Sunday, November 9, 2014

To Mike Tate, Peter Barca and Chris Larson! Please Do The Right Thing!

By Jeff Simpson

After a recent election drubbing, its time to lick the wounds and move on.   It is also time to move on with new leadership all across the board! 

That starts especially in the State Assembly where Peter Barca has overseen a complete transformation from being the majority party to being a party that hold the same amount of power as the office cactus(water rarely but usually pretend its not there).    Barca, overseeing the Assembly races, let 26 of the seats go unchallenged.   Does he even try anymore?  

Why in the world with that record he would want to continue on is beyond me.  Unfortunately for the left side of WI he does.   Fortunately though Evan Goyke is stepping up to challenge him!  if you are lucky enough to live in one of the few districts represented by a Democrat that is left, call your rep and say  - "Please for all that is Holy do NOT vote for Peter Barca to be Minority Leader.  Fine Assemblyman, horrendous Minority leader." (or something to that extent). 

Chris Larson, fresh off the Pat Bohmack debacle, is running again.  While Mr. Larson blatantly mishandled this Senate race and cost the dems a seat, he has only done it one term.   I would not be opposed to giving him another chance, BUT Jennifer Schilling is challenging him(sad Kathleen Vinehout isn't).  I highly recommend voting Schilling!  

Which bring us to Mike Tate.    Mike Tate has a long record of massive failure and this years election was no exception.  As Callen Harty pointed out, his record is not pretty!

Below are some of the highlights of Tate’s career.
He was the State Field Director for Kathleen Falk’s losing bid for the governorship in 2002. In 2004, a year before he graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor’s degree in political science, he was named the Deputy State Director of America Coming Together (ACT). The national organization disbanded in 2005.
Also in 2004 he served as the State Director of Dean for America. Howard Dean had lost several primaries by the time Wisconsin’s came up. Dean had pretty much listed Wisconsin as a must win and indicated he believed that a win in Wisconsin could turn his entire campaign around and lead him to the Presidency. Under Mike Tate’s leadership of the state campaign Dean finished third here with only 18% of the vote. It pretty much ended his campaign and any chance of becoming President.
Fair Wisconsin in its desperate bid to defeat the 2006 Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the state of Wisconsin hired Mike Tate to lead the campaign against it. The citizens of the state voted for the amendment with just under 60% of the voters supporting discrimination against their fellow citizens.
In 2008 he was the Executive Director of Advancing Wisconsin, a group that funneled money into the 2008 campaign to elect Barack Obama. Obama did win Wisconsin that year, one of the few things Tate has been associated with where his candidate or position fared well. According to an NPR special series called “secret money project” by Will Evans (11/3/08) Tate was quoted as saying that instead of the group fading away after the election he wanted to create “a permanent grassroots field-organizing infrastructure in Wisconsin.” Great idea if it were true. The organization’s website is no longer active and they are no longer registered with the Internal Revenue Service.
After his service with Advancing Wisconsin Tate became the chairman of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party. There has not been much to cheer about during his tenure. Wisconsin lost one of its most popular Senators when Russ Feingold fell to Ron Johnson. Also in that time Scott Walker won the governorship in 2010, became the first governor in U. S. history to survive a recall election, and proceeded to win re-election in 2014. The Democrats put forth Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett against Walker in 2010 and tried him again in the recall. This year the party, under Tate’s leadership, got behind the virtually unknown businesswoman Mary Burke almost as soon as she announced her candidacy. It was clear they had handpicked her and while Tate denied the party was endorsing her they did everything but come out and say it. Party regulars were denied a meaningful primary and never got fired up for her candidacy. She lost by 5%. Madison and Milwaukee voters did not turn out for her.
The amount of pain his incompetence has cost this state is almost unimaginable.   One good thing to come out of this though, is we finally found a way to bring the state together.  Start a petition to get Mike Tate to resign and people from all over the state will gladly sign it! 

I Signed and I recommend you do too!

It is time that Mr. Tate, Mr Barca and Mr. Larson  do the right thing. Step aside and clear the way for new leadership in our rudderless state.   Continue serving your constituents as well as you have been, work with the new leaders to advance our party, but please do not get in the way of needed and necessary change!




5 comments:

  1. Mr. Barca can only do so much on his own, besides, he has to focus on his real duty: representing his district to his best.
    Anything above and beyond is freebie, a give away to any other district, which any other district pays for someone else to represent them.

    The best direction of this blog should be a focus on progressive attitudes in governance and the positives that come with it. Compare this and contrast this dynamic view of the real world with conservative philosophy, and you will make many more friends than you already have.

    We all know Walker, who hasn't earned the title, "mr." in my view, is completely a corrupt politician.

    To his credit, he's a PK, he's never really paid taxes, or held a real job like most of us reading these blogs, or others.

    He's always relied on the funding of the wealthy conservative Christians, who themselves are quite the pieces of work.

    However, being of the lower class himself, he has allowed himself to indulge in the money and power of public office. And sadly, he is willing to only really bend ear to the wealthy because of this.

    So, be it Wieser Concrete, 3M, Nedland Industries, any sand mining company, GTAC, any Koch subsidiary, any turf-owning Wisconsin Road Builders, any Menards/ Club for Growth, American Sky Brewing of Hudson (who will sell out to Miller just like Leininkugels eventually), or Polaris Industries, or... well, you name it.

    This blog needs to focus on the contributors to Walker, as well. This will help everyone who would like to boycott Wisconsin Walker supporting companies as best they can.

    Shine the light, and yes it is on both parties throughout all levels of Wisconsin Government.

    Focus, though, less whine. Ok?

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    1. There is some value in finding leaders passionate about progressive issues, but I'll say it again, with the example I've used before, the top Democrat is hell-bent on destroying the last remaining dregs of our democratic republic in the cause of cementing complete totalitarian capitalism, by selling the last bits of US sovereignty to multinational corporations with the TPP. There is no reason to be affiliated with the DNC as a state party. Start there or you (we) are just so much burnt toast.

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    2. Very well said Anon 5:32. We do need to stop attacking each other in the cliched circular firing squads. We do infact have a problem of leadership but also of " folowership". Dynamic leaders might be able to inspire some of the apathetic into actually
      something but if the vast majority of us are content to just sit on the sidelines and bellyache we will get the results we deserve.
      Twenty-six uncontested seats is absolutely unacceptable, failure campaign actively is unacceptable. We should have at the very least organized a write in campaign for a corporation which if successful would go along way to undo Citizens United.
      As Will Rogers frequently commented he was not a member of an organized political party, he was a Democrat.

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  2. The worst thing about Tate is that he has to please Chris Abele. We need to fix the fundamental disconnect between the values of the Dem grassroots and the party's top funders. The Dems top donor is being compared to Scott Walker by public workers, how is Abele not the center of this discussion? Going after Tate and Barca is just rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.

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  3. Larson just did his part, clearing the way for Shilling as Majority Leader (a definite upgrade). We will see if Tate and Barca get the hint.

    Dennis brings up a good point- center-right oligarchs like Abele do not help the state party at all. We need someone from the Larson-Kovac-Barnes approach calling the shots in the statw's largest county, and not Plales or Abeles or Krusicks or other Third Way sellouts.

    ReplyDelete