Conservatives Lost

 Conservatives Lost 

Issues and Character Matter

 

With much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments “Conservative” pundits on this page and on other opinion pages are lamenting their recent electoral losses to liberals. They blame GOP leaders on lackluster campaigns and flawed messaging. They miss the boat.

 

Daniel Kelly took a shellacking in his second defeat running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Kelly lost by a larger margin than any other conservative in a statewide race in recent memory. Kelly lost because he was a flawed candidate with excess baggage and choose the wrong side of issues that matter to voters from the center to the left and young to old. 

 

Kelly’s speech to supporters on election night showed his flawed character. Instead of a gracious concession and congratulations to his opponent, he chose to take the lowest of roads with personal attacks on the victor and doomsaying predictions on what is to come from the new liberal majority on the Court. 

 

Kelly’s affiliation with anti-abortion and pro-gun movements turned off the thousands of new Gen Z voters who grew up with a right to abortion and reproductive healthcare while getting the wits scared out of them during active shooter drills in their public schools. They and those who fought for access to abortions and freely available contraception in the 1970s were not willing to roll back the clock to favor an abortion ban enacted in 1849. 

 

Wisconsin’s legislative and congressional district maps are the most gerrymandered in the country and Kelly’s affiliation with the GOP that gave us those maps did not help his cause. 

 

Kelly’s embrace of the “Big Lie” and his involvement in the fake elector scheme in Wisconsin turned off even more voters who have come to realize that the former occupant of the White House is headed for a huge fall for his multiple alleged illegal electoral and business transgressions.

 

Justice-elect Janet Protasiewicz won her huge margin with a race that highlighted her beliefs that women should have the right to control their own reproductive healthcare, that Wisconsin’s district maps are “rigged”and we need stricter gun control laws. 

 

In the special election in Wisconsin’s eighth Senate district, Dan Knodl should have won handily in a heavily gerrymandered district designed to favor GOP candidates. Jodi Habush Sinykin came within two points of winning that race based upon her campaign which highlighted women’s reproductive healthcare rights. It was only the construct of the district boundaries that tilted the outcome to Knodl. 

 

Locally, the only contested judicial race in Washington County was easily won by the incumbent Judge Ryan Hetzel who was appointed to fill a vacant seat by Gov. Tony Evers. His opponent was more deeply flawed than Daniel Kelly. Russell Jones’ checkered history and lack of connection to our community could not be saved by his self-proclaimed “Conservative” position. Jones’ lack of respect for local norms did not help his cause. 

 

West Bend’s school board race echoed the same themes. The three “Conservative” candidates used canned messaging with little substance and lots of popular buzzwords that no longer fool anyone who can think for themselves. The three “S” folks left damaging trails of their true beliefs on social media sites which were easily shared on Benders for Better Public Education, a local Facebook group I started years ago to help improve West Bend’s public schools. Even in their losses, two of the three choose to mimic Daniel Kelly’s lack of character by attacking the winners on social media and in public comments.

 

The three winners for West Bend School Board are all centrist professionals who ran campaigns supporting the institution of public education and those who teach the community’s children. They understand what needs to be done to help public education fulfill its role in our community and are ready to work with the other centrists on the board to ensure quality public schools.

 

These elections show that the “Conservative” star is dimming across Wisconsin and even here in one of the reddest counties in the state. The GOP and those who they are trying to elect have chosen a platform of a past that no longer exists and which more and more voters are seeing for what it is and is not. As more and more younger voters continue to turn out, and they will, elections will continue to be won more on the issues that matter to them than on the labels candidates they adopt to mask character failings.