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.

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2008 Primaries, Promotions, Views on News, public relations • July 23rd, 2008

The six-million-dollar election

by Chris Lato

Brace yourself for a new round of hand-wringing. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has issued an analysis that shows nearly $6 million was spent in the recent State Supreme Court election between Mike Gableman and Louis Butler.

The biggest spender: that shadowy cabal known as Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. The right wing has MoveOn.org to loathe – now the Wisconsin left has WMC to demonize.

We’ve been down this road before, but it’s amazing that Butler’s supporters still aren’t letting this go. Like it or not, the Supreme Court race was democracy in action. Was it nasty? Yup. Did some of the ads take harsh pokes at the candidates? You betcha.

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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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Grass Roots Organization, Messaging, Views on News, wispundits • April 2nd, 2008

Oh, what a night

by Chris Lato

For a spring election, which typically doesn’t do much to excite the voting population, this one had a whole lot of twists and turns.

One thing’s for sure: Gov. Jim Doyle can’t be happy about the results. Consider:

1. Doyle’s hand-picked Supreme Court justice, Louis Butler, loses in a squeaker to Michael Gableman – the first time a challenger has picked off a sitting justice in more than four decades. More on this race in a bit, but suffice it to say for now that Gableman’s win was in no small part a repudiation of the current high court’s left-leaning makeup and resulting decisions since Butler ascended to the high court.

2. Incumbent County Executive Scott Walker sails to victory against state Sen. Lena Taylor. Taylor has said she never spoke with Gov. Doyle about running for County Exec, but it’s hard to buy the notion that the governor never took more than a passing interest in knocking off Walker, an all-but-certain GOP candidate for governor in 2010. Walker is now positioned to make that run with the lessons of his ’06 bid to build on and the momentum from Tuesday’s decisive win to propel him forward.

3. Voters got out their pitchforks and torches and took down the governor’s ‘Frankenstein veto’ power by an overwhelming margin (as some of us predicted). There was strong bipartisan support for this constitutional amendment in the Legislature, due in part to what were viewed as abuses of the veto authority by the Doyle administration.

There were other big decisions, too. In Milwaukee, Ald. Michael McGee Junior’s constituents finally realized that having their representative locked in a jail cell is not exactly serving their interests well. McGee was defeated, in a bit of a surprise to some, to Milele Coggs, a member of a locally-known and politically-connected family. It feels a bit like the end of an era for the McGees, and the current Alderman hasn’t even gone to trial yet.
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