Fair Committee Chair Urges Waukesha To 'Resolve Cream Puff Question' Before State Fair Season

WAUKESHA — Waukesha County Fair Planning Committee Chair Diane Vandehey, 61, said Monday she wants the city's fourteen-year cream puff versus funnel cake stalemate resolved before the Wisconsin State Fair opens Thursday in West Allis, a 200-acre, eleven-day operation with no formal relationship to Waukesha County's own fair, its snack lineup, or its planning committee.

"For fourteen consecutive years, we have not reached agreement," Vandehey told the committee at Tuesday's session. "I propose we settle this definitively before the 2026 season. It affects vendor recruitment, promotional materials, and our collective dignity." The committee has scheduled a formal vote for its September meeting, the same session where, per this newspaper's reporting from Aug. 1, the pastry question was already docketed to be taken up.

Vandehey's fourteen-year figure is itself a break from prior committee statements. This newspaper reported in a July 28 story that members disputed whether the rivalry had run eleven or twelve years, "depending on which member you ask." Reached for comment on the discrepancy, Vandehey said she now considers fourteen the correct number and declined to say what changed. "I've done the math," she said. "I don't need to show my work."

A Fair Forty Minutes Away, Unbothered

The Wisconsin State Fair, which draws roughly a million visitors to the Wisconsin State Fair Park over its run, has sold cream puffs from the same stand without interruption since 1924 and also sells funnel cakes from a stand a few dozen feet away, having apparently never found the two mutually exclusive. Vandehey said she is aware of this. "I don't control what happens in West Allis," she said. "I control what happens here, and I would like it settled before a fair forty minutes away makes us look indecisive by comparison."

"I don't control what happens in West Allis. I control what happens here, and I would like it settled before a fair forty minutes away makes us look indecisive by comparison."

— Diane Vandehey, fair planning committee chair

Committee member David Paulson, the panel's newest addition and its most vocal funnel cake advocate since his failed push to expand the concession's midway footprint last week, said he supports "resolving the question" but not the method. A straw poll circulated among committee members last month showed cream puffs leading 6-4, a result Paulson called methodologically unsound. "Two of the four funnel cake votes were out sick that day and had to phone theirs in," Paulson said. "A phoned-in vote should count for less than a vote cast in the room. I've said this before and I'll keep saying it."

What A Resolution Would Look Like

Vandehey declined to say whether "resolve" means choosing one dessert as the fair's official representative or formally declaring both acceptable, a distinction Paulson said matters enormously and Vandehey said matters "somewhat." Committee member Robert Schulz, reached separately, said he expects the September meeting to run long regardless of outcome. "Whatever gets decided, someone's going to want a re-vote by October," Schulz said. "I've stopped scheduling anything the week after."

The Wisconsin State Fair runs Aug. 6 through 16. The Waukesha County Fair Planning Committee's September session has not yet been scheduled to a specific date, which Vandehey said was "not the point right now."