On paper, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele had every reason to believe that after obliterating state Sen. Chris Larson in last week’s primary he’d be able to cruise to re-election in April and continue feeding speculation about when he’d make his move on the Madison mansion of his predecessor, Gov. Scott Walker.
The millionaire county executive had all the money anyone needed for upbeat, feel-good commercials and slick, full-color mailers. Larson had a pittance.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which no longer has a full-time local political reporter, barely covered the race, assuming it was all over. Dan Bice’s political gossip column sniped at underdog Larson.
So imagine how stunned Abele and the newspaper were when Larson’s grassroots campaign appeared to come out of nowhere and finished first in the primary, with the unofficial results showing Larson 708 votes ahead of incumbent Abele, who outspent him 20 to 1.
Only Larson didn’t come out of nowhere. If the newspaper still covered politics, it might have realized that changes in Madison among Democrats as well as Republicans affect politics here in Milwaukee County.
In 2010, Larson, a member of the Milwaukee County Board, upset conservative Democratic state Sen. Jeff Plale, who immediately showed exactly how conservative he was by joining Walker’s administration.
Larson quickly rose to Senate minority leader while also helping to recruit and elect a progressive new generation of activist Milwaukee legislators including state Sen. Nikiya Harris Dodd and state Reps. Mandela Barnes, David Bowen, Evan Goyke, Daniel Riemer and Jonathan Brostoff, his former staffer.
That created an activist network for Larson throughout the city, where he not only ran ahead of incumbent Mayor Tom Barrett by 1,211 votes, but got 50% of the city vote to Abele’s 40%, beating him by nearly 6,000 votes.
Walker Republicans Love Abele
So what’s going on? Why did Abele trail Larson so badly in the city?
|
|
Much of that also goes back to the Legislature, namely Abele’s unsavory friends in the Legislature. Even though Abele’s a Democrat occupying a nonpartisan office, he’s become the favorite Milwaukee politician of the anti-Milwaukee Walker Republicans controlling the Legislature.
And Abele has repeatedly gone to those Republicans to gain total control of county government in a way that could be as damaging to the future of Milwaukee County as many of the other ugly Republican actions are to the future of Wisconsin.
At Abele’s urging, the Republican Legislature essentially destroyed the power of the legislative branch of the County Board to exercise any meaningful checks and balances over the actions of Abele or any future Milwaukee county executive.
After the 2016 election, Republicans will have reduced the elected legislative branch of Milwaukee County to a part-time job at half the previous pay with severely limited advisory authority.
When the County Board used its waning power to stop Abele, a friend of lakefront developers, from selling Downtown O’Donnell Park to Northwestern Mutual, Abele went back to legislative Republicans to gain the right to sell any county property not zoned as parkland without any oversight at all from the County Board.
Abele used that authority to sell 10 acres of Downtown county land to the billionaire owners of the Milwaukee Bucks for $1. No other county executive in the state has such unlimited authority to sell public property without public hearings or legislative approval.
What’s so brazenly irresponsible about removing legislative oversight to grant Milwaukee’s county executive unchecked power is that the last two county executives before Abele were embroiled in illegal and unethical activities.
Tom Ament was responsible for covert county pension changes that went unreported for months until top county officials and politicians began retiring with six- and seven-figure pensions. When the scandal broke, Ament was forced to resign and seven of the county supervisors who supported the scheme were recalled.
Walker, a minor legislator, began his political ascent by succeeding Ament. As county executive as he has as governor, Walker avoided indictment himself in criminal John Doe investigations into both offices. But three of his top county executive staff and three other political associates were convicted of felonies.
Even if you believe Abele is totally honest, it’s terrible public policy and an open invitation to continued corruption to eliminate effective legislative oversight to give any one elected Milwaukee county executive unchecked, unlimited power.
Now Abele has to spend a lot more money when Larson’s already made his wealth an issue. Larson accuses Abele of indifference to the problems of ordinary people for asking the state to aggressively collect back taxes from the poor to pay the county’s share of the new Bucks arena.
Since Abele is still a progressive Democrat on many issues, suburban Republicans may not exactly be rushing to his rescue.
Abele made his own re-election a lot harder by alienating many of his previous supporters by running to Republicans to get his own way at a time when he really could use some friends.
