Elections Do Matter

Elections Do Matter

Our recent state-wide elections brought interesting and hopeful results. Democrats swept the state-wide races and Republicans maintained comfortable, but not veto proof, majorities in both the Assembly and Senate. Hopefully, one of the results will be an end to, if not a tempering of, the one-party rule arrogance that has permeated Wisconsin government since the GOP ascendance in 2010.  

Clearly, Wisconsin voters just elected to move forward with divided government. When power is split between the two parties, no one agenda holds sway. There are only a couple of options. 

The preferable option is for the GOP leaders in the legislature to work with Democratic legislators and the Governor’s administration to find common ground. Polling makes clear that voters want our roads, bridges and other infrastructure items fixed, they want affordable healthcare that covers everybody and they want public education funded adequately. These are problems that transcend party lines and need bi-partisan fixes with which everyone can live. Governor-elect Evers reached out to GOP legislative leaders offering to work with them on these and other pressing agenda items. There has not been a favorable response.

A second, less favorable, option is for the two sides to continue the battle for power and control with the legislature passing bills that Governor-elect Evers cannot sign or fix with the line item veto. The goal here has less to do with actually trying to address real problems with real solutions than it is to make the other side look bad and rack up points to use in the next election cycle. Unfortunately, the GOP’s Assembly Majority Leader Robin Voss and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald are toying with this option by publicly floating proposals for a lame duck legislative session to pass bills stripping the newly elected governor of certain powers they freely gave when a friendly Scott Walker occupied that office. They follow this path at their peril. Voters will see it as nothing more than a naked power grab and a slap in the face for the new administration. The ultimate outcome with this choice will be a do-nothing government until the next election and that will suit many in the GOP just fine. 

An equally intriguing issue is how the legislative races turned out. Even though Democrats scored a 10-point victory re-electing Tammy Baldwin to the U.S. Senate, and took the rest of the state-wide races with relative ease, they lost legislative races to the GOP in staggering numbers. 

Michael Warren, a UW-Madison student journalist, looked at the numbers and came up with this analysis. 

If we look at the votes cast in all the Wisconsin Assembly Races, Democrats out polled Republicans by about 200,000 votes. 1.3 million Democrats voted in Assembly races but only 1.1 million Republicans did. These translate roughly to Democrats casting 54% of the votes to 46% for Republicans. When we look at the numbers of Assembly seats won, in a fair election, we would expect similar percentages to hold. Instead, Republicans won roughly 63% of the Assembly seats to 36% for Democrats. There is only one way to explain those numbers. Unfair partisan gerrymandering of the Assembly districts in favor of Republicans. 

Gerrymandering involves the drawing of state and federal legislative district lines to give an advantage to one party over the other. It is done in two ways, “packing” and “cracking.” The current legislative districts were drawn by the GOP when it controlled the legislature and governor’s office. They “packed” certain districts with Democrats, making sure they stayed blue, and “cracked” other democratic strongholds into several districts, giving Republicans majorities in multiple districts. 

In this past election, there were 35 democratic seats won. 80% of those races had no Republican candidate to challenge the Democrat. In the Republicans’ 64 seat victories, only 4% were uncontested. Republicans did not bother to run in districts “packed” with Democrats while Democrats ran in many more districts because they contained “cracked” Democratic voting blocs. Of the 68 contested races, 41% had a margin of victory of less than 5,000 votes. Thin victory margins rely upon where the district lines run in “cracked” districts. 

Let us add fairly redrawing the lines of Wisconsin’s state and federal legislative districts after the 2020 census to the list of issues the new Wisconsin split power government must consider. Leaving it to partisans leads to unfair gerrymandered districts that favor those in power. 

Six states, some red, some blue, have instituted independent commission systems to draw fair lines that make districts with roughly equal numbers of voters from each party much more competitive. It is part of the Wisconsin tradition to utilize panels of experts to look at and propose solutions to problems free from partisan political influence. We should consider returning to that approach when tackling redistricting while we have time to get it done fairly and correctly. This is another issue voters care about and demand a fair fix.

What Would They Think

Wisconsin Civil War Heroes

Remember Why They Fought

I read with great interest a recent piece in this paper by Linda McAlpine about an exhibit of photos of Wisconsin citizens who served in the Union Army during the Civil War that will be coming soon to Washington County’s Historical Society Museum. 

Evidently, over 90,000 Wisconsin soldiers fought to preserve our nation from being torn asunder by those who promoted the evils of slavery and believed that the rights of individual states to control what happened within their respective borders took precedence over federal laws to the contrary. The slave holders and states’ rights proponents lost that epic struggle on the battlefield and had to accept federal superiority as a precondition for re-entry into the Union. That victory cemented our current federal/state governmental hierarchy.

Many in the Southern states and recently in other states, including Wisconsin, continue asserting beliefs that states should not have to follow federal mandates with which they disagree. Anglo-Saxon racial superiority over those with other skin tones has once again reared up to justify rejection of the more inclusive society we have become since the Civil War.  Wisconsin politics has been consumed by divisive rhetoric along those very lines. 

I wonder what those brave Wisconsin men in blue uniforms who fought to preserve our nation state would think if they saw Confederate flags flying from pick-up trucks and painted on the sides of rural barns on their home grounds. Surely, they did not fight and die to see this come to pass. 

Another driver of the states’ rights and supremacy of individual freedom train is an extreme form of Christian fundamentalism that has taken over our political discourse. “Religious Freedom” has become an accepted justification for rejecting federal laws requiring equal treatment of women, the gay and transgendered, brown and yellow skinned immigrants, contraceptive insurance coverage and universal healthcare itself. “Religious Freedom” has morphed under such fundamentalist teachings. It used to mean that you were free to worship as you see fit. It now means my religious beliefs trump the laws with which I disagree.  

The Wisconsin men who went to war to reunify our country certainly never envisioned Wisconsin and the country being torn apart once again. 

What we are witnessing in this election season is a re-incarnation of the Union Army of the Civil War as Wisconsin men and, yes, women join together to reassert the fundamental beliefs that were reaffirmed by the Union victory those many decades ago. 

We are one state in one country, united by the common shared values and beliefs enshrined in the Constitution. We are all equal and have the right to enjoy the prosperity our shared work produces. We are blessed with untold resources that require wise conservation and preservation so that future generations can share in our national bounty. We take care of one another because together we can and will accomplish much more than any one of us can do individually. We share responsibility to protect the Republic and to make it stronger through unified, purposeful actions designed to promote the common good. We do not leave any one behind. The fallen and weak are just as important as the strongest among us and can contribute to the common good if only allowed the opportunity. We welcome all those, as we have since our founding, who come here to make a better life for themselves and their families.

To achieve these lofty ideals, we must learn once more to work together to find solutions to our common problems. We need to rely upon science to provide a foundation for what we do and how we do it. Religious beliefs must be honored for those who have them with freedom to believe what they believe, but not with the ability to impose those beliefs on others. 

We are on a threshold of once more rejecting attempts to divide this great country into increasing numbers of warring factions or allowing the chaos to envelop our wonderful State and make the struggles of those brave Wisconsin soldiers who left home to protect our nation a wasted effort.