the hardest thing he has ever done. “It was a huge weight off my shoulders, but I also broke the heart of the person that I love.”

He came out in 2005, when he was twenty-seven and married to his high-school sweetheart. “It took a long time for me to be honest with myself, and it took me a long time to come to the realization that at some point I was going to come out, but I decided I needed to rip the band-aid off before I had a family with kids.”

At the time, he did not have a very large network of support and few other queer people to look up to. When asked what representation he could point to, the Alderman joked, “besides Will and Grace?”

Still, Burgelis says that he believes his experience coming out was “a billion times better” than what a lot of other queer people go through. “The LGBTQ is a big umbrella, and as a cis white male, I have a lot of privilege that other people under that umbrella don’t have.”

Burgelis says that one of his goals for the city of Milwaukee, is to improve communication and representation for the transgender community. When Brazil Johnson, a transgender woman from Milwaukee, was murdered, there was immediate outcry from the transgender community.

Burgelis felt like he was at a loss as to how to fix it. He was a newly elected supervisor, and he did not know how to provide support to this community who feels so underrepresented and disrespected by the local government and the Milwaukee Police Department. 

“The trans community doesn’t feel respected, or seen, and they’re scared. That’s not good for our community,” the then-supervisor noted.

Burgelis attended the vigil for Brazil Johnson, and he noticed Denise Wandke, head of the Milwaukee County Transit System, had also come to pay respect. He was surprised to see the head of MCTS at the vigil, so he asked Wandke what brought her there. “She said ‘we have a trans-person in our training class who knew Brazil Johnson and I am here to support my employee.’ I thought, ‘Well s---, that’s what everybody should be doing why are you the only department head that’s here.”

Later, Burgelis said he found out that transgender employee had been continuously misgendered during their training programs. However, he was relieved to learn that the issue was quickly brought to the attention of MCTS leadership, and the trainer was quickly disciplined.

In 2023, that transgender employee was given the honor of driving the Pride Bus that was unveiled at the Pride Month kickoff in Cathedral Square.

A champion for everyone

That Pride Bus would not have existed if not for Alderman Burgelis’s intervention.

Burgelis has been appointed to the MCTS Board, and during a short procedural meeting in January, he asked Denise Wandke what the status was on the plans for a Pride Bus. She hesitated and said the project would cost around $10,000, and she did not know if they could do it.

Burgelis said nothing and looked her in the eyes, smiled, and waited a few seconds in silence until she committed. The Pride Bus designs were voted on by MCTS employees and the kick off event on May 31, 2023 turned out to be a huge success. It brought the community, and the bus system a massive amount of media exposure.

At its unveiling, a reporter asked Burgelis if the bus would just take the route through parts of Milwaukee with a higher density of LGBTQ individuals. Burgelis responded, “No, it’s not. It’s not just meant for Walker’s Point or the East Side, the LGBTQ community is county-wide. That bus is just one out of 350 buses we have in our fleet, and it’s going to work on every single route, because the LGBTQ community is not just on the East Side, we’re everywhere, and that bus is going to be everywhere too.”

To him, this moment demonstrated exactly why there needs to be more pervasive representation for the LGBTQ community in local government, to make people feel seen and to give people a seat at the table.

Burgelis recognizes that the city has made great progress at improving its relationship with its queer community. The city has many good, strong LGBTQ organizations, but Burgelis says many of them are underfunded and lack the resources to create change.

“I see it as my responsibility to see them thrive.”