Friday, November 7, 2014

Boss Abele Has Another Really Bad Election Night

Chris Abele used to think he was a major power player and had set his aim on increasing his sphere of influence - so much so that he had started to refer to himself as Boss Abele.

Then the August primaries came and the Abele Party got creamed.  The two Democrats that Abele supported - Jon Richards and Chris Moews - failed to make it through the primaries.  His two hand-picked candidates - Dan Adams and Tia Torhorst - fared even worse.

Just as the wounds from that butt-kicking were finally healing, the general election comes along and kicks Boss Abele's butt again.

Boss Abele went all in with trying to buy influence by giving tens of thousands of dollars to Mary Burke's campaign.  Lord only knows how much more money he flooded into the race in other ways.

Yet Burke lost despite his large donations - or maybe partly because of them.  It probably didn't help that Abele refused to release the Walkergate emails until it was too late to do any good.

Adding to Abele's bad election night was the fact that the Move to Amend referendum, which he actively fought to stop - to the point of trying to illegally charge private citizens to have it put on the ballot - passed with a 70-30% landslide

Abele's misery didn't end there.

While the county administrator referendum did not pass, it showed an amazing amount of people that are so upset with his power grab and plutocratic schemes that they were willing to consider making real reforms to county government.

Boyd McCamish, Executive Director for AFSCME District Council 48, issued the following press release which describes what the results mean:
A campaign to eliminate the office of Milwaukee County Executive garnered surprisingly strong support in Tuesday’s election, a slap in the face to the current occupant of that office.

More than 134,000 Milwaukee County voters, or 44% of the electorate, voted to replace the County Executive with a professional county administrator.

“This is a stunning repudiation of the high-handed regime of County Executive Chris Abele,” said Boyd McCamish, executive director of AFSCME Council 48.

“A lot of people in this community realize Abele’s efforts to concentrate power in his office and hobble the county board through Act 14 have really hurt our local democracy,” McCamish said.

Abele’s efforts to ram through his budget and stifle public participation in the process are not sitting will with county citizens.

“This is a clear vote of no confidence for Chris Abele. When so many people want to do away with the office you occupy, there’s no way to sugarcoat the fact the public is really unhappy with the way you approach your job,” McCamish said.
Nope, not a good night at all for Boss Abele.

But at least he did have one victory come out of Tuesday. One of the candidates that he supports and gave at least $1,000 to did win his race.

Sadly, that candidate is Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, a rabid and corrupt Teapublican who is bad news for the state, especially Milwaukee.

And to think that Abele wants to run for higher office.  With Democrats like him, who needs Republicans?

1 comment:

  1. If you want to know who really had a bad election night it was Lee "Score to settle with Walker" Saunders of AFSCME and Betsy Kippers of the state teachers union. And Mike Tate and Chris Larson and Mary Burke and Barack Obama and ... well, the list goes on.

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