By Jeff Simpson - Cross Posted at Purple Wisconsin.
There are 426 School Districts in the State of Wisconsin, that
currently serve over 800,000 public school students. In each of these
426 school districts, there is a democratically elected school board
that represents the community in running the School
District(approximately 3000 elected School Board members in WI).
In 1921, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards(WASB)
was formed. WASB seeks to advance education through supporting the
tradition of local school board control of the state’s public schools.
The Wisconsin Association of School Boards is a member-driven
organization that supports,
promotes and advances the interests of public education in Wisconsin.
WASB offers various services, from advice, to training, to advocacy and
information. One thing WASB also does is send out questions to
candidates running for elected office that focus on education.
This year was no different....well it was a little different(amphasis mine):
As it has done for a number of years, the Wisconsin Association
of School Boards (WASB) has conducted a question-and-answer with the
gubernatorial candidates, in this case Walker, the incumbent, and the
challenger Mary Burke.
According to the WASB website, “In keeping with our past practice, we
posed a series of questions to the candidates on a range of education
issues. Governor Walker’s response to the survey request stated ‘our campaign will not be completing any interest group surveys or interviews.’”
WASB did publish Mary Burke's responses and they can be found here!
Scott Walker has time to be interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, The right wing American Spectator Magazine, The right wing talk tank Hoover Institute, the despicable Rush Limbaugh, CNN, New York Times, and GQ, where this was revealed:
Back when Scott Walker was a young politician on the make, he was
known in media circles as a guy only too happy to supply quotes. Today
the governor rarely does interviews. (At the outset, his staff would
only promise me two or three of what they called "pullouts"—a chance to
ever-so-briefly grab him after an event and on the way to his
car—though ultimately I was granted two sit—downs of about twenty
minutes each.) Instead, Walker's preferred vehicle for conveying his
opinions is supplied by Sykes and other (right wing)talk-radio hosts,
since their deference to him is almost vassal-like. As Walker's former
chief of staff, Keith Gilkes, told me, "It's a medium where the
governor can go on the air and deliver a message unfiltered."
We also found out in the #walkerdocs drop, that Scott Walker enjoys telling our local right wing talk radio jocks what they should be talking about:
In 2008, after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorialized in
favor of light rail, Walker turned to his talk radio allies to make
clear his opposition to government-funded rail transit.
He frequently dropped conservative talkers Sykes, Belling,
Weber, Jeff Wagner and Vicki McKenna emails with talking points about
major issues before the county, and often distributed treats.
“County Executive Scott Walker plans on making his rounds next
week to deliver his own special holiday treat — Frosted Pecans (I have
already heard just about every nut joke, but you can try) to thank his
radio friends for getting the word out throughout the year on the
Executive’s Ride, the Budget, and other county-related issues,”
spokeswoman Fran McLaughlin wrote in a December 2007 email.
Showing posts with label 2009 Elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2009 Elections. Show all posts
Monday, October 27, 2014
Sunday, April 19, 2009
It's Hard To Keep A Good Fascist Down
Jody Harding was a candidate for the mayor of Racine. Her claim to infamy was that she wanted to deny legal rights to anyone that didn't meet her qualifications.
In the primary election, she was soundly defeated, garnering on 7% of the vote.
Not willing to take reality for an answer, she is now running again in the general election as a write-in candidate. She also is bringing a really, um, unique approach to things:
It is obviously Harding's right to run again as a write-in candidate, but it would scare me to vote for some one so out of touch with reality. If the majority of the voters chose two liberal candidates, that according to her, are similar politically, I would call that a pretty obvious refusal of whatever her message might have been.
In the primary election, she was soundly defeated, garnering on 7% of the vote.
Not willing to take reality for an answer, she is now running again in the general election as a write-in candidate. She also is bringing a really, um, unique approach to things:
Harding, who was one of eleven contenders for the mayor’s seat in the primary held April 7th, says she believes her message got lost amid the noise of so many, predominantly Liberal, candidates.Harding goes on to say how she was inspired by the teabaggers.
“People were confused,” Harding says. “They were overloaded with information and given almost no time to sift through it. Many voters gave up and just marked the name they recognized, which is how we wound up with Dickert and Turner on the ballot. Politically, there is almost no difference between them, but they are both well known.”
[...]
Harding claims she is not trying to draw votes from either remaining candidate. “Many people don’t consider either candidate an acceptable choice for mayor. My goal is to give them a better option.”
As a registered write-in candidate, Harding says her supporters don’t even have to spell her name correctly. “The vote-counters will be on the lookout for any variation of ‘Jody Harding’ or just ‘Jody’,” she says. “They’ll know that’s me.”
It is obviously Harding's right to run again as a write-in candidate, but it would scare me to vote for some one so out of touch with reality. If the majority of the voters chose two liberal candidates, that according to her, are similar politically, I would call that a pretty obvious refusal of whatever her message might have been.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Spring Election Results And Thoughts
Tuesday was the big day for the spring elections, there were some winners, losers and some really big losers.
Supreme Court
In the biggest race of the day, Lady Justice was the winner, by the re-election of the lady Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.
The loser was Randy Koschnick. Not because he had his butt handed to him in the election. I believe that he was led to believe that he would be enjoying the same bought and paid for election that Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman had. But early on WMC and the other special interest groups bailed out on him, if they ever did support him in the first place. It seemed like they were dredging the bottom of the barrel by then, having a lot of other people say no to them earlier.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Education won has Tony Evers managed to gain his victory more easily than I would have predicted, given that his opponent, Rose Fernandez, was getting a lot of out-of-state special interest money thrown at her.
I think she would have had a better chance of winning except for two things. The fact that she was too willing to sidle up to the special interests was one of them. The other was that some of her ideas and positions showed just how unqualified she really was for the job.
Taxpayers also win in this race as well. Fernandez' proposals, like breaking up MPS, would have jacked up the cost immensely. I suspect that it appealed to conservatives who saw several big troughs they could have fed at instead of just one huge one.
Local Courts
This was not a bad night for Lady Justice on the local level either.
J.D. Watts beat out Gabler and his hypocritical negativity, which is always a good thing.
Ellen Bostrom beat out Christopher Lipscomb. Even though I endorsed Lipscomb the other day, I also pointed out that Bostrom would make a good judge as well. I think it would have been better if one of them had gone up against someone else, but incumbents are hard to beat.
Local School Boards
This was the most disappointing part of the evening.
Peter Blewett walked away with an easy victory, defeating the dirty playing special interests-backed candidate.
Unfortunately, the special interests won on the other two contested races for the Milwaukee School Board. David Voelther beat Donna Peck.
In a real heart breaker, my friend Michael Mathias led through most of the evening. It was so sound that even JSOnline had called him the winner:
At least Mike can hold his head up with pride, knowing he ran a clean, positive campaign.
Similarly, my friend Zach Wisniewski lost out in his bid for the South Milwaukee School Board. But he too ran a good clean campaign. To show the class that Zach has, just look at the post he wrote about the race.
Both of these men should be congratulated just for the simple fact they were willing to take the risk and run for office, and did so with grace and dignity.
I am proud to call each of them my friend.
On a more positive side, another friend, Janet Evans was able to claim a seat on the Franklin School Board. Congratulations go out to her, with a word of advice about not letting the negative influences in her town sway her from doing what is best for the children.
The Biggest Losers
The biggest losers of the evening were not the candidates that lost their races. It was not the special interests. The biggest losers and biggest disappointments were the local media.
JSOnline did not have any results for a couple of hours after the polls had closed. But as observed by Phel and by RP, that did not slow them down from marking off the winners. On top of that, they had two separate poll results for Michael's race with the names interposed, and as mentioned above, they even named Michael the winner in the race in one of their Newswatch blurbs.
Fox 6's website was no better. They showed Michael losing in the numbers, but still checked him off as the winner.
TMJ4, boasting of their first HD news casts, couldn't be bothered with having a scroll of the results. To add insult to injury, I don't think they even covered the races in their first ten minutes of air time.
If the local news sources can't even get the information correct, where do we go from here?
Supreme Court
In the biggest race of the day, Lady Justice was the winner, by the re-election of the lady Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.
The loser was Randy Koschnick. Not because he had his butt handed to him in the election. I believe that he was led to believe that he would be enjoying the same bought and paid for election that Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman had. But early on WMC and the other special interest groups bailed out on him, if they ever did support him in the first place. It seemed like they were dredging the bottom of the barrel by then, having a lot of other people say no to them earlier.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Education won has Tony Evers managed to gain his victory more easily than I would have predicted, given that his opponent, Rose Fernandez, was getting a lot of out-of-state special interest money thrown at her.
I think she would have had a better chance of winning except for two things. The fact that she was too willing to sidle up to the special interests was one of them. The other was that some of her ideas and positions showed just how unqualified she really was for the job.
Taxpayers also win in this race as well. Fernandez' proposals, like breaking up MPS, would have jacked up the cost immensely. I suspect that it appealed to conservatives who saw several big troughs they could have fed at instead of just one huge one.
Local Courts
This was not a bad night for Lady Justice on the local level either.
J.D. Watts beat out Gabler and his hypocritical negativity, which is always a good thing.
Ellen Bostrom beat out Christopher Lipscomb. Even though I endorsed Lipscomb the other day, I also pointed out that Bostrom would make a good judge as well. I think it would have been better if one of them had gone up against someone else, but incumbents are hard to beat.
Local School Boards
This was the most disappointing part of the evening.
Peter Blewett walked away with an easy victory, defeating the dirty playing special interests-backed candidate.
Unfortunately, the special interests won on the other two contested races for the Milwaukee School Board. David Voelther beat Donna Peck.
In a real heart breaker, my friend Michael Mathias led through most of the evening. It was so sound that even JSOnline had called him the winner:
Newcomers will take three other seats on the board, with David Voeltner defeating Donna Peck in a district covering the southwest side, Michael Mathias narrowly defeating Annie Woodward for a seat representing much of the central city and Larry Miller winning an uncontested election to represent much of the east side and some of the south side.Unfortunately, it seemed that there was a sudden spurt at the end by his opponent and Michael lost the race by a lousy 76 votes.
At least Mike can hold his head up with pride, knowing he ran a clean, positive campaign.
Similarly, my friend Zach Wisniewski lost out in his bid for the South Milwaukee School Board. But he too ran a good clean campaign. To show the class that Zach has, just look at the post he wrote about the race.
Both of these men should be congratulated just for the simple fact they were willing to take the risk and run for office, and did so with grace and dignity.
I am proud to call each of them my friend.
On a more positive side, another friend, Janet Evans was able to claim a seat on the Franklin School Board. Congratulations go out to her, with a word of advice about not letting the negative influences in her town sway her from doing what is best for the children.
The Biggest Losers
The biggest losers of the evening were not the candidates that lost their races. It was not the special interests. The biggest losers and biggest disappointments were the local media.
JSOnline did not have any results for a couple of hours after the polls had closed. But as observed by Phel and by RP, that did not slow them down from marking off the winners. On top of that, they had two separate poll results for Michael's race with the names interposed, and as mentioned above, they even named Michael the winner in the race in one of their Newswatch blurbs.
Fox 6's website was no better. They showed Michael losing in the numbers, but still checked him off as the winner.
TMJ4, boasting of their first HD news casts, couldn't be bothered with having a scroll of the results. To add insult to injury, I don't think they even covered the races in their first ten minutes of air time.
If the local news sources can't even get the information correct, where do we go from here?
Monday, April 6, 2009
Cognitive Election Recommendations
Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 7, is the general election for the spring of 2009. Here are my recommendations:
Supreme Court
This is the race between Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Judge Randy Koschnick.
Abrahamson has been Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for years, and is well respected around the state and the nation. Koschnick, on the other hand, can't even handle a traffic ticket without it being overturned.
Koschnick has also accused Chief Justice Abrahamson of being partisan and an activist. He then turns around and proudly claims that he is conservative, has been to most of the conservative events around the state, and tells us what his agenda is, which is legislating from the bench in the favor of the NRA, big business and other conservative special interests.
Abrahamson has run a level-headed campaign without a lot of negativity, while Koschnick has said almost nothing positive about himself, continuously attacked the CJ, and has a pattern of contradicting himself, making one if Koschnick does have any ability of level-headed decision making.
He's such a bad candidate that WMC, which bought seats on the bench for Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman, both of whom have started their stint on the Supreme Court under clouds of shame and unethical behaviors, chose not to back what was to be their candidate this time around.
The clear choice is to return Chief Justice Abrahamson to the Supreme Court.
For further, more detailed information on these candidates, I would point the gentle reader to Illusory Tenant and Eye On Wisconsin, both of whom have done tremendous work on this race.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
If you were hurt or sick, and needed medical attention, would you rather go to the hospital with its trained and licensed doctors and registered nurses or to the clinic (if it's still there when you go) with no trained doctors or nurses, but staffed with people that have watched ER and Gray's Anatomy on the TV?
That is basically how the State Superintendent's race is boiling down to. Tony Evers is the candidate that has decades of experience in both education and administration. He knows that the state's school systems are in trouble and need help, and the best way to fix them.
His opponent, Rose Fernandez, has no faith in the schools and no experience in the field of education. All she does have is the backing of large, out of state private interests who would privatize the entire system with their gimmicky plans, all at the expense of the tax payers. As an example of bad some of her ideas are, she proposed that MPS be broken down to a number of smaller systems, raising the costs to the taxpayers. Then she also suggested that a turnaround team consisting of people from Mayor Barrett's and Scott Walker's administrations work on changing things. These are the two same groups that had to have federal intervention to resolve an old, old question of what to do with the $91.5 million for transit.
Jay Bullock and Cory Liebmann have done the yeoman's work on this race, and both are worthwhile reads.
Tony Evers is the only cognitive choice for this race.
Milwaukee Public School Board
My recommendations for the three races for Milwaukee Public School Board are Michael Mathias and Peter Blewett. I was originally just going to endorse these people, but now the feeling his stronger.
I had the opportunity to her Michael Mathias speak briefly and he has some clear, realistic ideas that could be started right away.
Another reason is again ethics. While Mathias and Blewett have both run clean campaigns, their three opponents, Annie Woodward and ReDonna Rodgers, cannot necessarily say the same.
It has been reported that a special interest group, Advocates for Student Achievement, recruited the three, gave them advice and talking points, as well as campaign contributions. All of which was not reported, but done on the sly, in violation of campaign laws. These are not the type of people that we need running a school system that is trying to recover from the bad reputation from people like Charlene Hardin.
Circuit Court Races
In the race between J.D. Watts and Daniel Gabler, I was originally torn between the two. But as in the Supreme Court race, one candidate did a great job of pushing voters away. Gabler has shown poor judgment in the way he ran his campaign. He has shown a great deal of hypocrisy in his attacks on his opponents in the primary, and not the sense in how to correct his mistakes once they were revealed.
On top of all that, Watts has the experience Gabler lacks, and has shown a good demeanor during his opponent's flailing about.
The other race is between Christopher Lipscomb and Ellen Brostrom. I have great respect for both candidates, and think that both would prove to be good judges in the circuit court system. However, my recommendation goes to Lipscomb based on the fact that he has experience being a municipal judge for many years and would be able to make an easy transition to the circuit court.
Other races
I would be remiss to not remind the gentle reader to vote for Zachary Wisniewski for the South Milwaukee School Board and for Janet Evans in the race for Franklin's school board. Both of these fine people have shown a high level of interest in their communities and have shown a good grasp of the issues that their communities and their schools face, and are ready to take those issues on.
Supreme Court
This is the race between Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Judge Randy Koschnick.
Abrahamson has been Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for years, and is well respected around the state and the nation. Koschnick, on the other hand, can't even handle a traffic ticket without it being overturned.
Koschnick has also accused Chief Justice Abrahamson of being partisan and an activist. He then turns around and proudly claims that he is conservative, has been to most of the conservative events around the state, and tells us what his agenda is, which is legislating from the bench in the favor of the NRA, big business and other conservative special interests.
Abrahamson has run a level-headed campaign without a lot of negativity, while Koschnick has said almost nothing positive about himself, continuously attacked the CJ, and has a pattern of contradicting himself, making one if Koschnick does have any ability of level-headed decision making.
He's such a bad candidate that WMC, which bought seats on the bench for Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman, both of whom have started their stint on the Supreme Court under clouds of shame and unethical behaviors, chose not to back what was to be their candidate this time around.
The clear choice is to return Chief Justice Abrahamson to the Supreme Court.
For further, more detailed information on these candidates, I would point the gentle reader to Illusory Tenant and Eye On Wisconsin, both of whom have done tremendous work on this race.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
If you were hurt or sick, and needed medical attention, would you rather go to the hospital with its trained and licensed doctors and registered nurses or to the clinic (if it's still there when you go) with no trained doctors or nurses, but staffed with people that have watched ER and Gray's Anatomy on the TV?
That is basically how the State Superintendent's race is boiling down to. Tony Evers is the candidate that has decades of experience in both education and administration. He knows that the state's school systems are in trouble and need help, and the best way to fix them.
His opponent, Rose Fernandez, has no faith in the schools and no experience in the field of education. All she does have is the backing of large, out of state private interests who would privatize the entire system with their gimmicky plans, all at the expense of the tax payers. As an example of bad some of her ideas are, she proposed that MPS be broken down to a number of smaller systems, raising the costs to the taxpayers. Then she also suggested that a turnaround team consisting of people from Mayor Barrett's and Scott Walker's administrations work on changing things. These are the two same groups that had to have federal intervention to resolve an old, old question of what to do with the $91.5 million for transit.
Jay Bullock and Cory Liebmann have done the yeoman's work on this race, and both are worthwhile reads.
Tony Evers is the only cognitive choice for this race.
Milwaukee Public School Board
My recommendations for the three races for Milwaukee Public School Board are Michael Mathias and Peter Blewett. I was originally just going to endorse these people, but now the feeling his stronger.
I had the opportunity to her Michael Mathias speak briefly and he has some clear, realistic ideas that could be started right away.
Another reason is again ethics. While Mathias and Blewett have both run clean campaigns, their three opponents, Annie Woodward and ReDonna Rodgers, cannot necessarily say the same.
It has been reported that a special interest group, Advocates for Student Achievement, recruited the three, gave them advice and talking points, as well as campaign contributions. All of which was not reported, but done on the sly, in violation of campaign laws. These are not the type of people that we need running a school system that is trying to recover from the bad reputation from people like Charlene Hardin.
Circuit Court Races
In the race between J.D. Watts and Daniel Gabler, I was originally torn between the two. But as in the Supreme Court race, one candidate did a great job of pushing voters away. Gabler has shown poor judgment in the way he ran his campaign. He has shown a great deal of hypocrisy in his attacks on his opponents in the primary, and not the sense in how to correct his mistakes once they were revealed.
On top of all that, Watts has the experience Gabler lacks, and has shown a good demeanor during his opponent's flailing about.
The other race is between Christopher Lipscomb and Ellen Brostrom. I have great respect for both candidates, and think that both would prove to be good judges in the circuit court system. However, my recommendation goes to Lipscomb based on the fact that he has experience being a municipal judge for many years and would be able to make an easy transition to the circuit court.
Other races
I would be remiss to not remind the gentle reader to vote for Zachary Wisniewski for the South Milwaukee School Board and for Janet Evans in the race for Franklin's school board. Both of these fine people have shown a high level of interest in their communities and have shown a good grasp of the issues that their communities and their schools face, and are ready to take those issues on.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Rose's Thorny Idea
I was doing a little reading on the candidates for the state superintendent of public instruction when I saw something that eliminated Rose Fernandez from any serious consideration. In an article that ran a few days ago in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the different candidates, and their ideas, were highlighted.
On paragraph really alarmed me (emphasis mine):
City of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker have spend the last several years in a stand off regarding what to do with the $91.5 million dollars of federal money that has been languishing around. Even in these severely troubling economic troubling times, they haven't come any closer to any kind of compromise.
Heck, they can't even agree on who is responsible for shoveling the snow out of the bus shelters.
How does she expect that Walker and Barrett would be able to agree to anything about the public school system? Barrett, on the rare occasion anyone even sees him, is obviously very reluctant to take over the school system. Walker would only want to sell it off to someone and/or blame other people for his failure to even act on fixing it.
And that doesn't even take into the consideration of whether it would be legal for the County Executive to have that kind of influence over a municipality's school system.
But to be fair, I thought I'd go look at her website and found her YouTube video explaining her proposal. Instead of making more sense, she only gets scarier, stating that she believes she would turn around the whole system in only three years, and then dump it back on the City of Milwaukee.
If she doesn't have realistic expectations for MPS, then she wouldn't be able to have realistic expectations for the rest of the state either. If he doesn't want to give serious answers to a serious problem, she doesn't deserve our serious consideration.
On paragraph really alarmed me (emphasis mine):
While [Mobley] said he would like to see MPS broken into smaller school districts, he criticized Fernandez's proposal of replacing Milwaukee's elected School Board with a "turnaround team" appointed by the state superintendent, Milwaukee mayor and Milwaukee county executive. He said involvement by three different elected officials would politicize any reform efforts.I have to wonder whether she is going for shock value, or if she just doesn't know what's been in happening in Milwaukee for the past several years.
City of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker have spend the last several years in a stand off regarding what to do with the $91.5 million dollars of federal money that has been languishing around. Even in these severely troubling economic troubling times, they haven't come any closer to any kind of compromise.
Heck, they can't even agree on who is responsible for shoveling the snow out of the bus shelters.
How does she expect that Walker and Barrett would be able to agree to anything about the public school system? Barrett, on the rare occasion anyone even sees him, is obviously very reluctant to take over the school system. Walker would only want to sell it off to someone and/or blame other people for his failure to even act on fixing it.
And that doesn't even take into the consideration of whether it would be legal for the County Executive to have that kind of influence over a municipality's school system.
But to be fair, I thought I'd go look at her website and found her YouTube video explaining her proposal. Instead of making more sense, she only gets scarier, stating that she believes she would turn around the whole system in only three years, and then dump it back on the City of Milwaukee.
If she doesn't have realistic expectations for MPS, then she wouldn't be able to have realistic expectations for the rest of the state either. If he doesn't want to give serious answers to a serious problem, she doesn't deserve our serious consideration.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
