William Dyke

William D. "Bill" Dyke (April 25, 1930 – March 10, 2016) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician. He was the 49th mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, from 1969 to 1973, and ran for Vice President of the United States on the American Independent Party ticket with presidential candidate Lester Maddox in the 1976 presidential election. He was also the Republican nominee for Governor of Wisconsin in the 1974 gubernatorial election. From 1996 until two months before his death, in 2016, he served as a Wisconsin circuit court judge in Iowa County, Wisconsin; he was chief judge of the 7th Judicial Administrative District from 2007 to 2013.

Early life Dyke received his bachelor's degree from DePauw University in Indiana. While completing his degree at the University of Wisconsin Law School, he hosted Circus 3, a local children's television program on WISC-TV. He also moderated Face the State, a local political news program modeled after the nationally televised Face the Nation. The program included interviews with Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy and other prominent politicians.

Political career Dyke was a two-term mayor of Madison, Wisconsin from 1969 to 1973. His tenure as mayor is considered a colorful and often controversial part of Madison's history. Dyke presided over Madison during the most turbulent era in the city's history, highlighted by the Sterling Hall bombing and subsequent clashes with student uprisings. Undeterred, Dyke ran as the Republican nominee for governor in 1974, losing to Democrat Patrick Lucey. Maddox and Dyke won 170,274 votes in the general election (or 0.21% of votes).

Post-political career Following the end of his political career, Dyke opened a general contracting business in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, and bred horses. He was elected to a full term on the court in 1998 and subsequently re-elected in 2004 and 2010. He later was selected as the chief judge of the 7th Judicial Administrative District by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and served the maximum of three two-year terms in that role. Dyke left the bench in January 2016, and died of pancreatic cancer in a Dodgeville, Wisconsin, nursing home two months later.

Dyke illustrated the children's book The General's Hat, or Why the Bell Tower Stopped Working, a tale written by Kay Price about two mice who get on the same ship with General Ulysses S. Grant on his travels to Galena, Illinois.

Electoral history Madison Mayor (1969, 1971, 1973)