Some advice for Republican candidate John McCain: Don’t waste your money on Wisconsin.
The media continues to portray Wisconsin as a “swing state” where either candidate can win. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has done stories by reporters Steve Schultze and Craig Gilbert repeating the idea that Wisconsin is key battleground, a point echoed by a recent USA Today story.
Nonsense. The most reliable measurer of trends is Pollster.com, which tracks all polls over time, both nationally and by state. It doesn’t include Wisconsin among the nine “tossup” states. It doesn’t even include Wisconsin among the 10 states that are merely “leaning” toward Democrat Barack Obama. Nope, Wisconsin is included among 17 “strong” Obama states.
And with good reason: Polls show Obama passed McCain (who had led him in Wisconsin) in late 2007 and has steadily widened that lead to more than a 12-point margin. Few states have shown such a consistently growing gap between the candidates.
The recent Quinnipiac University Poll looked at voters in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin and found McCain making overall gains since June among younger voters, white males, independents and women. The exception was Wisconsin, where McCain lost six points from women and four points from young voters and there was no real change in the overall gap.
This poll, moreover, came toward the end of a period (early June to late July) in which McCain and the GOP had spent some $1.9 million on TV ads in Wisconsin, compared to $1.2 million for Obama and the Democrats. Not much return for the dollar.
Meanwhile, JS reports show Obama has raised more campaign dollars than McCain in Republican Ozaukee County, and has even bested McCain in Super-Republican Waukesha County.
The response of longtime Waukesha Republican activist Don Taylor was telling: Taylor was willing to guarantee McCain would carry the county in November, but didn’t volunteer a prediction that McCain would raise more money there. Republicans must be shaken by how well Obama is doing in this state.
Some experts have suggested McCain could do well because Wisconsin likes mavericks. Yes, that would have helped against a more traditional Democrat like Hillary Clinton, but against Obama it’s two perceived outsiders doing battle.
Finally, as I’ve noted before, Wisconsin voters tend to be economic liberals and social conservatives, which is just the opposite of McCain, whose record has been that of an economic conservative and social liberal.
Nationally, the polls suggest the presidential contest could still be a horse race, but there’s little chance of this happening in Wisconsin, no matter how much McCain spends here.
Does IPic Hate Kids?
Last Thursday, I took my 16-year-old son to see The Dark Knight at the IPic movie theater at Bayshore Town Center. They didn’t let us in.
The theater’s policy, as I learned, is that no one under 21 is allowed into any movie that starts after 7 p.m. – even if accompanied by a parent. The policy has been much publicized by the media, so I guess I should have known all about it. My bad.
The policy doesn’t make much sense to me. So I called IPic Entertainment, a company based in Florida that opened its first theater at Bayshore and has tentative plans to open others (with the same policy) in Chicago, Miami and good old Plano, Texas. Jim Lee, the company’s VP of marketing, explained the concept.
“We are a venue for adults. We wanted to give adults a place to go into a movie by themselves.”
Why would they need or want this? “It’s a place where they can enjoy a movie in an adult atmosphere.” Yep, the answers got pretty repetitive.
Lee said the concept came from Dave and Buster’s, a Florida-based company that runs a restaurant, bar and video arcade complex and is said to be considering opening a franchise in Mayfair Mall. This is a place where adults socialize and perhaps meet someone interesting, and kids might get in the way. But a movie theater is where people sit anonymously in the dark. And I might add, a lot of the customers for comic book movies like Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk are minors.
Moreover, Dave and Buster’s, according to Lee, doesn’t let in kids after 9 p.m. At IPic, the cutoff is 7 p.m.
True, IPic serves alcohol, but it does this all day, from early afternoon matinees on, and kids are allowed all day. Meaning, I guess, that before 7 p.m., adults have to have kids watch them drink alcohol. The horror.
Lee says IPic did its demographic planning assuming the prime audience would come from a 3-mile radius, with the secondary audience from a radius of 5 miles. This would take in most of Milwaukee’s North Side, Brown Deer and Glendale, which happens to be where most African-Americans in the metro area live. I couldn’t help thinking about the controversy that arose at the Mayfair Mall, which bars unaccompanied teens after 3 p.m. on Friday and Saturdays — a move some felt was meant to eliminate young minorities. Was IPic out to keep certain moviegoers from attending?
Not at all, said Lee, who pointed to the matinee shows where teens of every color and creed are more than welcome. As to the evening policy, he intoned, “we just wanted a place where adults can go into a movie by themselves.”
And the adults, Lee says, love it. So who am I to complain?
The Buzz
The Journal Sentinel announced a second round of layoffs in early July and Milwaukeeworld.com columnist Michael Horne offered the first details last week. Editorial cartoonist Stuart Carlson is out, and confirmed this with Horne. Also likely to leave, sources tell me, are TV critic Joanne Weintraub, real estate writer Joanne Cleaver, senior editor Paul Sevart, and reporters Mary Zahn and Amy Rinard, as Horne reported. But Horne is wrong about media columnist Tim Cuprisin and technology writer Stanley Miller leaving; looks like they’ve changed their minds.
I’m also told that columnist Mike Nichols, business reporter Avi Lank, religion reporter Tom Heinen, education editor Laura Thompson and deputy national editor Anne Klemm are taking the buyout.
Meanwhile, sources say assistant managing editor Diane Bacha has applied for a position to run the new film festival, Milwaukee Film.
There are likely to be still more departures. There is a deep sadness in the newsroom about this. For the community, it will mean their daily newspaper is losing a lot of institutional memory and is likely to lose even more. That inevitably means the paper will cover issues with less depth.
And check out the Sports Nut, who goes Farving for fun.
