Dog Days of August and Wisconsin Democracy
Dane County, Wisconsin — Not sure who is more contemptible, white Republican election inspectors and Fitchburg City Hall who work to stop the votes of minorities or the Republican ass-hats who stuck Wisconsin with the Fall Partisan Primary elections in the first days of August.I know who comes in third.
If a multi-millionaire candidate shopping for the statehouse parachuted into a district, spent six-figures, after refusing on several occasions to support the Recall-Scott Walker movement as a UW-Madison student, after having been outed as devoid of community involvement, elected-office experience, political advocacy, knowledge of public affairs, and paying a D.C. consulting firm $10,000s to write, produce and mail reams of multi-page, glossy campaign literature, then this candidate would likely be disavowed or at the least not endorsed by Democratic Party strategists.
Wrong, wrong decade, wrong century.
The most valuable capital in politics is money of course, but this truism is now foundational law, blacking out any semblance of community democracy and grassroots participation. This epic-failure defect is now acclaimed by too many Dem. Party players with their hands out looking for their cut of the bank account of the new multi-millionaire in town, one Jimmy Anderson.
If you thought helping grassroots, democratic movements were a mission-critical Democratic Party objective in Dane County, you are dead wrong.
The Herb Kohl model of Democratic Party politics reigns supreme at all levels of electoral campaigns.
Gone are the days of William Proxmire, dropping a $100 to get elected, or Russ Feingold, knocking on every door of his district multiple times to get his start in electoral politics in a 1982 campaign for Wisconsin State Senate, though on a positive note Feingold is working to bring back people over money, an endeavor that looks to win in this cycle in Wisconsin's U.S. Senate race.
I refer you to the campaign for Democratic Party nominee for the Wisconsin State Assembly, (District 47), featuring Fitchburg Ald. Tony Hartmann (D), Fitchburg Ald. Julia Arata-Fratta (D) and California native, Jimmy Anderson.
Anderson is the multi-millionaire referenced in the lede paragraph. Anderson won the three-way primary, 44 percent (Anderson) to 38 percent (Arata-Fratta) to 16 percent (Hartmann) on August 9.
Anderson told the Capital Times that he would have opposed Scott Walker in the 2011 Recall campaign, but was forbidden by "law" from signing the Recall petition, a ludicrous suggestion that went uncorrected and virtually unchallenged in the local news media during the last days of this early August low turn-out affair.
I met Jimmy Anderson, he came to our home, nice guy. I sent the guy suggestions about hitting doors, Mark Pocan, Bernie Sanders and voiced my concerns on a number of public policy issues.
As the campaign continued, it became clear that Anderson knew next to nothing about public policy.
Tony Hartman and Julia Arata-Fratta came to our home next, and it was immediately apparent that these two Fitchburg alders were running to win, with deep roots in the community, and a wide knowledge of public affairs, so we, our household, supported Hartman and Arata-Fratta.
Everybody played by the rules, but Mark Pocan disappointed by sitting on the scales blinded by the promise of Anderson's money to come.
Fresh from last month's Democratic National Convention in which Pocan worked to shut down the Bernie Sanders Wisconsin delegation, Pocan hoisted Anderson to victory.
Congratulations are due Pocan, Anderson and political consultants with the Pivot Group and Andy Gussert.
Absent a return to citizen-based, democratic movements defining the Democratic Party, Dane County and Wisconsin need no more such victories.
This morning, Pocan is back in my InBox, shaking the trees for bucks. Didn't strike me as auspicious, post-partisan state fall primary, 2016.
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