Branding Politix, Leadership, Messaging, Strategic Blueprints, Views on News • August 17th, 2009

Doyle’s decision

by Chris Lato

From a political junkie’s perspective, the news about Gov. Doyle is seismic. It blows all the current conventional wisdom out of the water and makes this anybody’s race (with a definite advantage for the GOP).

And yet, Gov. Doyle’s announcement that he will not seek a third term is not necessarily cheery news for the state in the short term. The governor is leaving Wisconsin in worse shape than he found it. There’s no joy or gloating in that statement. We have deep problems that need a fresh perspective ASAP.

Some apologists are already lining up to blame Bush, Tommy Thompson (!), the GOP in the Legislature, etc., etc. for Wisconsin’s current woes. But the fact is that the man at the top will have had two terms – eight years in office – to leave his mark, assuming he doesn’t leave office early. To insist that the governor is not at least partially culpable is simply not realistic.

Doyle’s departure does leave the door open for a leadership change that can get the state back on track.

All that said, Jim Doyle is a canny politician. Anyone who can get elected statewide five times (as AG and governor) deserves respect.

As someone who played a small role in campaigning against Doyle, both in 2002 and 2006, I saw him as a frustrating figure. For all the (legitimate) criticism leveled against him, Doyle was viewed as competent, but little more than that. He never inspired passion. For a while, that worked in his favor in better economic times.

But the cracks have started to show. Now that Wisconsin is hemorrhaging tens of thousands of jobs, and the new state budget raises taxes and fees by a politically deadly $2 billion, and scandals are starting to take hold, it is inevitable that approval ratings would sink to Bush-in-his-final-months levels. People are upset, angry and actively looking for a change. And that is precisely where Doyle is right now.

Far more often than not, it is difficult to knock off an incumbent. But Doyle the canny politician must have realized that he was in a tough spot, and acted accordingly.

Now the candidates will be coming out of the woodwork. Don’t be surprised to see at least one more legitimate name emerge on the GOP side in addition to Neumann and Walker.

Meanwhile, on the Dem side – holy cow. Could we see as many as five reasonably strong contenders?

Of all the names out there (Lawton, Barrett, Falk, Erpenbach, etc.) the one name that intrigues me the most is U.S. Rep. Ron Kind.

Granted, he has a lot of strikes against him. Kind comes from western Wisconsin and isn’t necessarily well-known statewide. He’s a Congressman, and they’re not exactly enjoying sky-high approval ratings. (He also has some listening sessions coming up this week – how he handles any problems will be a very telling indicator of whether he’s really ready to jump into a bloodbath of a guv’s race.) He has a big war chest but cannot spend much of it on the gubernatorial race (call it the Green effect – now coming back to bite the Dems!).

And yet, Kind is appealing - able to ride the middle ground that may speak to those put off by the perceived extremes of, say, Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton. His lack of a defined personality statewide can be a plus, allowing him to shape a persona that works.

A former prosecutor in western Wisconsin, I had the chance to interview Kind way, way back in the day as a onetime reporter in Eau Claire. He struck me as smart, personable and reasonable – and potentially capable of inspiring his side in a way that I suspect the others are incapable of doing.

That said, Republicans have a far better opportunity now than they did before the Doyle news broke. Any Democrat candidate can be tied to the failures of the Doyle administration – and no credible Dem names have surfaced yet with any real ‘outsider’ status and lack of baggage.

If the GOP brings a vision, and brings a positive common-sense outlook to a dark economic situation, and a goal of reversing the overall direction of the state, then things will be looking up for the Republicans. And that goodwill may well flow down to the Legislature, and even a Congressional seat or two.

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