Messaging, Speeches, Views on News • April 9th, 2008

Capitol for a day

by Chris Lato

Today I had the pleasure of attending the kickoff breakfast for the ‘State Capitol for a Day’ event taking place in Waukesha (for two days, actually).

There really was an impressive gathering of just about every key Doyle administration cabinet secretary in one room, along with the governor himself. We sat with DNR Secretary Matt Frank and Revenue Secretary Roger Ervin, who’s a very friendly guy – even though he refused to give me an extension on my taxes* (I kid!).

There’s even been some news announced in connection with the Waukesha visit – an agreement has been hammered out regarding the Great Lakes compact. So, huzzahs all around.

The typical breakfast crowd can be a little lethargic – it’s tough to fire up the room. In a short amount of time, we were treated to a variety of different speaking styles. There was County Executive Dan Vrakas (low-key, down-home), followed by Waukesha Mayor Larry Nelson (a guy known for his, shall we say, off-the-cuff speaking style) who used his past experience as a teacher to get the room going. He’s actually pretty funny, too.

Then there was Governor Doyle. Speaking without any notes that I could see, he knows his stuff and struck the right note of bipartisan cooperation that you could feel spreading throughout the room. We all know it is typically not that harmonious, but for a little while anyway, the dream of bipartisanship spreading across this great land of ours seemed within reach. Doyle understands the need to appeal to the (largely Republican) Waukesha-area crowd and handled this initial appearance accordingly.

*Due credit should go to Gov. Doyle on this one - I took his joke and ran with it.

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