DON’T OVERLOOK AUG. 12 IN THAT EAGERNESS FOR NOVEMBER ELECTION

By Dominique Paul Noth

Most of the Get Out the Vote organizational promotions and media stories in Wisconsin have focused on the big November showdown for governor where Mary Burke, still largely a newcomer, is running neck and neck in polling against GOP Gov. Scott Walker, who thinks he’s famous enough to be president.

Additionally on November 4 the state Senate is within shouting distance of being won back by the Democrats, who could also make gains in the Assembly.  The state attorney general’s seat could also be taken by a Democrat depending on who emerges on top in the August 12 primary. 

August 12 means Milwaukee can put in a real lawman,
 Christopher Moews, to replace Clarke the media clown.

Yet there is a curious failure of media attention over that August 12 primary a month away, though the “big tent” party has some major primary decisions.  How feisty should  the winners be? How accommodating in bending even if  not breaking, how capable, how progressive, how cautious? The choices for Democrats are vital not just four months down the road but on their own – in Milwaukee the primary pretty much decides the next sheriff, a repeat contest from a terrible year for real Democrats,  2010,  with likely different results.


Unlike states like Virginia and Mississippi where primary fury makes national headlines, the Wisconsin primary is trudging along unnoticed and little discussed.

This is shameful inattention. Because despite the horrors of holding a primary in August rather than the after Labor Day scheduling of the past, voting is actually easier. Perhaps in conciliation for the awkward timing, the law lets you vote right now with minimal effort, and from your home.  Didn’t know?  Well, it’s high time someone told you.

Given Wisconsin’s traditional high turnout of voters over six decades, the  anticipated low results of  this primary could be a  pitiful historic embarrassment. It’s even more surprising given the widespread anger over the gridlock in politics – but that speaks volumes about widespread complacency. Blame the media, the  power of big money to chill election turnout as futile, blame how Americans take for granted  the core of democracy – voting.  But look in the mirror as you are assigning blame.  Wisconsin voters, not seeing a lot of headlines to interrupt their summer doldrums, are failing to recognize the value of the  primary process in shaping their own political future.

Future articles will  deal with the nature of  these contests (who’s on first and so forth), the consequence of gerrymandering, the new games played with social media, the flat lies or subtle mistruths  that one candidate tells about another in the primary even when they pretend to be in the same party. 

But this story about Aug. 12 is mainly explanatory and to my surprise seems much  needed.

The choice of August for a primary smells of partisanship but the main reason is a federal law passed under Ronald Reagan and improved in 2009 to the point of refusing waivers of the election scheduling to states like Wisconsin.

It is the MOVE Act (Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment) to assure timely receipt of complete primary ballots for overseas military and citizens.  It was resisted by Wisconsin with waivers  but agreed to in an expanded version in 2010.  (Wisconsin actually then extended that time frame for state elections to 47 days from 45 for absentee voters  at home as well as abroad).

What lends an odor of partisanship is not just our gridlock times but how eager the Republicans were to depart their normal Grinch posture to play footsie with the feds on this one. Especially since such overseas absentee ballots hardly carry decisive weight in these elections. 

Even after the GOP played friends with our troops by agreeing with the consent decree and rescheduling the primary, they went on attack in 2011-2013  against the parents,grandparents and siblings of those far-flung uniforms – the local voters who could make a genuine difference: minorities, students and elderly who lacked driver license photo ID. They were the target of that infamous voter ID bill that will not be in place for August or November. (It was rejected as blatantly unconstitutional this year  by a federal court and is likely to remain rejected on the appeals road since there is no evidence it addresses any real problem but clearly was inspired by the growth of minority voters.)

One result – it is easier to vote on August 12 via absentee ballot for everyone.

People who have voted in the past have more time to vote absentee – in fact, any ballot mailed (postmarked) by Aug. 12 qualifies.  For first-time voters who need to register before being allowed at the polls, the Government Accountability Board has provided an instruction page and they can even register online at myvote.wi.gov though new voters will have to provide their birth information and address.

The absentee ballot form  itself to sent to municipal clerks  can actually  be downloaded from the GAB in English, Spanish or Hmong.  

Beyond that, regular Wisconsin voters may also request that a ballot be sent to them by sending an e-mail or fax to their municipal clerk. This request must be made no later than 5 p.m. on the Thursday before the election in order for an absentee ballot to be SENT to you. 

(There is one change under the new law for absentee ballots. Previously, voters who changed their minds could go to the polling place and make a new vote on Election Day, and their absentee ballot would not be counted. But this is no longer an option.)

This primary is particularly important to the Democrats in many contests, even in districts where a Democrat is almost guaranteed to win and several in one party are competing aggressively for the same berth. 

The party out of power has a conflagration of strong possibilities to regain ground in November – so that has gotten the most media attention.  Yet  it is  voters in the primary who are going to determine the tone of that voice – what sort of Democrats will they pick to  work together and with the opposition?  

Think about that. The basics have changed and August shapes the nature of that change. In a strong democracy, voting is a habit and the primary is the perfect time to get the habit. Many Walker opponents, not just unions, are blindly looking toward November   as their “correction’ toward a do-something government, without weighing how much August in many districts will determine the tenor of that correction. The state contests are  no longer built around Act 10 on one side and distaste for the recall process on the other. It’s about competence in office and it radiates up and down the line of the legislature and major elected offices beyond the governor’s mansion.

Many Republicans – usually eager to gather their troops around primaries – are downplaying this one or playing mischief.  They  sense some troubled waters based on the governor’s poor economic record. Even if once enamored of Walker’s policies and tactics, their faithful supporters can no longer keep their heads in the sand given his self-centered behavior and dismal track record.

Not when Illinois and Minnesota are attracting more major businesses than Wisconsin. Not when even conservative school districts are  balking over the loss of quality and continuity, the reliance on big money and the tired  sound-bite promises of a brighter future if they only wait. It is all sounding hollower to them than to diehard Democrats.  

Aside from a few contests of their own on their side of the primary, the GOP will try to back the most pliable Democrats in districts where the GOP has no chance.  They can  also play up as dissent some genuine conflicts in the Democratic ranks, as voters figure out not only the best candidates but their own emotional state. Do they want flame-throwing fighters, duck and weave accommodators  or genuinely smart and determined boxers? 

This is where the citizenry has to roll up its sleeves and dig for the realities. Because at the doors and in electronic and mail come-ons, every candidate sounds smooth and sensible and makes a good case for how hard they will work for you. Intelligent voters need to pay attention and look behind the curtain.  The primary is one place where voters can deeply influence and actually clarify the issues and personalities heading into November.

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 editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, then 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

CANTOR’S DEFEAT OFFERS LESSONS FOR MEDIA, RYAN AND A NATION TURNED COWARD BY MERE FRACTION

By Dominique Paul Noth

In a nation of some 241 million eligible voters, can a mere .00015% of that total – 36,000 people --   derail something that 78% of Republicans actually support in polls – immigration reform? 

If ignoring needs of constituents in pursuit of national
attention did in Eric Cantor, what fate awaits Paul Ryan?

Can they send the GOP majority in the House scurrying for the hills, also refusing to vote on other concerns dominating the public thinking – unemployment compensation for long-term job-seekers,  steps  on climate change,  universal background checks for gun owners, fixing the voter rights law, allowing students the same low-interest loans as banks  get?

It may just have happened. That is, if you believe the paroxysm of doomsday judgments by talking heads across the cable TV board after that June 10 primary in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.

The results there deserve to reverberate – the defeat despite a 20 to 1 spending advantage of House GOP majority leader Eric Cantor, regarded as the poster child of conservative insider politics and one of the “Young Guns” of the GOP future.

He was beaten by a Tea Party darling – even supporters didn’t expect the challenger to win -- basically on two issues: That Cantor had made a head fake toward a very limited Dream Act (most of America wants a better stab than his at legalizing children brought to this county by undocumented parents)  and that he (probably more true) was so busy hanging out with lobbyists and bigwig D.C. money that he ignored his own constituents. This in a Richmond district that had been gerrymandered 57% GOP basically to cater to his continued victory.

He lost to a door to door campaign focused on xenophobic anger -- described in the cable media as “populist anger” --  over any cooperation on establishment immigration reform, though most members of the national GOP want just that, step by step. Polling after the primary suggests that 70% of Brat voters didn’t put immigration as a primary issue but Cantor’s cooperation with Wall Street.  You wouldn’t know from the coverage.

David Brat, a professor of introductory economics,
needed only 36,000 primary votes to take out Eric Cantor.

It is hard to believe that anyone could paint themselves as further to the right than Cantor but among Tea Party faithful, David Brat did.  A longtime political wannabe and small college economics professor, Brat ran a focused campaign, though he has not yet painted a clear picture of how he would handle the office he’s seeking. But he pounded Cantor tirelessly on immigration reform as “amnesty,” as a crony capitalist to Wall Street and for neglecting his constituents in order to build up his power base to be the next Speaker of the House.

But can we also look at simple numbers? Brat won with 36,110 votes to Cantor’s feeble 28,898.  So the GOP in Congress out of fear will now let 36,110 primary voters control the nation’s fate and destroy the GOP as a national party as its white male base evaporates demographically. For the world’s most vaunted democracy, this is ridiculous.

In November of 2012, that Virginia district drew nearly 381,000 votes in the House race. A more accurate nonpresidential year comparison might be 2010, a big one for Republicans when that contest drew nearly 233,000 votes.  So the turnout for Brat was somewhere between 9% and 15% of the normal vote.

This is going to decide the nation’s fate? So cable news tells us.

Virginia actually has the option of picking a GOP candidate via selective conventions. But distaste for hometown boy Cantor favored an unusual summer primary where Cantor expected his superior name recognition and money to win. The results caught his pollsters flatfooted with higher than anticipated turnout from Tea Party sympathizers.   It was literally the most surprising loss of a big name in House politics in generations. So that warranted coverage.

But cable news then became silly. Noted pundit Jon Stewart devastatingly mocked them for suggesting this ended “the Golden Age of cooperation” between Democrats and Republicans. That is nailing the flat nonsense since cooperation has long been nonexistent.

Much airtime deathknell chat was translated on cable into the end of immigration reform, which only spurred Republicans in Congress to duck for cover. Sure, the media and politicos regarded Cantor as a GOP giant because of the money and airtime he commanded – and then exaggerated his importance or sincerity in immigration reform.  The result? A sliver of a sliver of the Tea Party engendered panic.

What the election should do in every state is reinforce the importance of retail politics and the fate awaiting representatives who take their eyes off intense feelings within their own communities. 

If anything, it ought to send a warning shot to any politician who seeks a national reputation at the expense of home cooking, who ignores the thinking within their community, relying on gerrymandering to protect them.  I recall a Republican political adviser warning elected officials recently at a private meeting about this danger.  “The problem with gerrymandering,” he said, “is you assume it makes you safe, but who lives in your district and how they think changes and you have to keep up.  Don’t presume people don’t move into your district or the people who are there don’t change their minds.”

Among those so vulnerable is a GOP Young Gun from Wisconsin, US Rep. Paul Ryan. He has been busy painting himself as the party’s economic guru, ignoring his own voters and actually dismaying much of the GOP with his ideas about decimating Social Security and adding to defense spending. His views actually don’t match his own Congressional District 1 – he couldn’t even carry the votes in his hometown of Janesville in 2012 and looks even more remote from constituents in 2014.  And this year he faces strong, personable and well funded Democratic opponents competing in an August primary.

Perhaps a motivated decimal point of the Richmond VA district may succumb to a professor of introductory economics who labels every immigration effort as “amnesty” despite the penalties attached and the rescue of the nation’s finances that would occur from giving immigrants without papers a path to residence and citizenship. 

But there is another unexplored side to Brat who is a committed Christian and conservative yet whose free market ideas are actually more in line with Occupy Wall Street than national Tea Party ideologies.  He has set himself in opposition to “Chamber of Commerce” Republicans who want immigration reform.  So far he has dodged details of his approach to foreign policy. He deliberately quotes such Constitution authors as James Madison over their fear of business collusion rather than their admiration of immigrants (“That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.”)  He even seems to believe that Christianity and taxation are incompatible.

It’s too early to count on Brat fumbling his limitations the way other Tea Party surprises have done to lose elections in the past, though apparently many liberals already have such hopes. He will be surrounded by seasoned advisers and comes in with the reputation of a charismatic professor. 

The Democrats picked a sociology professor
and author from the same college, Jack Trammel,
 to play underdog (as Brat did to defeat Cantor)
  and he is gaining Internet campaign money.

But ironically, his Democratic opponent is actually a more highly regarded professor at the same college, Jack Trammel, who unlike Brat has not fudged his resume.  (Brat’s literature claims he tested his mental prowess against the “intellectual elites” at Princeton without revealing this was Princeton Theological Seminary, a small but notable Calvinist center only geographically related to Princeton University. From the seminary, Brat holds masters of divinity and formed a belief that God guided his victory over Cantor.)

Trammel, who was belatedly chosen by the Democrats to run, likely thinking he would be a sacrificial lamb to Cantor, is a father of seven, author of 20 books, teacher of sociology, holder of a master’s degree, a local historian and columnist with his own economics credentials (“The Richmond Slave Trade: The Economic Backbone of The Old Dominion”).  

He is clearly the unknown underdog, but thinking does change. In Richmond, a number of Republicans don’t agree with Brat on many views, including how to tackle debt, or his defense of China as a model example of the free market system. So among the growing questions in the district is the political allegiance of the constituents and whether they are as motivated to vote as Brat’s small band of original supporters. Many residents may not be ready to jump over the wall to the Democratic side, but neither are they enamored of Brat’s philosophy.

Another change is the sudden growing fever for Trammel, which translates into campaign support.   Within 24 hours of the primary results, the online ActBlue reported over 1,000 donors to the Trammel cause giving $42,000.  And the numbers continue to grow.  

So despite cable news, things are afoot in Virginia and no one should, as Cantor did, assume results that might indeed change. 

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, then for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic before rising to senior editor.  He created Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts.  In the 1990s he was tapped by the publishers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special technology and information projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he was hired as editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press, the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, and helped create its milwaukeelabor.org portal.  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 continues to review theater for urbanmilwaukee.

US RULING DID FAR MORE THAN RESTORE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IN WISCONSIN

By Dominique Paul Noth

US District Judge Barbara Crabb

Gay marriage is all over the national news with a parade of federal court decisions overturning state efforts around the country to deny same sex couples the right to marry.  So it was understandable that all the Wisconsin headlines June 6 were about how veteran federal district judge Barbara Crabb “Overturns Wisconsin’s Gay Marriage Ban.”

Except her definitive ruling, despite the inevitable appeals, did a lot more. 

It flat eliminated a 2006 amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution that was put on that November’s ballot for political motives. Afterward in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the wording survived legal challenges that state high court even with its conservative makeup would probably not allow today because it deliberately conflated two issues in one amendment, one clause aimed at same sex couples and the other at unmarried couples of any sexual configuration. 

Wisconsin is now officially the 12th state – by some counts the 20th -- to reject same-sex marriage state laws after the US Supreme Court agreed that DOMA was unconstitutional. But there was another side to these orchestrated attacks – an attempt to hold back the trend for people living together without the benefit of marriage but seeking the rights protection enjoyed by married couples.

Today’s march of time statistics could easily have been forecast back in 2006 as an inevitable trend in a society that has imposed financial and legal barriers to marriage, not to mention failing to respond to social changes.  The statistics indicate nearly half of young mothers have children out of wedlock though many are in sustainable couple relationships.  So domestic relationships seeking legal stature were also in jeopardy in Wisconsin from interpretations of this amendment.

It’s more than pregnancy, which 50 years ago accounted for a third of marriages according to some surveys. In Wisconsin, as I wrote back in the summer of 2006 before the vote, the amendment was not just aimed at same sex couples though that brought the media attention. It was a broad attack on choice within a general community of all ages that was choosing to live together devoid of formal city hall marriage yet deserving the basic legal protections of a married family. It actually flew in the face of what couples were deciding around the country about how to live together and raise children. 

Crabb’s ruling, though brought by gay and lesbian plaintiffs asking the judge specifically to allow same sex marriage, overturned the whole shebang – and she spelled it out that way in upholding the plaintiffs:

 “Standing in their way is Article XIII, § 13 of the Wisconsin Constitution, which states that ‘only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state.’”  That second sentence infected many heterosexual relationships.

“In addition,” Crabb continued, “various provisions in the Wisconsin Statutes, primarily in chapter 765, limit marriage to a ‘husband’ and a ‘wife.’ The parties agree that both the marriage amendment and the statutory provisions prohibit plaintiffs from marrying in Wisconsin or obtaining legal recognition in Wisconsin for a marriage they entered in another state or country.”

You’ll note how she spelled out and rejected the entire amendment declaring: “The question raised by plaintiffs’ complaint is whether the marriage amendment and the relevant statutes violate what plaintiffs contend is their fundamental right to marry and their right to equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Crabb ruled that it did – the first time in memory that an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution agreed to by a voting majority has been overturned as violation of the controlling US Constitution.

So I interpret this decision as more than a victory for same sex couples. The state has always given special preference to marriage, before and after this amendment, but now it may have to consider how it treats such nonmarried provable relationships, perhaps with various classifications. As I wrote back in 2006 opposing this ballot question, there needed to be some validation of those who for various reasons – including sensitivity of children from previous marriages – did not choose full marriage as they entered long-term domestic partnerships.

After eight years,   Crabb’s ruling seems to validate their rights as well.  Disputes over the validity of legal rights under domestic partnership agreements are likely to disappear or certainly change drastically.

In fact, all the emphasis on the same-sex issue, the center of the decision perhaps, may have hidden some broader aspects. Undertandably.  In enthusiasm after having sat on the shelf for so long with their basic rights violated, same sex couples rushed to get married in sympathetic Wisconsin counties, notably Dane and Milwaukee, even while Crabb called for a more orderly discussion by the plaintiffs on just what remedies they sought under her decision. 

All of which may keep the same-sex marriage pot boiling in the state, perhaps requiring reissuing of marriage licenses if the GOP continues to  force that issue. GOP servant J.B. Van Hollen, the attorney general who knows better than to run again for state office, is likely to seek appeal through every avenue. He has already done so with the decisive federal voter ID ruling the state has lost and is applying continuing pressure over a John Doe decision that is now in federal appeals court hands. There, despite right wing agitation and high-priced lawyers, the rights of prosecutors to investigate substance are likely to prevail.  (Choosing someone who puts citizens first and craven politics away may well be a big issue in the race for a new attorney general in November, which is why it was a major mistake this week for the lone GOP candidate for the office, Waukesha DA Brad Schimel, to insist he supports Van Hollen’s continued weak defense of bad legislative law.)

Crabb went out of her way in the ruling not to demean the voting majority back in 2006. “In reaching this decision,’ she wrote, citing varied court citations,  “I do not mean to disparage the legislators and citizens who voted in good conscience for the marriage amendment. To decide this case in favor of plaintiffs, it is not necessary, as some have suggested, to ‘cast all those who cling to traditional beliefs about the nature of marriage in the role of bigots or superstitious fools,’ … or ‘enemies of the human race.’ Rather, it is necessary to conclude only that the state may not intrude without adequate justification on certain fundamental decisions made by individuals and that, when the state does impose restrictions on these important matters, it must do so in an even-handed manner.”

It is telling that she, like many other federal district and appeals courts ruling for same-sex rights, went out of their way to quote Justice Antonin Scalia, the most outspoken conservative opponent of same-sex marriage among the US Supremes who in his writings warned that these consequences were a natural outcome of interpreting the original intent of the US Constitution.

Still it is important to recall the 2006  political times and even desperation when Bush was still president  (he lost the state vote) and the Democrats were making gains in a (believe it or not) less polarized  Wisconsin. The GOP made a move to convince the conservative religious that it was their freedom that was in jeopardy from homosexuals, a viewpoint I have never understood. Putting the issue on the ballot even in this mangled and religiously pointed form was a calculated GOP tactic hoping that turnout by fervent fundamentalists who felt under threat from nonreligious couplings would also defeat the Democratic governor, Jim Doyle, as a side-effect.  

That badly backfired.  In fact, after the dust settled, it was a noted conservative, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, who privately pronounced his colleagues dunces for putting this question on the ballot.  Openly, he blamed the amendment for bringing out young liberal voters in droves. Yes, the amendment passed but it so insulted voters in many districts that Democrats actually gained seats in the state legislature while retaining the governor’s mansion – and also gained strength in the US House.

The temper of the nation has changed in eight years.  Couples living together outside marriage, same sex couples living together and even raising children, are part of a highly ethical fabric committed to neighborhood development and community growth.  There is a change in attitudes, and it is affecting the innards of both parties.  Old guard Democrats are having to learn to embrace realities from a broader activist Democratic coalition.  (There used to be huge fights among Democrats about domestic rights; those are long gone.) And slowly the same change in underway in Republican ranks.  It is also happening in religious ranks, redefining the meaning of family values, social justice and even the term “conservative.”  Churches don’t have to change their beliefs to recognize there is health in diversity in a democratic society and in understanding the heritage of acceptance.

The slowness among traditionalists to respond to these changes was obvious on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when a former Milwaukee archbishop now elevated to cardinal and practiced public spokesman for the church, Timothy Dolan, revealed his own limited understanding of American values as they relate to Catholic values.  Dolan, whom I have interviewed, tried to suggest that gay marriage was making gains because his church was being “out-marketed” by opinion makers, those Hollywood types, he hinted.

But it wasn’t better public relations or better salesmanship as history demonstrates.  Over centuries religious leaders have turned over to civil authority many of the legal rights of marriage, which weakened their claim to the word “marriage” as a substitute for the term “sacrament.”

The public has picked up on that – finally.  Marriage definition has become not a religious issue but a human rights issue since hundreds of such basic rights associated with marriage are controlled by civil law not by church decree.

The surprise is that it took so long to crush this peculiar Wisconsin amendment.  Many in Wisconsin have wandered long in a desert of legal rights controlled by the state and justified as either the “voice of the people” (based on that calculated 2006 vote) or an attack on traditional religion.  I personally know many families who will not settle in Wisconsin as long as such onerous policies were part of the law.  No more, perhaps.  Yet there are still forces in the state attempting to defend it. 

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 editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, then for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic before rising to senior editor.  He created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts.  In the 1990s he was tapped by the publishers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special technology and information projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news.

From 2002 to 2013 he operated as editor the Milwaukee Labor Press, the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, and helped create its milwaukeelabor.org portal.  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 continues to review theater for urbanmilwaukee.

A SURPRISE FOR ME IN THOSE EXHIBITS THAT HELPED DEFEAT WISCONSIN VOTER ID LAW

By Dominique Paul Noth

The things you discover in Google search! I had never realized that an article I had written as editor of Milwaukee Labor Press was used by the winning side in that sizeable US Eastern District Court decision striking down that bizarre Wisconsin Voter ID law.

Judge Lynn Adelman

It happened April 29 when, combining complaints into a single trial and decision,  US Judge Lynn Adelman forcefully struck down Wisconsin’s Voter ID law as unconstitutional denial of minority voting rights, among other errors. 

It was a decision so sweeping and imposing judicial review that no legislative remedy is available to Gov. Scott Walker who wanted the limitations in place before the November election.  His extremist supporters may fume and rail, as Assembly majority leader Robin Vos assuredly did, but wiser GOP heads actually read the ruling. They seem to be quietly backing off for now.

Of course I am exaggerating the importance of my story’s presence in the trial exhibits. One set of plaintiffs on the winning side submitted 808 academic and journalistic citations, emails, videos and opinions (mine was 187 on their list). If Adelman worked his way through  all those exhibits in the case that started many court hearings earlier as “League of United Latin American Citizens, et al” he may have come across it.  Who knows?

But I do know his reputation as a thorough judge with a humanistic bent (which infrequently had led to reversals on appeal but seldom with basic constitutional issues).  No one has ever claimed he is not scrupulous in gathering research and testimony that directly bears on an issue. That, and the failure to mention the high regard he is held in by the legal community, nor  how he was blocked by the GOP in the US  senate when nominated to join the appeals court, were among the errors in the recent JS side by side comparison of him with fellow US Judge Rudolph Randa.

Yet frankly, I didn’t remember directly writing  on this ridiculous voter ID law, unless someone was reading my mind.   So when a friend sent me the trial’s list of exhibits and I was up there, that launched some  surprise and memory lane research.

What, I wondered, had I written about to provide evidence for the winning side? I know the right wing likes to beat me up as a flaming leftist, while I think of myself as solidly left – like most of America, I suspect, when they vote. I do understand how partisan our politics have become and how a concern about factual elements can now be used as examples of extremism by RightWisconsin and company. But what had I written?

Since I served as editor the Milwaukee Labor Press for a decade, and that article was from that era, I know the drill. Most of those stories dealt with mundane statistics and meetings, and debates within the labor community over things like highways vs trains, mining vs environment, minority hiring vs nepotism. Yet political hired guns on the right see my union credentials and automatically dismiss any conclusions. So  what had I said that they could beat up?

Turns out the winning side in the voter ID case had turned to a deep analysis I did in early 2012 exploring the US Census of 2010 and the enormous growth of the Latino population in Wisconsin.  The story is still online. 

My 2012 story emphasized the importance of the Latino vote by
picturing US Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin (she won) with Latino
activist Jesus Salas and  Rep. JoCasta Zamarippa.

It reflected that the Latino citizen population was growing immensely, would probably not erupt for years, but both parties had better look out when it did erupt. It made some observations but the article was heavily based on data.

I didn’t like to think that a factual study of US Census data, with my particular brand of commentary, would outrage the right, but sure enough it had (my Google search revealed).

The story detailed quite factually the growth of Latino voting power in Wisconsin and suggested that Wisconsin was slowly looking more like Milwaukee, now a minority-majority city with 39% African Americans and 17% Hispanics.  How that figures into voter ID becomes obvious, certainly to any public official who can do simple math and  look around the corner. These Hispanics voters,  both born here and legalized,  often work or live in circumstances that do not require driver licenses in the same proportions as white suburbanites, which tilts those photo ID simplistics.  They survive poverty circumstances in many cases. They may share homes or have relatives who are undocumented, instilling an extra caution about intrusive  GOP sponsored investigations of honest citizens,  using nonexistent voter fraud as a legislative excuse to play politics and instill fear. 

The May Day march of 2011 underscored a growing young
Hispanic population willing to demonstrate for immigration
reform.

Apparently there was one  comment in my story that agitated the right and may have attracted the plaintiffs:

“You can already hear that particularly bigoted breed of Charlie Sykes and CRG conservatives scoff that all this (growth)  has to be the ‘illegals’ taking those valuable jobs of cleaning out cesspools or picking corn that whites born here must surely be clamoring for.

“But the statistical breakdowns reflect a quite different reality – the variety and vitality of Latinos in this state. What the census analysts describe as those with ‘Hispanic roots,’ society now recognizes as leaders in entrepreneurship, culture expansion and community building -- business owners, plant workers, housewives, production experts, legalized here or born here. Many in Milwaukee are indeed our poorer citizens, in a city that suffers staggering rates of unemployment for minorities. But simultaneously they are filling schools and churches and gaining clout. A great number of their children born in this county have now reached voting age.” 

It was a 2012 recognition that has grown in validity, reflecting a hot reality in the 2014 voter photo ID decision.

No wonder Walker wanted  voter ID in place before the November election  to cripple nature and normal expansion  --  and make it difficult for his social and intellectual opponents to vote him out.  

Frankly, my story was an infinitesimal part of the case.  I sure wish  I had access to the depth and breadth of examples of social and employment discrimination facing minorities that Adelman had.  Note how he not only drew the right conclusions but pushed  a strong dose of sanity toward those overwrought  Walker proponents:

“Given the evidence presented at trial showing that Blacks and Latinos are more likely than
whites to lack an ID, it is difficult to see how an amendment to the photo ID requirement
could remove its disproportionate racial impact and discriminatory result,” he said, asserting that there would be instant hearings before him if the legislature attempted any such abusive amendment.

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 editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, then 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  arts editor and then its senior feature editor. In the 1990s 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 as editor the Milwaukee Labor Press, the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, and helped create its still operative milwaukeelabor.org portal.  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 Urban Milwaukee.

HIGH-PRICED LAWYERS FOR RIGHT HAD RANDA BUT WERE THEY JUST SNOOKERED INTO EXPANDING JOHN DOE PROBE?

By Dominique Paul Noth

Did Judge Randa fall into a honey trap
 set by US appeals panel?

It’s virtually impossible for laymen to follow the checkers game of ins and outs of the John Doe probe. Many lawyers have that same problem, and so obviously do journalists who fall back on preconceptions while much of what they do is flat guesswork. 

But one likely interpretation has been endorsed off the record by a number of legal experts familiar with the case, not discussed in the media but a hot discussion in legal circles.

It could very well be that the high-priced lawyers for the Wisconsin  Club for Growth were just sucked in to major tactical error  by the US 7th District Court of Appeals, which encouraged an oops ruling reversal  by US District Judge Rudolph T. Randa that  now allows  a broader investigation to proceed.

The entire episode may inadvertently reveal that the Club for Growth and other conservative groups’ longer goal was delay in exposing any wrongdoing rather than preventing the prosecutors from revealing wrongdoing. Because if there is anything illegal under our campaign finance laws about excessive coordination, it will come out sooner or later in any fair collection of evidence.  

But now the various decisions do allow what was probably the main political purpose of these hired guns. The results will not be unveiled in time to confirm in court anything ugly about Gov. Scott Walker before his November attempt at re-election.

This partial victory of delay may come at an enormous price.  Particularly if the public perceives that Randa tried to quash a pursuit of corruption in campaign financing based on his right-wing leanings. 

To oversimplify the sequence of events, the various rulings of Randa, whose decisions have strayed further to the right over the last decade, may have actually opened a broader geographic door previously denied the states’ district attorneys who brought the second John Doe probe. Previous, they were limited by the rules to only investigate campaign finance abuse within specific counties applying to specific residents.

Now, depending on court results, they could be open to something the lawyers who brought Randa into the case wanted to prevent – a sweeping nationwide probe of coordination with Walker’s campaign of third party money from states and residents far away. 

Most of the money raised by the groups involved for Walker came from outside Wisconsin and up to now outside the reach of state prosecutors.

Originally, the DAs,  both Republicans and Democrats, had sought to involve the state attorney general, a prominent GOP  figure, only to see him tacitly concede they had the right to investigate and yet stall for six months to join them.  J.D. Van Hollen has also decided not to run for re-election on the GOP ticket, and read into that what you will.

But the John Doe did receive broad legal permission to proceed, including a thumbs up from the Government Accountability Board, which by statute is limited in its ability to conduct criminal probes and is also beholden to Walker and the GOP dominated legislature for its board of retired judges’ terms in office. So from the start there was an effort to remove the John Doe from partisan tinge, including the appointment of a special prosecutor with noted conservative credentials.

The Wisconsin Club for Growth and other conservative groups that had raised money nationwide for Walker’s election campaigns – and this is not hyperbole but fact – went ballistic. It accused the prosecutors of invading their free speech rights by investigating their behavior, bringing up specters of Al Capone seeking to block any investigation into his tax evasion for fear it would reveal tax evasion.

A series of state court cases and appeals ensued – based on the standard cry of free speech rights and injury to political activity, always a winning soundbite and helped by past cases of prosecutorial excess  in a nation that hates criminals getting away with anything but also hates police authority. The Club’s lawyers, hoping for quick resolution by a sympathetic pet on the federal bench, Randa, asked him to halt the investigation.

Former state justice Janine Geske was among
the legal experts disturbed by sudden breadth
of  Randa's ruling.

He did that and much more in a sweeping decision May 6.  Refusing to rule on whether the prosecutors’ case was frivolous in other state court cases, he ruled they should cease and desist the John Doe and destroy the collected evidence. Both Democratic and Republican attorneys contacted expressed shock at the unprecedented broadness of a decision by a judge who once prided himself on more narrow if quite conservative rulings. 

They noted the judge created a classic Catch 22 for the prosecutors. If they didn’t destroy evidence as he ordered, they were in contempt in his court.  If they did destroy evidence, they were in contempt of state judges in ongoing cases.  Certainly his decision brought immediate national stories about Randa’s clear bias given his staffing and contacts.

The federal appeals court immediately recognized this Catch 22 and May 7 granted the emergency staying of Randa’s order. But being logical and helpful, they also drew Randa a road map on one glaring mistake, how he had to first declare the original complaint frivolous, which in his zeal (his decision now a clear error contains almost a cut-and-paste of the Club for Growth’s interpretation of the events, which is hardly the full story or even an accurate version, as a simple search of newspaper records would reveal) he had neglected to do and therefore failed in any legal way to justify his overreach.

May 8 he fell into this carefully laid trap by the federal appeals panel, two of whom were appointed by GOP presidents and quite likely reflect the majority conservative view of the full 15 member court of appeals.  He offhandedly agreed he had no right to order destruction of evidence and declared the original complaint frivolous, opening the door to broad investigation of whether it was frivolous.

Though lawyers for Club for Growth immediately crowed that this second Randa decision was extremely embarrassing for the prosecution and “a very good day for us and a very bad day for them,” the DAs involved laid low, perhaps chuckling.   In fact they may be delighted to have their reasons for the probe put under a more public spotlight.

What Randa has  unintentionally done is allow various groups of judges, state and federal, to hear testimony and information about why the pursuit is not frivolous and why prosecutors are allowed to gather evidence under previously granted legitimate court authority – something no judge has the right to throw into the river.

I’m simply an observer, not a lawyer, but it could be the expensive team assembled by Club for Growth has now misfired twice. First, by letting the case into federal court, where any approval allows the investigators to spread out into jurisdictions denied them as state prosecutors.  And second in allowing many judges in court sessions to hear the reasons why their right to search is inviolate and whether the evidence for the search is frivolous or not. Which, of course, also allows the public and journalists to get deeper clues into the reasons for the investigation free of the partisan reporting and taints that have surrounded the John Doe from the start.

It may also provide a dose of reality for partisans on both sides.  If there is a smoking gun in the violation of campaign finance laws, it will not be demonstrated in court before the November election. Voters will have to look at Walker’s actual strange track record in office to make a determination and not expect a last-minute rescue revelation in the courts.  On the other side, the right cannot crow before the election that the courts have determined he has done nothing wrong.  That decision is far far away.

The struggle now is to let an investigation proceed, so that Wisconsin doesn’t duplicate New Jersey, being blinded by partisan attitudes and political necessities and only belatedly waking up, after election, to face some horrible truths about how far politicians will stray to raise money, gain power and behave in and before achieving office.

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 editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, then 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  arts editor and then its senior feature editor. In the 1990s 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 as editor the Milwaukee Labor Press, the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, and helped create its still operative milwaukeelabor.org portal.  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 thirdcoastdaily.

LIES AND WISCONSIN POLITICS INTERMINGLE IN ELLIS’ HASTY DEPARTURE

By Dominique Paul Noth

Ellis leaving, but with memorable full head of steam.

After putting a ham-sized fist in his mouth on video – again! –  and insulting his own Republican colleagues even as he revealed his ignorance about voting laws April 9, Wisconsin Senate President Mike Ellis had no other course two days later than to announce he would not run for re-election for Neenah area District 19. 

But the reasons he gave in radio interviews  and to reporters  actually don’t hold up (basically, "it was sure foolish but doesn’t everyone have a right to talk nonsense to a gathering in a bar?"). Such excuses speak volumes about the mendacity that the public has come to associate with politicians.

It took Gov. Scott Walker, a fellow victim of speaking too preeningly to a secret taper, to really pinpoint the hypocrisy game the public has rightly begun to hate. 

Walker says Ellis’ remarks were distressing (perhaps because they included sarcastic comments about Walker being all about Walker). But back in a notorious 2011 chat with someone he thought was billionaire David Koch, Walker was full of boasts and self-delusion about his own importance.  His ego still enlivens the hit parade on YouTube --  in two parts!   

Also that year, as the “As Goes Janesville” documentary later revealed, Walker promised a major donor on video he would push for “right to work” legislation after he got through dismantling public sector unions. The transcript is agonizingly embarrassing. 

Now with the Ellis case, Walker pronounces a new level of  caution – don’t say out loud what you personally believe.  In other words, lie more adroitly.  He has learned, he says, that anything can be on tape so be careful.  A fair paraphrase: Don’t speak in public all those ugly hopes, planning and thinking you do in private.  

At least Ellis, the Neenah Republican who has been in the legislature since 1970, openly revealed his fears and fly-by-night thought process.  He was already facing a hot and heavy state senate test against a strong campaigner, Democratic Rep. Penny Bernard Schaber.

An advertising image lost.

Everyone who has covered state politics knows his tendency to boast about his prowess off the cuff, sober or not, and he has been exposed on video again and again for such excesses. One Democratic adviser told Schaber months ago that her entire TV campaign should be showing the real Ellis on the senate podium screaming at opponents of ultra sound probes for pregnant women to sit down and shut up. 

Well, now TV won’t have Ellis to kick around anymore. The chosen GOP leader for voter regulation laws was caught on tape suggesting he should use his own fund-raiser to set up a super PAC to raise money against Schaber, even including names of the rich Republican backers (operators of Mills Fleet Farm among them) that would be solicited for money.  He had to know that the idea was illegal – the remaining court firewall is that PACs can’t openly coordinate with candidates. It’s even worse if he didn’t know since he is the senate leader on campaign laws.

In that video he went on to declare himself more important to the Senate than elected GOP leader  Scott Fitzgerald or even that other Scott, the governor.  It’s so devastating a video that there is a short version for people who can’t believe the highlights 
 and then an unedited hour-plus version to confirm the worst. 

Deception exposed him as it did Walker, this time from the right while Walker’s came from a radio trickster.  Even Democrats were glad to see Ellis destroyed but remained troubled by the motives and the source -- James O’Keefe, who claims his Project Veritas pursues corruption wherever the video cameras find it but gets money and attention from notorious hate groups of the right-wing. 

O’Keefe is a proud professional liar, pretending to be something he is not. That’s how he posed as a pimp to get video (heavily edited to fit his pre-conclusions) on ACORN, which helped shutter the national reform community organization for low income families.

In this case, the media reports, Project Veritas pretended to be the son of an Ellis supporter to capture the ugliness on tape at the Inn on the Park bar near the Capitol in Madison, a watering hole where Ellis’ tendency to let down his hair has got him into trouble before.  This is known in the media business as low-hanging fruit. It is also known as using methods that violate journalism ethics.

Among the interested listeners, though he has denied absorbing the details, was state Sen. Glenn Grothman who intends to run for Tom Petri’s US House seat grabbing the same extreme right money that Ellis offended. 

All that loose talk, combined with discussion of GOP bigwigs owning valuable  lake property,  left Ellis no recourse than to abandon the re-election race.  Now he paints himself as another “independent thinker” being pushed out by the Republican Party machinery.

 Given the source of the exposure – O’Keefe and his tactics – there seems some validation.  Ellis took the common sense course – as did several quieter Republicans, more than the media unveiled  – of opposing expanded spending for private voucher schools, which drew the wrath of the powerful lobbyists of American Federation for Children. So did opposition to  another bill close to Sen. Leah Vukmir and other Tea Party groups to gut educational Common Core standards.

So clearly there were big money forces that wanted him out, though they deny coordinating with O’Keefe. But it sure signaled that O’Keefe had a receptive right-wing audience for a stealth attack.  Ellis certainly believes, as he told Wisconsin Eye, that he was set up after multiple efforts. 

 Ellis now tries to paint himself as one of those few  honorable traditionalists  forced out by extremists, saying there was “no room on the street anymore for people to walk down the middle of the road."  But while there have been episodes of math common sense from Ellis, immediately his self-inflation was labeled as nonsense by watchers of the legislature, noting how despite his loose tongue Ellis was given the presidency because he could push  through the party line and was dismissively arrogant in his treatment of opponents.  Remember, this is the same party that elected Bill Kramer Assembly leader despite warnings about his annoying tongue and loose fingers.

Penny Bernard Schaber
 -- GOP scrambling to find
an opponent for a notable campaigner.

Madison reporters were  particularly amused when Ellis likened his work in the Senate to three others departing out of age or sadness with the tone of politics  – Tim Cullen, Bob Jauch (Democrats) and Republican Dale Schultz.  Ideology aside, they were considered true listeners and negotiators. Ellis was not.  But now he seeks to wrap himself in their aura.

Schaber took the high road saying she was sad to see Ellis leave on such a “sour note.”  But she knows the Republicans are scrambling to find an opponent to pour all the ready money into the race (there are four likely opponents already)  and knows that voucher school advocates are particularly poised to fund any opponent.  Schaber’s team laughingly admits they now have to scrap an ad campaign built around Ellis’ video blunders.

But here’s what Ellis didn’t learn and Walker pretends to have learned. Rather than seeking  better hearts and minds to occupy public office,  he needs the GOP to find candidates with tighter lips, obedience  built into their DNA and smiles that never reach the eyes.

For 10 years the author, Dominique Paul Noth, served as editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press until its demise in 2013 and continues to freelance to many publications as well as write for his own websites. A professional journalist since the 1960s he has won multiple cultural and political journalism awards and for nearly two decades was film and drama critic before serving as  senior editor at the Milwaukee Journal. His theater reviews appear at Third Coast Daily.