These are not good days for Annette Ziegler. The Washington County
Circuit Court Judge is running for state Supreme Court, specifically the seat
being vacated by Jon Wilcox. But she keeps stubbing her toe.
The race already looks partisan: Madison attorney Linda Clifford has
ties to Democrats and once sponsored a fundraiser for Gov. Jim Doyle.
Ziegler was appointed to the bench by former Republican governor Tommy
Thompson, and her campaign manager is Mark Graul, who ran Republican
Mark Green’s campaign. The dark horse candidate is Madison attorney
Joseph Sommers.
Graul told the press this is a nonpartisan race and he didn’t know whether
Ziegler had a history of voting for Republicans. That was the first mistake. It
soon came out that Ziegler’s extended family had contributed $6,000 to Thompson
before he appointed her to the bench in 1997 and some $7,200 over the next few
years. “The perception here is that this is a purely political appointment,”
charged Circuit Court Judge Richard T. Becker in a letter to Thompson
criticizing his choice of Ziegler in 1997.
But it gets worse. A check of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign finance
records done by the liberal-leaning One Wisconsin Now found that the Ziegler
family has contributed some $117,000 to Republican candidates from 1990 to 2006.
Nothing wrong with that, but it makes Graul and Ziegler look slippery in not
remembering her Republican connections.
Next, in response to a Journal Sentinel story about judges taking sick
leave, Graul told the paper that Ziegler had taken some sick leave in 1999 or
2000. He left it to the paper to check state records and find that Ziegler took
a 28-day leave in 2001. But the JS reported back in 2001 that Ziegler was
absent from the bench from Jan. 19 to March 13, which suggests she took well
more than 28 days off from work. This again leaves questions about the
campaign’s forthrightness.
Then there is Ziegler’s Web site, which showed photos of her appearing across
the state in many counties. But as bloggers checked this, they found Ziegler
appeared to be Photoshopped into the pictures. In response, Watchdog Milwaukee wryly Photoshopped
Ziegler into a painting of The Last Supper and next to Jesus, and had another
“photo” of Ziegler in a bikini in Florida.
WKOW-TV in Madison, which pays attention to bloggers, did a short item noting
the errors on Ziegler’s Web site. “We asked the judge if she was trying to
deceive voters…and she referred us to her Madison consultant Brandon
Scholz.” Naturally the campaign blamed an unnamed volunteer for the Web
site’s problems. So far the buck doesn’t seem to stop with anyone in the Zeigler
campaign, including the candidate herself.
Why Air Tran Really Wants Midwest
A recent Chicago Tribune story explained the real reason why AirTran wants to buy
Midwest Express: It’s all about Chicago.
AirTran, JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines are all trying to use
discount prices to win customers flying to and from a central national hub like
Chicago. But one problem they face is that more established airlines like United
and American have more gates at Chicago’s two airports, and there’s no room for
expansion. Solution: AirTran buys Midwest and gets a major hub in Milwaukee and
attracts customers flying out of Chicago to fly through Mitchell International
instead.
“We think we would be fairly effective in competing for the customers north
of O’Hare,” said Bob Fornaro, Air Tran’s CEO. “In essence we would be
serving Chicago from both the south side and way north side.” In short, fly
folks from Chicago’s Midway Airport (on the south side) and from Mitchell.
Meanwhile, JetBlue is considering adding operations in Milwaukee, the story
noted.
But Chicago customers haven’t been willing to travel to Milwaukee and would
have to be “trained” to consider driving north. For years, an expert noted, the
percent of Chicagoans willing to use Mitchell has stayed at about 5 percent. It
would take aggressive marketing by the likes of an AirTran (and only after
succeeding in a hostile takeover of Midwest) to bump up that percentage.
But AirTran’s takeover bid looks iffy, the story suggests. And Chicago’s
“Third Airport,” as Mitchell has sometimes been described, may have a ways to go
before arriving at that destination.
Mr. Good News
JS reporter John Schmid really, truly wants good things for
Milwaukee’s central city. His editors may as well. But the result of these good
intentions has been a lot of weak reporting.
In July 2005, the paper ran a huge front-page article about how investors were all set to trigger
development in the central city. The story’s central focus was Cory
Nettles, the former state commerce secretary, and Midcities Investment
Management Inc., a venture fund targeting the inner city. It all sounded
wonderful, except there were no specifics about any investments or projects.
Last week, Schmid ran a story correcting himself, which naturally got less
prominence, running in the business section. It seems Midcities has been
dissolved after “three years of pitfalls and delays.” Yes, a new effort will
replace this one, but in the meantime Midcities has no progress to show, some 18
months after Schmid had readers expecting the second coming.
Schmid previously did a story touting Johnson Controls’ fantastic solutions
for the inner city while ignoring the legal problems and lack of success for the
company’s efforts in New Orleans. And before that, Schmid did another long
front-page story hyping the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, once again
suggesting everything was coming up roses in the inner city, only to do a later
article letting readers know the flowers actually never grew. Today, ICIC is
essentially defunct.
You might call Schmid the Will Rogers of urban blight: He’s never met an
inner city development group he doesn’t like. But the result is
counterproductive. Rather than helping the inner city, it leaves readers
wondering how all these fabulous experts with their magical plans have failed.
The only possible conclusion: blame the residents of these impoverished
neighborhoods. Ultimately, such journalistic puffery fuels more cynicism about
the potential for inner-city development.
And try critic Ann Christenson’s Dish on Dining.
