[1] As a child, he developed paralysis due to the Polio virus, which left him reliant on crutches and wheelchairs for nearly his entire life.
At the time of the election, a poll of the Milwaukee Bar Association senior membership found that 96.7% did not think Michael Sullivan was qualified for the job.
Nevertheless, Sullivan won a narrow victory in the April election, carrying 52% of the Milwaukee county electorate and defeating Judge Drechsler by about 10,000 votes.
At the time, some local journalists attributed his win to the fact that he shared the name "Sullivan" with the recently deceased judge, although there was no known familial relation.
[10] After a year of the new system, however, Judge Sullivan announced his plan to resign, effective January 1, 1980, for personal reasons.
[11] In the month before his 1979 resignation, Judge Sullivan received an informal reprimand from the state Ethics Board.
He also publicly accused fellow Milwaukee judge Fred Kessler, himself a former-legislator, of conspiring with the Assembly leadership to circumvent his ruling which had enabled bail for profit operations in the state.
[13] Sullivan ultimately withdrew his complaints, but the Ethics Board scolded him for the public nature of his complaint, saying that his actions were "contrary to the Ethics Code's purpose of promoting faith and confidence of the people of this state in their state public officials.