Dusty Democrats

Guest Post By Dana Green:

The latest letter coming from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin's Chair, Mike Tate, has me scratching my head.  Sometimes folks see the writing on the wall, sometimes they don't, even when it's right in front of them.

 

 Thanks for your membership in the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and your work on behalf of Democratic candidates this fall. Even though the midterm elections were hard on Democrats in Wisconsin and around the country, we should all be proud of the work we put in. We fought hard and left it all out on the field.

Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to reach out for your feedback. I’m especially interested in hearing from members and activists like you - the backbone of this Party. Through constructive dialogue and analysis, I believe the Party will come out of this election stronger and more organized than ever before.

A committee has been formed to identify what worked well this campaign cycle and what can be improved for future elections. Our 2nd Vice Chair, Jeff Christensen, will head up this committee comprised of members, activists, county party leaders, and congressional district officers.

Jeff and the Election Review Committee would appreciate receiving feedback from as many people as possible. Please click here to complete a feedback form. All submissions will be sent to the committee for analysis.

Thank you for your continued support and dedication.

Forward,

Mike Tate
Chair, Democratic Party of Wisconsin

Here's my take:

"Now that the dust has settled"......

The dust has settled?  Are you and I living in the same Wisconsin, Mr. Tate?   Folks statewide are still in disbelief that the Democratic Party couldn't muster enough "oompf" to oust the most corrupt politician our State has ever seen.  If anything, the dust is flying fiercer than ever, now that our Governor has a stranglehold on the entire legislature.  I am anticipating more "dust" with the right to work and school voucher lobby agenda moving full speed ahead, aren't you, Mr. Tate? 

"I wanted to reach out for your feedback.  I'm especially interested in hearing from members and activists like you."

I almost had to read that line twice. ( I am not a member of the party. I do vote regularly, I am passionate about what's going on in the State. I pay attention, I love this State, does this make me an "activist"? )This sentence stuck me funny, cause, I don't think you are sincerely interested in my feedback.  I'm involved in a lot of online discussion and political groups, and have been throughout the years, and "activists" have been complaining about the lack of message and representation from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin for years. It's no secret that tons of us "activists" were not on board with Team Burke.  We wanted a primary.  Us "activists" were appalled about how the recall was handled.  We told you this.  Rural "activists" have felt ignored by the DPW for years.  We told you this.  Many "activists" have expressed their frustrations, the lack of leadership, and vision for the party.  We want a party that has our backs, and that fights the good fight, not a party that sends out lame attempts of an "olive branch" after the fact, claiming the dust has settled.  Again, we told you this, time and time again, in emails, facebook messages, blog posts, letters, and most recently, in a move-on petition I started asking for your resignation.  If you want a real perspective of how "activists" are feeling, Mr. Tate, you should read some of the comments folks have posted on the petition.  I'm not sure if these folks who signed it are "activists", I'm guessing they're voters, just like me. 

Sign the petition: Demand Mike Tate of the DPW Resign Immediately

				Sign the petition: Demand Mike Tate of the DPW Resign ... I just signed a petition to Mike Tate, Chair, of the DPW: Another election, another election lost.....Feeling frustrated in the lack of direction, creativity, and u...
				View on petitions.moveon.org	Preview by Yahoo

 

Maybe in your next letter Mr. Tate, you can send Joe Wineke an S.O.S for help with the "dust" problem?   Just a thought.

MY Dem Endorsement!

By Jeff Simpson

This weekend is the Wisconsin Democratic Convention and there is a race for chair.  The race is between incumbent Mike Tate and challenger Joe Kallas.  There is also a race going on for 2nd chair between Jeff Christensen and Jamie Shiner.  Apparently there are not enough chairs to go around in our state so they have to fight over the 2nd one.  (edit note: Full disclosure I know Mike Tate and Jeff C and only know Joe Kallas and Jamie Shiner via Facebook).

This endorsement is mine, and only reflects what I think, not @cog_dis as Capper is perfectly capable of giving us his own endorsement.  Also, this is the only place where my endorsement will matter, since I did not "sign up as a delegate", I would now be voiceless at the Dem Convention(were I attending).   (edit note take 2 - the fact that only "delegates" can vote is a ridiculous rule and needs to be changed. Any paid member at the Dem convention should be able to cast a ballot.  Period!   Its hard to have as a position on your platform, protecting the voting rights for all when internally we set up barriers that would make robin vos proud).

In Mike Tate's career, the democratic party(for various reasons) has lost control of all three branches of Government and then in the last election, lose them even further.   While this is not all Mike Tate's fault, he was the one in charge.  Now he has a vague but promising 72 county strategy(I need more information and guarantees) and a billboard.




Joe Kallas is someone who has been involved in the party from all angles including having run as a candidate(against Tax Avoiding Tom Petri) yet he seems sincere about focusing on the grass roots and breaking down the barriers that the party has set that discourages outsiders from getting to close to the inside(like the secrecy on Mike Tate's pay and forcing a potential candidate to travel the state  However his inexperience as party chair and the turmoil a tate loss would throw the whole party in.

Add that to the fact that the Democrats have been non existent in messaging since the Graeme Zielinski fiasco, the disgusting votes by ten members of the democratic caucus for AB 110, the lack of any comprehensive plan(long term or short term), no relevance in Government despite massive vote totals that show our state is a center left state, while we enact extremist right wing zealot policies, a subservient media to the right wing, internal strife, and as of printing this no candidate for Governor and most 2014 seats.

I also feel that this is the election cycle  to make a mark(despite the unethical redistricting), we have an extremist group of semi religious, bitter and unethical group of republicans, who have not only broken every promise, but also tragically and epically failed at them.   We have a Governor who has a very bad relationship with the truth and his economic record puts WI in the lower 40's(out of 50).

Our friends on the right have pushed an abortion agenda so extreme that it goes beyond planned parenthoods!   They have been so unethical in how they passed their dismantling of education bill, that they had to do it in the middle of the night.   The fact that they handed northern WI to Gogebic Taconite  with no strings attached and diminished DNR strength,   They also are attempting to cut out the Center for Investigative Journalism, unconstitutionally cracked down on free speech, and have borrowed and spent us into a huge structural deficit, and enacted a devastating pay cut on hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. And much much more to list.

With the opposition being so incredibly untalented and just plain bad, how can we not win?

Well part of it is that Peter Barca, Chris larson and Mike Tate are not all on the same page and as a party we cant go forward when someone is going solo.  We cant win, when elder members of the party are telling younger members of the party, to calm down and do not be so strong willed and aggressive.  We can not win when we spend more time and research on our own candidates then we do the opposition.

I do not see anything changing regardless of whoever wins this weekend.

For that reason, my recommendation is to vote

NO CONFIDENCE!

Let them know that you are sick of the games, sick of the cowardice, sick of the letting the right wing decide our tactics, let them know that there is truly a sense of urgency and it is NOW time to embrace the grassroots and the base and give Wisconsinites what they want - a Statehouse full of sane, bipartisan, intelligent, ethical, mature men and women. 

If I were allowed a ballot(and I am not) my vote would most definitly be the write in candidate :

NO CONFIDENCE!

let them know there is still time to earn it back but make sure they hear you that the same losing techniques will no longer be tolerated!

NO CONFIDENCE! 

Then let's build our party up from the grassroots! 

Controversy Leads Into Democratic State Convention

With just two days until the kickoff of the state Democratic convention, a wee bit of controversy has kicked up, but not where one might have expected it.

I would have thought that one of the biggest issues would be the election for the Party chair.  The incumbent Mike Tate has been a lightning rod for blame, rightly or wrongly, for the series of losses the party has won, especially on a state level.  Tate is being challenged by Joe Kallas, who I guess is from the Fox Lake area.  Other than that, precious little is known about him.

The only other race which is being contested is that of second vice-chair.  The race is between Jeff Christensen and Jamie Shiner.  As with the Tate/Kallas match up, this race also has been rather quiet.

Until today.

Scott Michalak, the man who took on Joel "Get in mah belly" Kleefisch, feels he was wronged by Christensen and has been telling his beef to everyone and anyone who would listen.

Christensen, who has been striving to avoid this confrontation, realized this was no longer possible, issued this statement:

Tonight I was made aware of a Facebook post by Scott Michalak accusing me of doing wrong by him. It’s too bad that he chooses this public course, but let me state I stand by all of my actions in this situation.

First let me preface this by mentioning a process we use in the 5th Congressional District: checking the background of all candidates before the primary. We do this to remove risk of having candidates on the ballot who do not share our values. I ran this check in the spring of 2012 and Mr. Michalak came up clean. Even more so, he did not indicate to us that such an issue existed.
I also found out later that Portage County did not join the CCAP program until July of 2012, which is why the document did not appear on our first check.

In September I was notified by one of our county chairs of a potential issue for Scott on the CCAP system. We looked into it and saw a listing for a temporary restraining order (TRO) from 1999. Not wanting to judge, I had the actual case file pulled from Portage County. I received the file and immediately gave copies to the chairs of the counties in the district. A member of the DPW staff also received a copy of the file.

On the evening of September 30th, we held a conference call to discuss the case. The case is quite graphic in its descriptions of its accusations of domestic abuse. I will save you the grizzly details. Beyond the initial reaction, we noticed two key details: the TRO was put into place, and that the dismissal was not a clearance but rather was rolled into the family case.
If we had discovered this about a republican candidate, we absolutely would have made it public. Even more so, is that this is an official document that indicates the individual does not share our values.

After an extremely fast discussion we came to a collaborative and unanimous decision to suspend all support for Mr. Michalak. It was also decided that I would be the one to explain this decision to Scott in person. We figured after putting his name on the ballot, he deserved an explanation to his face.

I met with Scott that week in Jefferson, with a third party observer in the room. I gave him a copy of the file and informed him that we were pulling our support. He attempted to plead his case, which I understood in that this is a domestic “he said, she said”. However politics is the court of public opinion, not the court of law and we were dealing with a court record. I read to him a paragraph from the case and explained how this could be used against him.

I encouraged Scott to suspend his campaign for Assembly, to minimize the risk to him and his family. The last thing I thought he needed was for him and his family to relive all of this via the press. I told him I thought it was a shame, as he was working extremely hard; which is something I always respect in a candidate. As we finished the conversation he became more combative and actually referred to Erin Sievert, the chair of Jefferson County as “C**t”. I’ll let you fill in the blanks on what he said.

If you want to see the case for yourself, you’ll have to pull it; as I’m going to save Mr. Michalak that indignity. I had spoken with all of the chairs and party officials at the time and again in post mortem and am convinced more than ever that we made the right decision as leaders. I stand behind it 100%.

For the record, unaware of the allegations against Michalak, had endorsed him for that race.

It's sad that it has come to this, but politics is a contact sport.  Even if what Michalak claims about being innocent is true, he's got to be aware that most people sadly don't dedicated that much time or effort to learn about a candidate.  All they would see or hear is domestic abuse and beating the family pet.

No, it's not fair and it's not right, but that is the way it is.