Views on News • November 16th, 2009

Barrett’s in

by Chris Lato

My gut told me he wouldn’t jump in. So much for the predictive abilities of said gut.

Tom Barrett has his work cut out for him. Already, we are seeing cracks in the façade - such as the ‘will he or won’t he raise taxes?’ question. The difference between the printed remarks and his actual words is revealing.

What’s also striking about Barrett’s coming out party is what could be perceived as a lack of vision expressed in his remarks. Why does he want to lead the state? What is the compelling reason(s) that drove him to make such an enormous and serious commitment? And why did he wait so long to announce?

From this day forward, Tom Barrett is going to run the city of Milwaukee, presumably continue working to take over MPS AND build a statewide campaign – a campaign that will require him to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars each and every month. This fella must be Superman. Will he be able to do all of these jobs effectively? It’s a question that will be open to much scrutiny over the next year. Presumably third-party spenders will be stepping in to pick up the slack on the money issue, but still.

By all accounts, Tom Barrett is a nice and personable guy. As a former reporter, I occasionally interviewed him and always found him to be engaging and someone who (much to his credit) virtually always returned press calls.

But in this race, he comes tainted by what appears to be a serious reluctance to jump into the fray, and of being Jim Doyle and President Obama’s hand-picked guy.

Those are among the ongoing PR challenges Barrett will face, along with Milwaukee’s record on jobs and taxes and economic development. This career politician will be charged with clearly making the case for why voters should give him the keys to the Governor’s Mansion based on a record that includes managing Wisconsin’s biggest city.

A pretty long list of high-profile Dems didn’t want the job – starting with the incumbent and his lite guv. Democrats were desperate to find someone, anyone, to run. Who knows what the party would have done if Barrett hadn’t decided to take the leap.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Views on News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.