Last week’s election results were touted by both Republicans and Democrats as proof their party can win in November. But the only thing that seems clear is this is not a good year for incumbents. That is not good news for Wisconsin’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold. The trend may even hurt Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker in the Republican primary for governor.
You might think Feingold would be insulated against voter anger about Washington insiders. Feingold, after all, voted against both of the federal bailout bills for banks, the one under President Bush and the later one under President Obama. He also opposed the 2009 omnibus spending bill, has pushed for bills to end congressional earmarks and has routinely opposed a raise in salary for senators. Newsweek dubbed him one of Conservatives’ Five Favorite Democrats. That story included a quote from Mark Block, Wisconsin Tea Party leader, saying Feingold “deserves Wisconsin’s thanks” for opposing the omnibus spending bill. (Making this all the more bizarre was the fact that Block has long been a Republican insider who worked on many GOP campaigns.)
But Feingold did vote in favor of Obama’s stimulus plan as well as the watershed Health Care Reform Act. And voters, in their anger at what’s going in Washington, may not pay careful attention to which bills Feingold did or didn’t support. He has been in office now for nearly 18 years. It gets increasingly difficult to portray yourself as a maverick, as Feingold has, when you’ve been in office that long. His mediocre approval rating in the polls (about 50 percent) may suggest he is wearing out his welcome.
Republicans seemed eager to get Tommy Thompson into the race against Feingold, but I’d argue he was exactly the wrong candidate. No one looks like more of an insider than Thompson, who spent his entire life in government and then cashed in on his clout, collecting millions advocating for health insurance and pharmaceutical companies and the finance industry. Tommy would have been the perfect foil for Feingold. He may have been the only possible opponent who could make the incumbent look newer.
Ron Johnson is an entirely different matter. The 55-year-old owner of an Oshkosh-based plastics manufacturing company is the perfect candidate for today – he has absolutely no experience! He can portray himself as the ultimate outsider, has no record Feingold can attack and has millions of his own money he could choose to spend in the race. He has also given a couple well-received speeches to Tea Party gatherings. If he can avoid major missteps (a big if for a novice politician), Johnson could be a formidable candidate. Voters, after all, want to protest against things as they are. And Johnson represents things as they aren’t.
If the voters are truly feeling that cranky, they might also decide they don’t want Scott Walker, who has been in office since 1993 (when he was first elected to the legislature), as their Republican standard-bearer for governor. His opponent, Mark Neumann, served just four years (two terms in Congress, 1994-1998) in politics and has spent most of his life as a businessman. He can truly portray himself as a citizen politician. Helping to solidify Neumann’s credentials as an outsider, the Republican Party just selected Walker overwhelmingly as its endorsed candidate for governor. (After not endorsing a gubernatorial candidate since 1978, the Republicans picked 2010, a year of anti-insider fever, as the year to do so. Go figure.)
Walker, in short, is the anointed insider candidate, just as Trey Grayson was in last week’s GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Kentucky. Neumann is the outsider, just as Rand Paul was in Kentucky. Grayson got the support of all the GOP insiders (as has Walker), but Paul upset their apple cart, winning the election.
Of course, Wisconsin is not Kentucky. And there’s still time for the mood of the electorate to change (particularly for Feingold, who won’t face an opponent until the general election in November). But if ever there was a year for the favorites to fall, 2010 could be it.
Journal Sentinel All Wet On Water
Last month, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. received an honorary award from the Milwaukee Press Club, where he gave a feisty speech condemning the age of the Internet (and also of Fox News) for elevating assertions over facts, and making it impossible to have a set of agreed-upon facts that can help structure political debates. Pitts has also written that newspapers should stop publishing anonymous comments online.
While I agreed with some of Pitts’ points, I was struck by what was left out: that traditional newspapers he works for are partly to blame for the situation he decries. For decades, newspapers have been a prime repository of “facts” but haven’t always played it as straight as they should.
A classic illustration of this came last week in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. On Friday, reporter John Schmid posted an online piece summarizing a story in the Economist called “Liquid Gold.” It was a brief update on how Midwestern states are beginning to value the lakes more, forming the Great Lakes Compact to protect them and seeing the lakes as an economic asset. Milwaukee “exemplifies the hope” that water could support economic growth, the story also noted.
Pretty small potatoes, really. The magazine made no conclusions as to whether Milwaukee is likely to succeed in its efforts to build a water hub, or whether its creation of a Water Council was a good idea. Schmid’s online post bore was accurately headlined “The Economist magazine highlights Water Council’s efforts.”
But by the weekend, the story made it into print, and those editors who love to control what we think had gotten busily to work. The new headline was “Area’s water plans praised” with the subhead “Magazine lauds Water Council.” Lauds, I kid you not. Of course, that isn’t what the Economist said, or for that matter, what Schmid’s story said the Economist said.
Why the change in language? Because the newspaper has been criticized – by this magazine and by UW-Milwaukee researcher Marc Levine – for writing gullible stories uncritically accepting the idea that Milwaukee is poised to become a water hub. But if the idea was lauded by an internationally known publication like the Economist, well, the JS must be right.
Meanwhile, the JS didn’t quote the sentence in the Economist story noting that even while Milwaukee is raising its rates for water, the water would “still remain some of America’s cheapest.” As I noted last week, the newspaper ran a front-page, top-of-the-fold story filled with suburban officials complaining about the proposed increase without noting how cheap the water would remain.
This use of selective reporting and slanted headlines doesn’t exactly falsify the facts. Nor is this practice always tilted in a rightward or leftward direction ideologically. But it does betray a bias that makes it more difficult for the community to agree upon the facts – and might be a contributor to the backlash against the power of the press. That’s the part Pitts left out.
The Buzz
-“Scott Walker has failed Milwaukee. Don’t let him fail the state.” The state Democratic Party created signs with this message to greet Walker as he made his motorcycle tour. This actually echoes Neumann’s attack on Walker and Barrett, asking voters if they want them to do to Wisconsin what they did to Milwaukee. How well will that approach work for the Dems if it’s Neumann running against Tom Barrett?
-In response to my piece last week, “Insane Handouts to Business,” Metro Milwaukee Association of Commerce President Tim Sheehy offers a defense of subsidies, along with some guidelines to limit their use, in letters.
-Milwaukee faces an alarming AIDS problem, according to a new study reported by NewsBuzz.
–Milwaukee newsman Mike Miller reflects on three decades of broadcast news in this week’s Pressroom Buzz.
