Ever since the Republicans gerrymandered the state Legislature in 2011, there are very few true swing districts in which a Democrat and Republican can actually compete. As a result, the real competition is in the partisan primaries, which will be held on Aug. 9. That’s true of the Milwaukee-area primary races, which are far more numerous and lively than the legislative races in our area on the Nov. 8 general election ballot.
Democratic voters in Senate District 4—which encompasses the Northwest Side of Milwaukee, as well as Shorewood, Glendale and a slice of Wauwatosa—have a highly competitive Democratic primary on Aug. 9. Longtime Sen. Lena Taylor is being challenged by state Rep. Mandela Barnes, who is vacating his Assembly District 11 seat, which encompasses portions of the North Side of Milwaukee and Glendale, to run for Senate. Both candidates spoke to the Shepherd Express about their campaigns.
Mandela Barnes
State Rep. Mandela Barnes is a former community organizer who beat then-Rep. Jason Fields, a fellow Democrat, in 2012 to represent Assembly District 11. He said the same issues that motivated him to run four years ago still motivate him today: public education, public safety and economic development.
He said he wasn’t daunted by the challenge of taking on an incumbent Democrat this year.
“In 2012, I was a member of the Democratic Party, and I took on my sitting representative,” Barnes said. “For so long people assume a sense of entitlement when they are elected to a position. We aren’t elected for life. If someone wants to run against me, then by all means run against me.”
He said that he and Taylor share many common views, but he said they have big differences on three big issues: the privatization of education, gun rights and economic opportunities.
Barnes supports public education and opposes privatization and changes in governance, such as the Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program (OSPP). He and state Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee) authored a bill that would allow community schools with wraparound social services to tap state grants for those services.
“Community schools have been proven to be very effective at addressing the root causes of lack of achievement,” Barnes said. “When students are going to school hungry, when students are going back to homes that are in despair or where you are in a transient household, or even homeless, those are issues that play a role and have a significant impact on the state.”
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Barnes noted that in 2009 Taylor introduced a mayoral takeover bill that would have handed control of the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to the Milwaukee mayor and severely weakened the democratically elected board. Barnes said the bill laid the foundation for subsequent Republican privatization efforts and school takeovers.
“If Democrats are attacking MPS then the door is wide open for Republicans to do the same thing when they control both houses of the Legislature by significant margins and the governor’s mansion,” Barnes said.
Barnes also disagreed with Taylor’s votes for the Castle Doctrine and implementing concealed carry in Wisconsin, which he called one of the most dangerous permitting systems in the country because, among other things, it prohibits law enforcement from accessing data about permit holders.
“You’ve got a lot of people with long rap sheets who probably shouldn’t have a weapon, let alone a concealed one, who are able to get a concealed carry permit,” Barnes said. “Then the four hours of training—you don’t ever have to have held a gun a day in your life to get a permit.”
Barnes and Goyke authored a bill that would require the Department of Corrections to study the Missouri model for juvenile corrections, which would create smaller, and more numerous, facilities in the community for juvenile offenders. (The bill didn’t go anywhere in the Republican-controlled Assembly.) He said juveniles returning from Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake need to have plans in place so that they don’t go back to the same situation in which they originally got into trouble.
“If they don’t have an education plan set up, if they don’t have a plan for employment, then what do we really expect from them?” he said. “Job training is a necessary component, and using more restorative justice models as well so that they can know the impact of whatever they did to get there.”
Barnes said he’s the best candidate in the race because he wouldn’t compromise on his Democratic principles.
“I can’t say things have gotten better over the past 12 years, and I think with the challenges we’re facing we need a new approach,” Barnes said. “We need to provide transformational leadership. We need to not get stuck in the same modes and I will say at the very least I won’t partner with the governor to make things even worse, which is a charge that I have for my current senator.”
Lena Taylor
Attorney Lena Taylor was elected to the state Assembly in 2003 and won election to the state Senate in 2004. “There is so much work to do,” Taylor said. “I’m a champion and I continue to be and I desire to do that work and to serve the people.”
Taylor said her top issues are reforming the criminal justice system, from policing to incarceration, as well as jobs and education.
Taylor said she would push her Love and Faith Initiative, which is a food- and agriculture-based program that would place hubs around the city staffed by a community connector to use hoop houses and orchards to educate and train participants in agriculture, forestry, construction, entrepreneurship and technology. Her initiative is not up and running yet, however, and won’t be set up as a nonprofit organization, but Taylor said she’d like to use it as a way to build infrastructure in the city.
“The people I would target are those who already have to do community service work,” Taylor said, such as those receiving food assistance or in the W-2 program or individuals with a court order to do service work.
She said she would continue to work on reforming the criminal justice system, with a special focus on re-entry barriers for ex-offenders, juvenile corrections and finding a solution to the Lincoln Hills crisis. She has conducted community-based visits up to Lincoln Hills, during which members of the arts community engage with residents.
“They need to know that someone is watching out for them,” Taylor said.
Taylor said calling her 2009 bill a mayoral takeover was an “unfair characterization” and denied that it was a takeover. SB 405, which Taylor introduced in the Senate with then-Sen. Jeff Plale and Sen. Tim Carpenter, would have given the Milwaukee mayor the power to appoint a Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent who would be in charge of MPS and have most of the powers of the MPS board, including staff appointments, the budget, collective bargaining and school closings. The bill also required a public referendum to be held in 2017, nine years after Taylor introduced the bill, on whether the MPS board should be in charge of MPS and appoint its superintendent. Among much controversy, the bill never was scheduled for a vote.
“I don’t think it’s inappropriate for the mayor to have some engagement,” Taylor said.
A separate bill, authored by then-Sen. John Lehman (D-Kenosha) to which Taylor signed on as a cosponsor, gave the state superintendent the power to intervene in low-performing schools. That bill passed in April 2010, and Taylor said it has helped to reduce suspension rates.
Taylor said she supports public schools and has worked to add more accountability measures to the voucher program. She said she opposes the recent expansion of vouchers.
Taylor said she supported concealed carry because she believes gun owners have a constitutional right to do so. She said she introduced amendments to require more training and limit where concealed weapons could be carried, but they didn’t pass.
“We do bills all the time and the perfect doesn’t happen all the time,” she said.
Taylor has authored several bills to improve gun safety and responsible gun ownership, including requiring proof of insurance to obtain a concealed carry permit.
“The individuals who are doing a lot of the havoc that has existed in our community, they aren’t the ones with [concealed carry permits],” she said. “It’s not them.”
Taylor was the only Democratic legislator to vote for Act 14, which stripped the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors of much of its power. Taylor co-sponsored the Senate version with Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa), Sen. May Lazich (R-New Berlin) and then-Sen. Paul Farrow (R-Pewaukee). Taylor said she helped to limit the supervisors’ pay cut and require a public referendum on supervisors’ pay after their powers were cut.
“I was not asked to be on the sidelines,” Taylor said. “Somebody has to go in the room.”
To learn more about Lena Taylor, go to golenataylor.com.
