It’s hard to imagine that a smart, popular state Senate leader could be seen as an underdog in a local election, but when the incumbent is the son of a billionaire who can spend millions of his father’s money on his campaign without hesitation, any challenger is definitely at a disadvantage. But state Sen. Chris Larson’s underdog status doesn’t seem to bother him as he seeks to unseat Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele in the 2016 spring election. Larson, a Democrat who grew up in Greenfield and currently represents the lakeshore communities in the state Senate, said Abele’s repeated power grabs and lack of public outreach motivated him to run for county executive. Larson is championing a more transparent, inclusive, balanced county government that makes smart investments in job creation for the county’s hardest-hit neighborhoods, expands affordable transit options and revitalizes our parks. Here’s an excerpt of our interview.
Shepherd: Why are you running for county executive?
Larson: I want to take back the county for the middle class. We have a county executive who campaigned one way and governed another way very quickly. In the past five years he broke promises and broke away from who he was. He’s changed. I think he’s grown out of touch and I think he’s grown more out of touch over the last five years. I think it’s important to have a county executive who is going to be a steward for the county for the long term and actually care for the parks and restore them to greatness and expand transit so that people have access to jobs that’s affordable, and also to usher in a long-term vision that’s balanced. A county executive has to actually listen to people and be responsive to their needs. That’s why the first pledge I made out of the gate was to do a public listening session in each municipality in each year we’re in office, a la Russ Feingold.
Shepherd: What would be your biggest priorities as county executive?
Larson: The big one is rejecting the takeover of our public schools and to make sure that education is handled by those who were elected to handle education. I don’t think it should be something that the county is involved in one way or another. It breeds into the divide-and-conquer strategy from the Republicans to continue to divide the pie on education. The second is restoring power to the people. There’s been a concentration of power in the executive’s office. He sought unilateral authority on land sales. I want to make sure that the office is balanced and that there is a check there for after I’m county executive. It’s an American value to make sure that there’s a check and balance in every form of government. Beyond that, I want to restore our parks to the national legacy that they once had—not just to maintain what happened under County Executive Scott Walker, but actually to create quality parks that every resident can have access to, not just those who live in high income communities, but also to make sure that we’re serving people in the inner city with quality parks.
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Shepherd: Abele worked with suburban Republican legislators to craft Act 14, which cut the board’s responsibilities and concentrated unprecedented power in the county executive’s office. Why do you want to repeal Act 14 when, if elected county executive, you’d have all of this power to run county government from behind closed doors? Wouldn’t it be tempting to grab that power and go wild with it?
Larson: If we were in the South and there was a group of business leaders and conservatives who were trying to do what they did here in diminishing the power of the minority community in elective office, there would have been calls for a federal lawsuit. But they did that here. And for whatever reason, people went along with it because of something that happened with the county board years ago. I think if you don’t like your county board supervisor you should vote for a different county supervisor or run yourself. That’s what representative democracy looks like. I’d say similarly that people don’t like Congress and some people don’t like the president. But if the president suddenly said I’m going to take over the powers of Congress you would have everybody upset because it’s un-American to invest that much power in one office. And that happened here.
It’s led to deals being made behind closed doors and a lack of response to the public and it’s shifted priorities away from what’s actually going to benefit the middle class in Milwaukee County. I think it’s important to restore that balance. There are some changes that are always needed to refine and improve government, but I think completely trying to place all aspects of power in one office, which I think is what County Executive Abele has sought, is dangerous. To quote Kanye West, “No one man should have all that power.”
Shepherd: On top of Act 14, Abele’s Republican friends in the state Legislature slipped an amendment into the state budget that gives him near-unilateral power over the sale of non-park land, which includes the airport, the zoo, the Milwaukee Public Museum and other county assets.
Larson: Right. He can do that without county board approval. That is dangerous. That was frankly the thing that pushed me over the edge into running for this office. I was thinking about my kids and thinking about the next generation. The torch is in our hands now. We are the ones in charge. When the torch was in the hands of our predecessors they made sure to get us a world-class parks system. They made sure to get us a public airport that’s low cost. They made sure to get us a good museum. And much more. If we screw this up, it’s done.
Shepherd: After Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett refused to get involved, Abele agreed to head the new Opportunity Schools Partnership Program, which allows him to appoint a commissioner and take over low-performing public schools to privatize them. Why do you think this is a bad idea?
Larson: It was a bad idea that’s come after 25 years’ worth of bad ideas. This was based off of a failed model in New Orleans that has debilitated a school district and hurt the community there. And the reason why I know that is because we actually met with the stakeholders, the folks who have been through this before. As far as I can tell the current county executive never did that. The phone rang from [River Hills Republican state Sen.] Alberta Darling and he picked it up and he said, ‘Power, you say? Where do I sign?’ And that was after Tom Barrett turned it down because he knew that these are not folks who value public education based off of their long history of misdeeds—specifically Alberta Darling, [Brookfield Republican state Rep.] Dale Kooyenga and Gov. Scott Walker. But we’ve had 25 years of experience where we started with a voucher program that sounded good in theory and very quickly slid down a slippery slope of trying to privatize and shift public dollars away from where it’s needed most and to give more money to subsidize private education while not fixing the underlying problem.
Shepherd: When Walker was county executive, Sue Black headed the parks department and while our parks didn’t receive a lot of funding they were treated respectfully. But Abele fired her. How are the parks faring after her departure?
Larson: We had one of the most popular county employees in Sue Black. She could make miracles happen in our parks. She was able to balance one of the most divisive periods in county government and be able to work with both County Executive Walker and the county board and at the same time see through a mission to make sure that our parks were improving and find public-private partnerships. Beer gardens were ushered through. She got the ball rolling on the South Shore terrace. She had a beefed-up friends group that was very active. The list goes on. And all of that was happening when there wasn’t a lot of money being pumped into the parks. She was brilliant. And County Executive Abele fired her without explanation for god knows why. With that you lost a huge resource in someone who had a mind to look for grants, look for private dollars, look to leverage every inch she could to make sure that our parks were the first priority. And that’s gone. That’s happened with over a half a dozen department heads who were alienated and eventually fired. If you don’t have a team like that you’re not leveraging the best tools available to you. And frankly, as the belt tightens on county government, you need to have the smartest people in the room figuring out where you can get federal grants, where you can get creative dollars in the door to help citizens of Milwaukee County.
Shepherd: Let’s talk about the Bucks arena deal. Originally, Gov. Walker proposed that the state should bond for the entire public portion of the financing package. But the final deal, which Abele negotiated with Republican legislators, puts the county on the hook for $80 million over the next 20 years. How did that happen?
Larson: I think there’s a reason why Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and the Republicans are complimenting Chris Abele and his amazing negotiating skills. Because they got off the hook and they shoveled $80 million worth of payments to county taxpayers. What we got out of it was that the county executive gets more power and that we were going to pay for it by chasing down those struggling in our economy with bill collectors. I think that demonstrates the failure of not listening to your constituents, not listening to your neighbors and not approaching things in a balanced way.
We tried to make it better when it got to us in the Legislature but by that point the cake was pretty well baked and it was a matter of what the frosting was going to look like. We were able to get service fees, so the people who go to games help pay for the arena, which hadn’t been there before. We said that paying for an arena for billionaires on the backs of the poor was not what we wanted. In addition—this will come out publicly within the next month—we wanted to make sure that there were real jobs associated with this and that they were going to be living wage jobs and that they were going to be sourced to the wards that have been hit hardest by unemployment. We also wanted to make sure that there was going to be labor peace. That’s the line that we drew when discussing this with the stakeholders, with the Bucks, myself and a few other legislators. We were able to get all of those things accomplished [in a side agreement].
Shepherd: Abele drew deserved criticism for his statement that his plans to help African American Milwaukeeans include more programming at the House of Corrections and adding more money for child support programs, mental health and social services. What do you plan to do to help the county’s African American residents?
Larson: The short answer is a lot. It would start with quality job creation. One of the jobs initiatives that I really like that came from the county board and was blocked for a while and spoken against by County Executive Abele is the Ready to Work proposal, which sought to employ some of the hardest to employ folks in Milwaukee. That has been successful to the point where now Chris Abele is trying to take credit for it. That’s something we’ve championed from the beginning and would like to expand. Living wage is a priority for me. That goes for people who are working for the county, that the county is contracting with but also when we are working on economic development across the county. When dollars are going out we’re going to make sure that the jobs associated with them are living wage and we are doing our best to reach out to high unemployment wards so that we are helping the people who have been the hardest hit. It’s about empowerment. That’ll be a priority for our administration.
Shepherd: After alienating progressives and moderate Democrats, Abele is now hiring a bunch of people to try to make him look like a Democrat before the election. Do you think it’ll work?
Larson: I think it’s great that he’s boosting the local economy so much with his dad’s money. I think that’s fantastic. That makes him a good private citizen, a good philanthropist. That doesn’t change the fact that he is a lousy leader of government. There is going to be a flood of money coming through with slick ads and fancy mailers and all the other trappings that come with a top-tier, multimillion-dollar campaign. It’ll be the best campaign that money can buy. But I don’t think that Chris Abele can spend his way out of the consequences of his policies. He can spend as much money as he wants but he can’t spend away the facts. And those facts are that over the past five years we’ve learned a lot about who Chris Abele is and who he has partnered with, how he acts in government, how he has condensed and consolidated power, how he has ignored the public, how he has used the same rhetoric about our public schools as Republicans, and how he has completely shifted away from how he was in the last election. We do know one thing and that’s Chris Abele knows what to say when elections roll around. It’s what happens afterwards that we all need to worry about.
