It was just last November that Democraticpresidential candidate Barack Obama scored a resounding victory in Wisconsin,winning 59 of 72 counties. That rout helped Democrats win control of the stateAssembly, giving them control of both houses of the Legislature as well as thegovernor’s office for the first time in more than two decades.
What a difference a year makes.
Instead of taking advantage of a golden opportunityto rekindle the progressive politics of Wisconsin’s dimly remembered past,Democrats now appear hell-bent on tearing apart their own highly successfulcoalition.
The Obama landslide in Wisconsin won a combinationof more urban, suburban and rural counties than in any other state in thenation. It created a power base from which Democrats could conceivably dominatestate politics for years to come. Instead, starting with a series ofanti-Milwaukee budget vetoes back in July, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle beganblowing apart the successful Obama coalition.
Doyle vetoed a local sales tax negotiated to rescueMilwaukee County transit that was approved by voters in a referendum.
The governor also went out of his way to veto jobfunds for Milwaukee, benefits for immigrants and criminal justice reforms thatwere personally inserted into the budget by state Rep. Annette Polly Williams,state Rep. Pedro Colon and state Sen. Lena Taylor.
While Milwaukee Democrats were still trying tofigure out how a Democratic governor expected to get re-elected after givingthe back of his hand to the state’s largest city, Doyle made the surpriseannouncement that he didn’t.
A news leak apparently forced Doyle to announceearlier than he’d intended that he would not seek re-election. If Doyle hadwaited longer, of course, he would have given his party even less time toscramble to find a candidate.
Not Done Dividing
Doyle wasn’t done dividing Milwaukee Democrats,either. He publicly announced his support for Mayor Tom Barrett’s attempt totake control of Milwaukee Public Schools and eliminate the locally electedschool board. It’s a proposal the majority of the city’s Democratic legislatorsoppose.
To say the campaign has been handled awkwardly is anunderstatement. But a joint appearance by Doyle and Barrett a week ago threwgasoline on what already was a flaming controversy.
First, you had two of the state’s most prominentDemocrats adopting the Bush administration tactic of barring from theirpolitical speeches any citizens who disagreed with them.
A group of about 30 opponents of the mayoraltakeover picketed outside before the appearance of the governor and the mayor.They included MPS parents and community activists who had organized grassrootssupport in the past for Obama, Doyle and Barrett.
A wall of Milwaukee police officers prevented anyonewho publicly disagreed with the takeover from entering the building to hearDoyle and Barrett.
Police also barred Michael Bonds, the president ofthe Milwaukee School Board, from the press conference where the elimination ofhis elected position was being discussed.
There was one major news development that came outof the joint press conference. Unfortunately, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which editorially supports the mayoraltakeover, didn’t bother to report it.
At community forums, Barrett has argued that aprincipal reason for the takeover would be to position Wisconsin to receivehundreds of millions of dollars for public schools from the U.S. Department ofEducation’s “Race to the Top” program.
Barrett said Wisconsin could possibly receive asmuch as $300 million statewide and as much as $120 million of that could cometo MPS.
At their joint press conference, Doyle slashed thoseexpectations dramatically. He suggested a more realistic figure for the statemight be $80 million, which could mean only $10 million or so for Milwaukee.
With an MPS budget of more than $1 billion, whoeveris in charge of Milwaukee Public Schools won’t be funding any dramatictransformations with a relative pittance Wisconsin is considered a long shot toreceive anyway.
Opponents of the mayoral takeover already criticizeDoyle and Barrett for being eager to jettison a democratically elected schoolboard in a lust for one-time money from the federal government.
Now they’re pointing out just how cheaply thegovernor and the mayor are willing to sell out voters.
What’s most disturbing is that the political leadersand activists fighting each other in Milwaukee are all Democrats.
Without even a consensus on the Democratic candidatefor governor next year, Doyle seems strangely eager to destroy the successfulcoalition that consolidated Democratic power in Madison last November.
It’s never a compliment to say a governor’s finalterm was the pinnacle of his party’s success. That means he left it teeteringon a precipice and everything went down hill from there.
