Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler came into this race with less-than-resounding support from voters. In mid-February, before the media was paying much attention to the Supreme Court race, a telephone survey by WISC-TV in Madison found 37 percent of voters favored Butler and 29 percent favored Mike Gableman, with 34 percent undecided.
That’s a pretty unimpressive result for an incumbent. Granted, Butler was appointed to the position, but he did run for the Supreme Court in 2000, losing to then-incumbent Diane Sykes. (Butler got 34 percent of the vote in that race.) Gableman is a judge in sparsely populated Burnett County in northwest Wisconsin who’s never run statewide, yet wasn’t far behind Butler in this poll.
Butler has raised a lot more money to date: $650,000 compared to Gableman’s $276,294. But their cash will be dwarfed by third-party spending. Third parties spent some $3 million in the last Supreme Court race, with most being spent by business groups who have now targeted Butler.
Butler’s opponents damn him as soft on crime, but the issue is not as clear-cut as they’d like. Third-party ads are also pounding Gableman for plea bargaining or reducing charges 70 percent of the time in cases involving sexual assault of a child when he was an Ashland County prosecutor. Gableman contends the figure is incorrect but hasn’t offered his own number.
It’s a dirty, confusing campaign that may come down to who is tougher on crime, which is quite simplistic, given that most cases handled by the court have nothing to do with this issue. The media, however, isn’t doing much to shed light on the campaign. The Wisconsin State Journal has chosen not to endorse anyone. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has given the race less coverage than the Madison dailies, and has been milquetoast in its analysis.
Sunday’s JS profile of Butler noted that “Gableman’s campaign used an ad to highlight one of Butler’s public defender cases, which involved a child molester, to show what Gableman calls a ‘stark contrast’ in their experiences.” But the story didn’t inform readers that the ad was completely untrue. Even conservatives like Charlie Sykes have flagged the Gableman campaign for suggesting Butler let a child molester get off to commit another crime, when the criminal actually served his sentence and committed another offense after being released from prison.
The JS story might have also informed readers that the Milwaukee Bar Association overwhelmingly voted Butler qualified to serve (by 429 to 52 among those with an opinion) and was pretty damning on Gableman (119 called him qualified and 198 called him unqualified). True, it’s a Milwaukee poll, and some of these lawyers may have had no experience with Gableman. But does this make the poll of no interest to readers? Why not report it, with qualifications?
In an increasingly partisan age, with vicious third-party ads, and talk radio, conservative and liberal blogs all ready to pounce on newspaper coverage as biased, you get the feeling the mainstream press is increasingly wary of trying to referee these campaigns, leaving voters adrift in the world of sleazy claims and portentous voice-overs.
So who will win the race? Butler should carry Dane, Racine and Kenosha counties. Gableman will carry the whole northern chunk of Wisconsin, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties and probably the Fox Valley. Butler will need a healthy margin (at least 55 percent) in Milwaukee County. He’ll certainly carry the city, but will he lose the suburbs? The JS editorial board will probably endorse Butler, but talk radio will be bashing him as Loophole Louie.
A big turnout by black voters in Milwaukee for Lena Taylor’s race for county executive could help Butler. But is Taylor generating that kind of excitement?
My guess is that Butler will win in a squeaker. But there’s still a week of attack ads yet to come, which will further bloody both candidates and depress turnout. Whichever side gets more of its folks out will win.
Has Barrett Targeted Bohl?
Ald. Jim Bohl and Mayor Tom Barrett have a natural affinity. Both grew up in the city, Barrett on the West Side, Bohl on the Northwest Side. Both have that Marquette, Jesuit education connection: Barrett went to Marquette High School, Bohl to Marquette University. And Bohl worked as an aide to U.S. Rep. Barrett before getting elected to the Common Council in 2000.
But they’ve had a falling out, which may disappoint the Jesuits. Bohl accuses Barrett aide Pat Curley of helping to convince the Journal Sentinel to endorse the alderman’s opponent.
The voluble Bohl prides himself on being a fiscal hawk. His biography says the Shepherd Express pronounced him the council’s “Budget Cutting Champion.” He offered some 30 amendments to the last budget, which some thought excessively zealous, and is sometimes seen as grandstanding at the mayor’s expense. Bohl embarrassed Barrett by exposing the fact that the mayor was dipping into the city’s contingency fund to pay for mounted security cameras after first promising federal money would pay for it.
In short, Bohl looks like he’s ungrateful to his one-time mentor. “I’m someone who’s independent,” says Bohl. “If I disagree with the administration, I’m not going to roll under the carpet and hide.”
All of which has provoked Curley’s latent carpet-beating instincts, says the alderman. “Tom (Barrett) plays good cop. Pat Curley plays bad cop,” Bohl declares. (Aides to former Police Chief Nan Hegerty made the same complaint about Curley.)
Frankly, I’m impressed. I thought Curley was pure mush. He must be eating wheat germ for breakfast these days.
Anyway, Bohl says JS editorial page editor O. Ricardo Pimentel was quizzing the alderman with detailed questions he had been fed by Curley. “No other alderman got these kinds of questions,” Bohl says. “There’s no way someone on the Journal Sentinel editorial board would know that level of detail.” (Curley denies this, sort of, saying his conversations with Pimentel were just “general budget stuff” that was not aimed at Bohl.)
Once again, I’m impressed. The JS tends to endorse most incumbents, and has been known to pick candidates without doing much homework. But Pimentel seems to take the whole process very seriously.
Anyway, the paper gave the nod to Bohl’s challenger, Brenda K. Pullen-O’Donnell. The editorial, among other things, criticized Bohl for “an unwise and impractical plan that would have ghettoized sex offenders to less than 1 percent of the city’s housing stock.” True enough, but even more prominent in that effort was Ald. Tony Zielinski, who the JS endorsed as “bold almost to the point of visionary,” a description which might seem overly enthusiastic even to Zielinski’s supporters.
I don’t know why, maybe just because Pullen-O’Donnell wouldn’t disclose her age to the JS, but I’m betting Bohl wins re-election. “My opponent’s not working hard at all,” says Bohl. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
If Bohl wins after publicly outing Barrett, that won’t be so good for the mayor. But on balance, it’s probably better for Barrett to show some moxie and let opponents know there will be consequences. Perhaps the mayor could put up a sign: “Cross me and Pat Curley will bite your butt.”
And the Sports Nut predicts who will be the Bucks’ next general manager.
