Fitchburg Wisconsin Mayor's Race Heats Up

Fitchburg Wisconsin mayor goes negative on progressives
and neighborhood activists in mailer delivered March 13, 2017

Sitting mayor attacks residents and activists: Is this the new normal?

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — A corporatist, anti-grassroots mayor is running for reelection in a small liberal city in southern Dane County.

The mayor is Steve Arnold and he is running scared.

Three weeks out from the April 4 Election Day, Arnold is going nuclear-negative, a clear sign of increasing rejection from progressives and neighborhood activists who are opposing him and his bizarre sock-the-working class campaign.

Arnold has a text-heavy mailer out that accuses his many opponents and Fitchburg residents of "lies," and features a nine-point list of negative, false and incoherent attacks.

After the Feb. 21 primary in which Arnold was rejected by 61 percent of voters, Arnold said he would change "tactics a bit" in his campaign, (Girard, Fitchburg Star).

Changing tactics. It would appear that Arnold's opponent, Jason Gonzalez, who is running to become the City's first Latino mayor has so upset the autocratic and heavy-handed Arnold regime that going negative, to Arnold's way of thinking, is the only way to hang onto his seat. Twenty days out from Election Day and the incumbent goes negative. Not a good tactic for this city.

It would also appear that the lessons of 2016 fall on deaf ears: Listen to the grassroots and the people, not the hacks and Party establishment.

Fitchburg Wisconsin Mayor Steve Arnold targets progressives and activists

Progressives, Neighborhood Activists Want Jason Gonzales for Mayor in Bellwether Wisconsin City

Jason Gonzalez is running for mayor in Fitchburg Wisconsin.
Jason is pictured with James Kilgore who helps people
traumatized by the prison-industrial complex try
to reclaim their lives, (Gonzalez for Fitchburg mayor).
Gonzalez is the first Latino to sit on the Fitchburg Common
Council and would be the City's first Latino mayor.

Fitchburg, Wisconsin—Jason Gonzalez is running for mayor in this small, fast-growing city in south-central Wisconsin, in the most progressive county in the state.

Gonzalez has amassed a broad coalition—typical in Wisconsin municipal campaigns—that includes Bernie Sanders progressives and independents, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, neighborhood activists and labor unions, (Wisconsin AFL-CIO).

Fitchburg is a bellwether, part of Dane county's jobs-creating engine that powers the state, socially liberal, activist and in the middle of a hot real estate market.

Gonzalez preaches "inclusion" and "collaboration," and would become the first Latino elected as Fitchburg mayor.

He's running against incumbent Mayor Steve Arnold, who calls himself a populist.

The progressive label seems ironic for a mayor who wants $100s in property tax increases, (nine percent), for working-class homes, higher rents for tenants and who seeks to privatize City services for those living in cul-de-sacs.

As though living in a cul-de-sac, a small home, or on a rustic road were a bad thing. Arnold also apparently doesn't like the bucolic look of residents' front yards, so he has divined a grand vision to pave over people's front yards. Walkable urban neighborhoods and pedestrian approaches, he says, (Wisconsin State Journal), (Fitchburg Star).

Arnold is fighting a City and a grassroots-backed candidate in Gonzalez that does not react well to commissars working to decide what front yards and neighborhoods should look like.

Word from the campaign front is Gonzalez is the on-odds favorite to defeat Arnold.

In the February primary Gonzalez won 47 percent of the vote to Arnold’s 37 percent. Marc Jones finished with 13.8 percent of the vote. Jones has since endorsed Gonzalez. The election is April 4, early voting begins March 13.

The Pocan Problem

In a dynamic that has progressives shaking their heads, an increasingly corporatized U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, (D-Madison) decided to endorse Arnold in early March.

The move echoes perhaps the worst image of 2016 broadcast from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last July. It features Pocan reprimanding the Wisconsin Bernie Sanders delegation for wearing "silenced by the DNC" tape over their mouths. Hundreds of Sanders supporters walked off the floor as Pocan and DNC hacks preached "unity," a heavy-handed move that did not work out well in November.

Corporatized Democrats like Pocan have not seen the April 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary results from Fitchburg that saw Sanders win easily. If they knew and cared about the results, likely they would be backing Gonzalez.

"This is our community. I know there is no easy fit for which member of the political spectrum supports a candidate for mayor in Fitchburg. But this is a strength of our campaign. We need wide collaboration now," said Gonzalez last January after knocking on a door. "I'm proud of the wide support we have received. People need to know they are being listened to. That's the basis of my campaign."

It's a little rich to read give-me-more-money Mark Pocan endorse Steve Arnold for Fitchburg, Wisconsin mayor. What attracts Pocan: Nine-percent property tax increases, higher rents or privatizing cul-de-sacs? (WISC-TV).

What is clear is that residents of Fitchburg are looking pretty small now-a-days from the D.C.-based, money-infused world of Mark Pocan.

Come to think of it, that's the problem with Arnold as well: People just don't seem to matter so very much anymore.

Jason Gonzalez is working to change this.

Neighborhood Activists Fight Fitchburg, Wisconsin Mayor

Update: Mandatory sidewalks are a central issue in the spring 2017 mayoral election as a pro-let-neighborhoods-deide alder has declared his campaign for Mayor.
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Fitchburg, Wisconsin  — Used to be Fitchburg, Wisconsin pols would gloat to reporters over holding the line on taxes, opening up city government, and abiding by simple platforms of safe-and-clean streets to maintain this rustic paradise less than ten miles out from the capitol.

Now, the city of Fitchburg is under assault by the Mayor's office whose vision includes higher property taxes, higher rents, grand urban designs, and mayor-knows-better-than-neighborhoods twaddle, and an off-putting arrogance that should offend households of most every political stripe.

None of the above characterizations are even controversial, so insular has become the Fitchburg mayor. 

What's the matter with Mayor Steve Arnold? At base Arnold is officious and malignant, treating residents showing an interest in City affairs as interlopers, (Thomas, Wisconsin State Journal).

Those beautiful, rustic Fitchburg roads where families have lived for decades? Arnold has decided they need sidewalks and major retrofits, and objecting residents just don't see the big picture that Arnold has divined and laid down in Arnold's Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan.

Fortunately, a motley coalition has grown in opposition to Arnold, and residents appear to be fishing around for an opponent for the mayoral election next April.

Alders Carol Poole, Julia Arata-Fratta, Jason C. Gonzalez, and Dan Carpenter are responding to the voice of the people, and deserve plaudits.

The four alders have drafted a resolution, (Resolution R-185-16), calling for the residents in existing neighborhoods to be the deciders on the question of whether bucolic roads and neighborhoods need to be retrofitted by Steve Arnold, and whether neighborhood residents should be socked with the unwanted bill.

Mayor Steve Arnold opposes the democratic citizens' resolution of course. Residents just don't realize Arnold will develop policy and their concerns are being addressed, says Arnold.

Arnold couches his opposition to neighborhood sentiment by assuring residents that he too opposes elements of his own mandatory-sidewalks push and that Resolution R-185-16 really is just going to bring more unwanted sidewalks, and "actually weaken ... prohibitions on installing sidewalks in existing subdivisions." Alice in Wonderland.

Mostly, Arnold declares that he knows what's best, hopes residents will come to see this, and that democratic, anti-mandatory sidewalk resolutions are not required. I hope you will see that I am right, says Arnold.

Seriously, and with no hyperbole.

In an email dated November 28, 2016 12:38:02 AM CST to numerous Fitchburg residents, Arnold writes in part, "no resolution is needed," and Arnold hopes residents should "not see a need for a separate resolution."

For a dose of reality, below is a reproductions of Resolution R-185-16, and part of an email chain to Arnold stating in unequivocal words that mandatory sidewalks are a terrible idea, and that Resolution R-185-16 is the mechanism to protect neighborhoods from Arnold. Arnold's repulsive reply is reproduced.

Fitchburg Resolution R-185-16

Email dated November 28, 2016 12:38:02 AM CST

From: Steve Arnold
Date: November 28, 2016 12:38:02 AM CST
To: Jay Hochmuth Cc: , Ahnaray Bizjak , Thomas Hovel , Wade Thompson , Patrick Marsh
Subject: Re: Sidewalk Resolution, R-185-16

... Thank you for your input on the bike and ped plan update and on resolution R-185-16. I think I understand your goals, and believe they are better served by the updated ped policies in the draft bike and ped plan, which were sent to all interested parties on 11/23. Adopting the resolution will actually weaken the plan's prohibitions on installing sidewalks in existing subdivisions. 

In any event, I oppose the concurrent passage of a resolution, [Resolution R-185-16], addressing the same subject matter as the bike and ped plan. Upon adoption, the plan will be Council policy, and no additional resolution is needed. Anything that the Council, as a body, wants for pedestrian policy should be in the plan. 

It is my hope that your concerns will be addressed by the plan itself, and that after review of the next draft, you will not see a need for a separate resolution. 

Feel free to share this with interested neighbors.
 -- Steve Arnold, Mayor ...

Wisconsin Voters Prevail in Court, Then Face New Fight to Vote

American heroes: Two of many Wisconsin litigants
who took on Republican voter obstruction laws in Wisconsin

The Republican Party stands for much that is deplorable.

Perhaps nothing is worse than its animosity to voting, the foundation of American democracy.

Republicans and rightwing money have poured money and effort into obstructing voters and even when voters ultimately prevail in the courts, voters are left confused, isolated and frustrated.

All of these objectives are part of the Republican assault on democracy.

Writes Michael Wines in a NYT piece filed from Madison, Wisconsin today:

It seemed a clear victory for voting rights advocates in July when a federal court invalidated much of Wisconsin’s restrictive elections law, concluding that it discriminated against minorities by requiring voters to produce photo ID cards that blacks and Latinos too often lack. The remedy was straightforward: Henceforth, the state was to 'promptly issue a credential valid as a voting ID to any person' who applied for one. ...

Despite a string of court victories against restrictive voting laws passed by Republican legislatures, even when voting rights groups win in court, they are at risk of losing on the ground. 

On the ground includes navigating a purposely onerous state DMV and, though not mentioned by Wines today, a new twist in another barrier to voting: The poll worker, (or election inspector).

After the Wisconsin Republican Party began naming its poll workers some five years ago, voters often face a hostile, antagonistic gantlet at the polling place: Wisconsin Republicans. Wisconsin Republicans being Wisconsin Republicans more likely than not: White and racist polling workers.

I speak from personal experience, you have to fight against every encroachment for your right to vote.

I spoke with Ruthelle Frank of Brokaw, Wisconsin in March 2012. Frank is a co-plaintiff in the heavily litigated federal voting rights case, Frank v. Walker:

'I have been living here 83 years; everybody knows me. We [Brokaw] have 194 people. I maybe could have voted last month illegally,' Frank said. 'I wasn't allowed to vote legally though, because I didn't have a valid Wisconsin ID. I didn't vote.'

As civil rights activists today march from Selma to Montgomery in protest of Alabama's voter ID and anti-immigration laws, Ms. Frank keeps up the fight in Wisconsin.

'My motto is: You don't use what you have, you lose it. But I have never seen treatment like this, what is going on,' said Frank. 'I'm fighting for everyone who has lost his [voting] rights. This isn't right, it's just plain crazy. Just because we're old, and can't get around like we're young doesn't mean we're stupid and can't think and shouldn't be able to vote.'

Frank whose story was broken by Robert Mentzer [in 2011] in the Wausau Daily Herald, sang the praises of old-time journalism, singling out Mentzer.

'I called up Bob Mentzer of the Wausau Daily Herald and told him what was going on; and he just said, "he's driving over,'" said Frank.

As the state and federal law suits against voter ID laws across the country continue, Frank said she is optimistic and ready for the fight.

The fight for voting continues, and one Party, the Republicans, are again on the wrong side of history.

Trump, Alt Right, Republicanites Are Seamless in Anti-voting Project

Anti-Semitic tropes pitched by Trump hit by Chris Hayes

American racists have found a hero in Donald Trump.

If Trump loses, then black and brown Americans are to blame. So goes a racist, hence absurd and false syllogism that has now veered into historically deprecatory anti-Semitic tropes, (Hayes, All In With Chris Hayes).

From the Alt Right nonsense to the local white primates populating municipalities administering elections to the Republican Party's Big Lie of vast voter fraud, Trump has declared that if Trump loses then the election is illegitimate. I have no idea if the American political culture has taken this development in.

Trump will lose.

Though this latest muck from Trump may be an implied threat to the Republican Party that it better get behind Trump or he spill the beans on the taunts and lies that underlie Republicans propaganda, in itself inciting racists is never a good idea.

Important piece in Rick Hasen's Election Law site.

From Hasen:

... This morning Donald Trump tweeted: 'Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail. Instead she is running for president in what looks like a rigged election.' People in the media and broader society are suddenly concerned that Donald Trump is now threatening the core of our democracy: rule of law and the belief in the peaceful transition of power across presidential administrations.

But this is nothing new. ...

No, this is nothing new, but what Trump and the Alt Right with the assistance of generic racists have done in amp-up the vigilance of racists. [I have bore witness right here in Dane County and I am involved in a legal fight against Fitchburg, Wisconsin which cited me for 'disorderly conduct' for voting Aug. 9, an act of retaliation against speaking out for voters the last seven years working as a poll worker.] [You can contact me here: malleon@live.com].

When you see racism, you have to speak out.

The stakes are getting higher.

Wisconsin Republicans Going to Extremes to Suppress Vote

Update: Republicans and bureaucrats team up to lie and stop voting, (Storify).
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Wisconsin Republicans really don't like people voting.

From the dozens of GOP-created election laws, to local municipal racist poll workers, (e.g.: Ron Johnson and Dale Zahorik), to the latest Republican attempt to confuse and block the process to obtain voter IDs, some people just don't want to see you at the polls.

Not much of a price to pay to obstruct, harass, and destroy the votes of Wisconsin citizens.

It is up to citizens of conscience to blow the whistle on racists blocking the vote, wherever this deplorable action occurs.