Friday, August 8, 2014

LOOK FOR HIGHER TURNOUT IN KEY COUNTIES TO GIVE RICHARDS THE WIN

By Dominique Paul Noth

Jon Richards
You’ve seen the prediction by experts that only 15% of Wisconsin voters will turn out for the August 12 primary. That requires some adjustment. The estimate is spread out over 72 counties and many don’t have intensive contests, particularly on the Republican side. But throughout the state there are pockets of dispute among Democrats that could spur bigger numbers.

That’s anticipated in Milwaukee County by the overseeing public authority. In an interview, Milwaukee County Clerk Joe Czarnecki expects interest will be considerably higher given the sheriff’s race alone, not to mention the intense battle among Democrats in several legislative districts, such as 10 and 19. In another Milwaukee centered federal race (the county has the responsibility of placing it on their prepared ballot), there is growing desire to protect respected and admired US Rep. Gwen Moore from the crossover machination of right-wing radio.

The situation in Dane County as well as Milwaukee might also increase the current ho-hum attention to the attorney general contest. Both counties have high Democratic populations and well-known candidates in this race to counter what has largely been a blandly covered contest. It’s not just DA Ismael Ozanne but how well Jon Richards is known from years in the Assembly in Madison.

A lot of media is indifferent because of the bigger money raised by the unopposed Republican in the race. Brad Schimel doesn’t have to spend money or time on this contest until the November finale, which observers see as an edge. But there is also a negative – the taint of agreeing so much with the current AG, J.B. Van Hollen, who spends more money defending laws that are questionable or unconstitutional – and Schimel agrees with Hollen. They are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. (One example is the voter ID law blocked by federal ruling and not even solving the 31 cases of voter fraud in 1 billion US ballots cast from 2000 to 2014). 

So there is a lot of pressure to find a new AG more concerned about the Wisconsin public than about partisan buddies. There is a nonpartisan history in this state for that office, a search for an AG with the proven standards and intelligence to oppose any questionable laws whichever party offers.

The lack of interest in this primary doesn’t mean the voters aren’t eager for change. It may simply be they don’t much care which of three respectable Democrats win.

But maybe they should. There is a misconception about the role of the attorney general, often described as the state’s “top cop.”  In public discussion of the “issues” important in the job, what often dominates is the courtroom experience putting murderers in jail, which the AG doesn’t do. It is seen as prosecutorial presence in criminal cases, again not the key role, which is setting tone and policy with an almost academic ability to understand nuanced and complicated laws. 

The public doesn’t see the huge operative sweep of a major agency that must interpret laws, administrate statewide police procedures and facilities, cooperate and set the standards for other state law enforcement units and prosecutors, while working with dozens of outside agencies of justice and with the legislature, listen to the people and maintain as primary his or her own conscience.

We’ve left out the very important meeting and cooperating with other state attorneys general on task forces and combined legislative concerns such as white collar crimes, fraud mongers and criminal groups across jurisdictions. Van Hollen because of political vagaries has resisted a lot of such opportunities, but they raise the state’s profile and importance and often bring in money for state coffers and respect for the state’s moral status.

Those are some of the reasons I much prefer Jon Richards. He is a lawyer but offers far more than knowing his way around the court in criminal and civil cases. He knows his way around governments. He has spent decades in the Assembly pushing for responsible behavior not just in law enforcement but budget issues, mental and social health, poverty and other factors that have a direct impact on crime and punishment. Richards abandoned a secure seat in Milwaukee District 19 knowing he will have some image problems as a liberal Democrat and a genial politician who knows how to work the rope lines more than strut and posture iron-jaw for the camera. 

He must also deal with that old saw that urban Milwaukee candidates can’t win statewide, ignoring Herb Kohl and even our current governor (though they reflect different parties) not to mention past state leaders in other generations that won big coming out of Milwaukee. The office is expected to be nonpartisan and approachable.  Administrative competence and infighting skills may be the most important – and Milwaukee if nothing else sure teaches you about infighting.  Charlie Sykes’ junior partner in talk radio, Jeff Wagner, may beat up on Jim Doyle in part because Doyle beat him for the AG spot, and actually ran it well enough that even Republicans voted him in as governor – and he worked with other state attorneys general to bring in tobacco settlement money, though the other party frittered it away.  

Richards’ quiet manner, his ability to enthusiastically glad-hand while keeping his counsel until he stands up in negotiations, may fit this job better than the macho prosecutorial toughness that Wisconsinites associate with “top cop” – as the media should be pointing out.

His platform reflects how long his  policies have matched his AG intentions -- increased funding for drug and alcohol  courts, increased pay and experience for prosecutors, background checks and taking guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, and –- a major function of the office -- protecting all consumers from fraud, such as senior citizen abuse by unscrupulous nursing homes. These don’t make great 30-second ads, nor does suggesting wait-and-see-what-happens in Colorado before writing a law about legal marijuana.  But this is the kind of measured soundness the AG job will require whomever occupies the governor’s mansion or legislature.

That may be why both his opponents are playing up their roles as criminal prosecutors – and good ones on the record. What else can they say?


Ismael Ozanne
Dane County DA Ismael Ozanne also made a lot of friends exposing what the GOP did to the open records law to rush-pass Act 10, though the Wisconsin Supreme Court, whose rulings have become a blot on the nation’s judicial system, overruled him.  That case alone made him a favorite of the far left, which is somewhat misleading given his balanced record.

Similarly – in a mystification to some longtime progressives – there is a big money hug for the other DA, Susan Happ, because she flashes Democratic principles in conservative Jefferson County, though some of her positions are closer to those of Schimel, the Waukesha County DA.

Ozanne does stick with his principles, such as a diversion program for abusive parents, which encourages greater understanding of adults raised to believe in corporal punishment as a “culturally acceptable” style of discipline.  News reports oversimplified his program as supporting spanking as opposed to his recognition that the problem can’t be solved by jail time. But Ozanne has not sufficiently responded to some intelligent criticism from child psychologists about longer term educational needs for such families.

Susan Happ
Happ is selling herself as a tough Democrat who can win -- and has -- in rural Republican territory. But the ad campaign and financing are doing more than that – playing up her gender at one moment and then overemphasizing the masculine associated side of her biography – a tiny baby who grew up with muscles, wrestling boys into submission, riding a Harley, having a concealed carry permit and putting away criminals with enthusiasm.

At the June 4 Emerge Wisconsin event in Milwaukee honoring Gwen Moore as woman of the year, she gave a mighty speech I totally  agree with about the extraordinary efforts needed to put more  women in public office – but not any woman, as she knows from working in  Congress next to rabid Marsha Blackburn and ranting Michelle Bachman.

But women are more than half the population and less than a fifth of Congress.  They work with more compatibility and effectiveness in many cases, yet because of cultural bias and upbringing they must be more forcibly recruited into public roles. That inherent sexism of society they have to conquer is reflected even in diaper styles, where girls get plastic butterflies and boys get Spiderman. Yet most women I know have more physical endurance and tolerance of pain. As British actress Helen Mirren is fond of saying, there will be more good roles for actresses the more diverse roles society gives women.

So no question we need more and more women and they need a special push. But the problem comes in politics when a man is proven equal or better on women’s issues and negotiating skills (Richards) and the “more women in office” organizations ignore the field to support the gender.

I sure wish (and have told them) that the national Emily’s List supporting more women in office  had done more homework before backing Happ given not any deficit on her part but how Richards has proven himself in their causes for two decades.  I also wish Happ didn’t feel the need to emphasize a lifestyle associated with men to convince male voters.  Intelligent America is supposed to have grown beyond that.  Maybe it’s that lingering belief that women don’t have fortitude or that voter association of the AG with physical bull-rush.  Maybe we can grow beyond that?


About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news.

From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with its still operative archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

TV GAMBLE IN ASSEMBLY RACE MAY CHANGE ODDS

By Dominique Paul Noth

Sara Geenen's fans take to the TV channels  to
support her District 19 candidacy.
We are about to find out if TV ads flooding the Milwaukee market via cable and local channels can change the margins August 12 in a single Assembly district along the lakefront. 

For Milwaukeeans surprised that there was enough liberal-leaning big money for hard-hitting TV ads using David Clarke’s own excessive words to attack his behavior as sheriff, this will create a bigger pop – a candidate in a sliver of the Milwaukee TV market using TV to change minds in a politically astute Assembly district. 

With Clarke, who loves to posture braggadocious in media interviews, there was plenty of fodder to destroy him with his own words and actions.  While Clarke has preened that the NRA would rescue him with money to match this media blitz against him, all that has happened is a second more devastating ad from the Greater Wisconsin Committee using his own words to expose him, such as telling citizens to only call 911 to drag the bleeding body out of the house before it messes up the carpet.

But how does an Assembly candidate running from behind launch a TV attack without attacking her opponents?  Sara Geenen, a personable  liberal herself whom everyone hopes will stick around politics even if she loses this race, has  a independent expenditure camp of supporters that knew just how to produce sophisticated TV. Their main ad looks like she is running against Scott Walker! And that is waking viewers up.

Playing to the high-tone politically involved image of the district, the ads are booked on national news channels.  (If PBS took ads, one wag told me, they would be a blizzard there.)

It’s almost unheard of to see a saturation TV ad campaign in an Assembly race -- even veteran politico and Assembly member Fred Kessler couldn’t remember a similar case when asked.

“I was floored when I saw it,” said Geenen herself, but delighted that it kept to her platform and approach.

She was assumed to be running behind two other noted progressives in District 19 and is seeking to change that expectation. They are Milwaukee County board chair Marina Dimitrijevic and active political figure Jonathan Brostoff.

Any polling in this race is private, but word on the street even before TV had her nipping at the heels of County Executive Chris Abele’s well-funded candidate in third place, Dan Adams. Adams’ style has been a disappointment given the friendlier, more issue-focused reputation he brought into the race. Instead of intelligent discussion, he has gone hard in support of school choice and vouchers and attacking other Democrats for not knowing how to talk to Republicans.

County board chair Dimitrijevic 
In my own July 22 column making a choice in this race, I picked Marina over Jonathan, a view I more strongly support today. But even then I pointed out that Geenen with more seasoning was a keeper in local politics.  What I didn’t know then was that she would have the funding to match the rivals and experienced hands in political messaging to challenge her opponents.

Few Assembly candidates have the money or gumption to take to TV a week ahead of the finale in a tight contest.  Geenen can because of strong USW financial backing – as much as $41,000 according to reports. The Steelworkers’  enthusiasm stems not only from the top office her father holds in the union but also their knowledge of her labor  work with the Previant law firm – and the still fresh desire to expose the horribles of Walker’s elimination of collective bargaining and paycheck dues collection for their public worker brethren. 

Geenen’s team has taken to CNN, MSNBC and apparently local TV to force attention to her vision and echo exactly her style.   In the TV ad she is not running against any of the others. You would swear from the tone that she is running against Walker, so prevalent is the attack on his policies.  

Now that is quite clever if you don't think about it too much – and not thinking too much is a requirement of good TV advertising.

The whole idea of the Democrats is that come November Walker should be history and Mary Burke – already ahead in the polls – will knock him out of the governor’s mansion. That is something Geenen fondly wishes.  But the key to TV ads is not to get too complicated and lost in the weeds of issues. So no one watching considers she might not have Walker to pick on by November. Such ads choose an ideal monster, a bogeyman that voters understand you oppose as they do and use the bogeyman to establish your policies and confirm your willingness to fight. And right now in District 19 that hobgoblin is Walker in terms of failed education and economic policies that are the heart of Geenen’s platform – indeed the platforms of Dimitrijevic and Brostoff.  Only they haven’t used his face on TV.

So Geenen’s ad pinpoints specifically what most Democrats support. The ad doesn’t put  Act 10  front and center but the consequences of Walker’s reign front and center in more humanistic terms, especially evocative in a  primary where Walker is not even opposed on the Republican side of the ballot.

The ad reflects the politically hip union supporting Geenen. It is clearly not meant as an anti-Burke ad but the idea of going to Madison to fight against the policies of Walker and his followers.   Because even getting rid of Scott doesn’t get rid of the damage.

Geenen’s problem, of course, is that these views have been forcefully articulated by Dimitrijevic and Brostoff in forums. This is a fresh way of selling the sizzle not the steak, something else TV is good at. 

This single district Assembly battle represents an extraordinary amount of money when you consider Adams backing by Abele and his mainly out of state supporters; then throw in  the Marina-Jonathan grassroots donations from within the district and state; lard in the union PACs mostly backing Marina and the fund coordination for Brostoff. Then add the USW money for Geenen. Suddenly the cash you’d expect in much bigger contests is being lavished here, alongside some strange whispers and sniping on the street about “the other” – whichever “other” could hurt your candidate.  

The Geenen forces taking a chance on TV have put regionwide attention on District 19, where there is an almost palpable public distaste for Walker’s damage to the city and state. Whether Geenen wins or not, a lot of voters are saying, “Right On!” 

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news.From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with its still operative archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com

Monday, August 4, 2014

VERY ODD AND ENDS OF AUG. 12 IN MILWAUKEE

By Dominique Paul Noth
FIRST ODDIOCY – THE TWO-FACED JOKER ATTACK

The biggest oddity for the August 12 primary landed August 2 on doorsteps in a major Democratic stronghold, District 19, which ranges from UWM south through Bay View.  The oddball flyer attacked the two leading progressive candidates for that Assembly seat without mentioning the candidate the flyer was actually supporting nor the deep connections of the flyer group to the county executive. 

Chris Abele has spent a lot of time assuring reporters he is not playing politics, acting surprised or distressed when questioned. It’s become like a Martin Short routine --the sketchy Nathan Thurm always denying any involvement.

But in finances and organizational links, County Executive Abele is closely connected to the flyer group and he is playing heavily in politics – in District 19 with Dan Adams and in District 10 with his campaign director and former legislative director at the county, Tia Torhorst.

The oddity flyer came from a secretive heftily financed organization called Forward Milwaukee County Inc. Many thought (or hoped) it was dead and gone after it spent big last April to carve into the wages of Milwaukee county board members, just as Abele was pushing for. Goal accomplished – as supervisors expected, the voters erroneously saw money savings and agreed, and so the Forward group went quiet.  It seemed.

Only now like the ghosts in “Poltergeist” creeping in through the TV set – “They’re back!”

Last March it raised $50,000 quickly (and probably a lot more since) for radio ads and other promotions to turn the board into a part-time pay status in 2016 while still requiring caring supervisors to work full time.  Its treasurer is Joseph Rice, who blamed the board more than the US Census for squeezing him out of a board seat and has been on the attack ever since.

The funding we know of (we only know a smidgen -- remember the secrecy rules allowed in forming a   non-stock Wisconsin corporation) comes from the octogenarian financier who is now Chris Abele’s favorite adviser,  Sheldon Lubar, who sees the county board as “sand in the gearbox” (while many others now recognize Abele as the “fly in the ointment”).  Lubar has been reportedly joined by Bradley Foundation’s   Michael Grebe and other business names connected to the county executive. 

By not naming Adams in the flyer and pretending to be just about the county board in portraying Marina Dimitrijevic and Jonathan Brostoff as card deck jokers, Abele hopes to retain deniability. But the public has long known he has been upset that the board has been united behind Dimitrijevic in vetoing some of his policies and hires (while clearly supporting others). Though nominally a Democrat, and a rich one,  he turned to conservative Republicans to push through his power-seeking bill known as Act 14 and other pet pieces of legislation that don’t really address the county’s problems but give him a freer hand to do what he wants without judicious interference.

The current Assembly Democrats had tough questions about some of his ideas, so he threw money at Republicans in the legislature and is now pushing for an Abele breed of pliant Democrats in Madison.  The flyer is seen as part and parcel of that game.

This Rice-Lubar Inc. is now a PAC for Abele’s candidates, pretending to still be upset about the county board.  Sure,  the board like the exec is hardly flawless. Such is the nature of legislative arms. But it exercises an important and legally required check and balance on the executive, from whose office most county scandals have come.

BLATANTLY MISLEADING and forced, down to the misleading newspaper blurbs,
 this is one side of the Joker flyer that hit District 19 homes and had voters crying foul!
If nothing else the flyer has made crystal clear to the average citizens the ugly holes in campaign laws. Attacking two candidates without naming who you are for?  Asking voters to phone  the two candidates --  to cease and desist what? Their questioning the exec? Clearly there is not an understandable issue in calling them, it’s all about politics and shifting votes in a district election.

Yet by never naming Adams, the Forward Abele group  can claim to be engaged in issue advocacy not candidate advocacy.  Everyone living in the district knows the purpose of the flyer – and from all camps they expressed dismay about the deception.  How the flyer has been distributed is also interesting, since it landed next door to journalists and union leaders but not in their mailboxes.

Yet the flyer clumsily arrived at “The Geenen Household.” That is  another progressive candidate in the race, Sara Geenen, a union lawyer who cannot be tied to the county board and has maintained decorum with most sides in this race. Given her amicable style and especially her close connections to the well organized and politically astute Steelworkers, she is not an enemy Abele wants to add. Yet her supporters were clearly miffed that she was excluded from the flyer attack – they felt he was slighting her at a time when she needed the help of his opposition.

When discussing the flyer, Brostoff laughed aloud. He has been attacked by Dimitrijevic supporters for criticizing her refusal to go along with Abele’s attempt to wrest parks patrol from the sheriff’s office – which hardly sounds like a county board devotee, does it? And he hasn’t worked there for years (once a staffer for Supervisor Jason Haas and on leave from working for state Sen. Chris Larson).  So the flyer is clearly more connected to the assembly contest than the county board.  Brostoff  advisers speculate that the Abele camp must really be ticked  at him or the internal polls they have reportedly been taking show that he is doing quite well.

Dimitrijevic is also amused, particularly since the board accuses them both of failure in  the one district where the efforts of the county board are highly admired (on one end is Dimitrijevic, on the other is Gerry Broderick, an avid champion of the parks system and financial frugality who already has several distinguished Democrats maneuvering for his seat when he retires in 2016,  whatever the ultimate pay scale). 

The Abele theory must be that making mischief by splitting the progressive voters among three could leave the field to Adams. It might work in some districts but it strikes me as a misreading of how many progressives there are in District 19 and how Adams with these maneuvers has  quickly diminished the image he started with. In forums and appearances he has come over as petty and combative.

Many expect the second shoe after the flyer  to drop right before the election in a flood of ads for Adams, who is raising money mainly from outside the state  from names familiar to watchers of Abele.  Abele’s father was co-founder of Boston Scientific and the son runs the Argosy Foundation the family wealth has spun off. Now, taxpayers suspect that  under the fabrication of an inefficient board (translation: they don’t always agree with him) he is trying to gain the sort of unfettered authority that would create outrage if his name were Scott Walker.

The voters shouldn’t be the maddest people about this bizarre  flyer. That should be the flagship newspaper of the Scripps organization (still known after the recent buyout as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
  
The flyer claims its views of Dimitrijevic and Brostoff are supported by JS,  using bubbles of text ostensibly from  the editorials. But these are mainly columnists and reports on various issues quoted out of context. 

The most vicious quote in the flyer is  against Dimitrijevic and pretends to be normal JS opinion. But it is actually from conservative blogger Aaron Rodriguez whose work appears in Purple Wisconsin, which the newspaper deliberately distances itself from with the warning: “a collection of community bloggers with views from across the political spectrum.”  Rodriguez writes for El Conquistador and Charlie Sykes’ Right Wisconsin and inadvertently,  in the column cited,  revealed not dysfunction but the care, study and diligence the board goes through to vet their proposals through legal experts -- in contrast to what courthouse insiders describe as the Abele-Lubar righteously close-minded certainty. 

It is all the sort of violation of journalism ethics for which once upon a time  the newspaper would threaten legal action. But this is not the first time the Forward Milwaukee group has been accused of violating campaign law behavior.

In a knowledgeable community unaccustomed to backstabbing nonsense and big spending in such a race,  this flyer is backfiring hard by portraying the county board as a failed vessel rather than the balancing legislative wheel voters expect and respect from anyone they send to Madison. The jokers are becoming the people who spread this around.

HOW CAN LIBERALS HAVE SO MUCH MONEY?

A more amusing oddity is the shock! shock! that progressives have a lot of money to put behind their beliefs.

For conservative Republicans, committed extreme libertarians (think Kochs) and tea party devotees, money has always been their hole card – easy to raise,  pick up a phone and tap a conduit, demoralizing to opponents and a guarantee of victory.

Imagine their dismay when progressives and common sense moderates combine either to match them dollar for dollar or display enough donations and database smarts to gain the edge.  That was the palpable outrage on the extreme right (our money is good, even holy) when the other side (their money must be dirty and underhanded) announced more than $400,000 in the last weeks before Aug. 12 to show a hard-hitting TV ad against David Clarke and for Christopher Moews for sheriff. 

It was probably a deliberate spit in the face to the NRA for sticking its email nose into this local race and seeking to raise last-minute money for Clarke to do similar advertising, which so far he has not been able to muster though he threatens to match the ad amount.

Doubling the shock was that this was being organized by the Madison based liberal group,  the Greater Wisconsin Committee, a statewide 527 independent PAC that had  been active in attacking Scott Walker.  Where it gets its money is protected under the law,  though  it cannot coordinate directly with a candidate (sort of the left brainy version of the ill-considered Forward Milwaukee County Inc. oddball flyer in District 19). But  it has union support and funding from Wisconsin citizens and businesses in the state who want to change from failing economic and education policies and the sort of extremist gun-nut strutting Clarke represents.

Judging from the instant reaction to this news of the dollars raised against Clarke, the right simply cannot believe there is this kind of money on the left for a Milwaukee County primary contest (though this anti-Clarke fever is hardly left, though the funding group may well be), so they immediately started a rumor that George Soros must be involved. That has a lot of people laughing.

Soros in the frequent bogeyman for  the right-wing, trotted out every time anyone complains about the Koch brothers or the Wal-Mart heirs or other active conduits for  conservative causes.

Soros is politically active internationally more than in America, which only has made him  the right’s global Dracula. Soros has gotten involved in US presidential politics and in Wisconsin is supporting the efforts by American Bridge 21st Century to examine Walker’s emails for wrongdoing. On a philanthropic front he has supported nonprofit investigative journalism. His causes are many even if he has publicly indicated his money for US politics is limited.   But he is constantly  accused in almost hysterical fashion for all the evils descending on the Republicans. 

There are plenty of Wisconsinites willing to give big to such causes as ousting Clarke. Blaming Soros as the monster funder  from hell without any evidence brings  chuckles from many connected with the Greater Wisconsin Committee, who frankly like the fear being engendered.

But again, the 527 rules for  a non-stock Wisconsin corporation are such that anyone can claim anything and no journalist can prove differently. Voters are forced to use their common sense. 

So ask yourself,: Who  wants Clarke gone? (That list is endless. Soros not needed.)

And who wants to demean accomplished political progressives in District 19 using the county board’s questioning of the exec as an excuse?  A much shorter list – it comes down to Abele, Adams and their camp followers.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with its still operative archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com