The Election Next Door in Wisconsin

Less than a week from now the Wisconsin recall election will be history.

Those of us in the border area media markets, sitting much like spectators at a parade, will have been inundated by the same half or non-truths as our neighbors across the St. Croix, but we won’t have an opportunity to vote for any candidates.  That is as well, because those policy makers elected don’t make policy for our own state.

Those in Wisconsin will have to live with their decision next Tuesday.

We outsiders simply have to put up with the Wisconsin circus for a few more days. And in the process we can learn what's ahead for us in the coming months.

It has long been known that Citizens United money would come in by the gazillions of dollars for this election. I call it “Citizens United” since it arrives by the boatload largely from very wealthy interests and is essentially anonymous. It is what pays for those ads, the assorted (and abundant) “dirty tricks” we’ve read about, and will continue to hear about through June 5.

Then, like the aftermath of a tornado, on June 6 Wisconsin will sift through the rubble to see what is left standing.

A couple of weeks ago, more or less at the same time, I heard two pieces of information about Wisconsin that seem to well frame the over-arching Election Issues for the election.

1. There is the now famous “divide and conquer” video of Gov. Scott Walker meeting with the billionairess from Beloit; the lady who wanted assurance that her contribution would lead to a permanent “red state”. I’m sure the video is readily available, and anyone can look it up, very easily.

2. Then came the flap over the apparent reluctance of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to cough up $500,000 to at least help match the tornado of money coming in to support Walker. If memory serves, estimates were that the Republican-Democrat campaign money differential might be as much 25 to 1.

I was less than impressed by both narratives.

“Divide and Conquer” is a frequently used strategy, and it never works, except in the short term.

Perhaps one of the worst examples of a supposedly successful “divide and conquer” strategy is the disaster that has been Wisconsin since Jan. 2011. Scott Walker and his party won by division. That is all. But they conquered nothing, at least not permanently. The people of Wisconsin are the losers, and if they have some collective intelligence they will repudiate what they’ve had to live through, and not tolerate such nonsense again.  Whoever wins next week will inherit abundant anger from those who lost.  There is no "win" for anyone.

As for the Big Daddy (or Big Party) Cash Cows coming to the rescue of Walker, I can’t see how that helps either.

Conventional wisdom these days (which is not very wise, in my opinion) is that you win and lose by dollars spent on media advertising and the like.

But where the election next week will be won or lost is by the presence (or lack of) local “boots on the ground”, and, then, people actually showing up at the polls next Tuesday.

Daddy (or Mommy) Warbucks can have ships full of money to dispense, but in the end they are – each of them, including that billionaire – a single vote, just like everybody else. Those who vote uninformed, or stay at home and don’t vote at all, are de facto voting by their absence.

We’ll probably spend a few bucks across state lines (I emphasize “few”), but in the end, the win or the loss will come from the people of Wisconsin who actually show up on Tuesday. It is for this reason that I had little sympathy for the crew that wanted a national group to come in and rescue local people from their own necessary efforts. We’ll never succeed in getting money in politics under control, if we try to win every battle by money alone.

Next week we’ll know what Wisconsin decided.

And in a few months we’ll have our own demonstration in our own state of whether we care enough, or not.