Reason Breaks Out In Legislature

An alarming spurt of reasonable opinions has broken out among the Legislature’s Republican leadership. I expect they’ll get over it soon enough, but let’s acknowledge it before it melts away.

Just within the last day or so Senate Majority Devin LeMahieu has taken two positions that make sense. He has joined Speaker Robin Vos in opposing an idea being pushed by some Republicans to eliminate the Elections Commission and put the administration of elections in the hands of the partisan Secretary of State’s office. And LeMahieu has called for Vos to back off on his withholding of inflationary wage increases for UW staff in order to pressure the UW administration to eliminate DEI programs. LeMahieu says that he’s been in talks with Vos on that.

Putting elections in the hands of the Secretary of State is a terrible idea in this climate. In normal times it might be okay. In fact, the Wisconsin Secretary of State once handled those functions and it’s not an uncommon practice in other states. But in the current environment of rampant, unfounded election denial, this is asking for trouble. While current Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski would do fine with that responsibility, keep in mind that the office was narrowly kept out of the hands of an election denier last year. Veteran Secretary of State Doug LaFollette won reelection by only a few thousand votes over Republican Trumpite Amy Loudenbeck. LaFollette subsequently resigned and Gov. Tony Evers appointed Godlewski.

This is also a bad idea because it’s a solution in search of a problem. The Commission is functioning okay. Not great, but okay. What we really should have is the former board of retired judges. That was abolished by Vos, et. al., when they hit then-Gov. Scott Walker for violating the law by coordinating his campaign with outside groups that were supposed to be independent. Still, credit Vos for not taking that bad idea even further by abolishing his own creation in the Elections Commission.

As for the UW wage increases, I share some of those concerns about DEI. Those programs seem to have had no positive effect and there’s a not unreasonable suspicion that they are suffused in Critical Race Theory and the illiberal views of fringe thinkers like Ibram X. Kendi. I do think that DEI deserves to be under scrutiny, but there’s no reason to punish UW employees for decisions made by a handful of their superiors. LeMahieu has pointed out just that. Let’s hope he can convince Vos. It would be even better if the UW powers-that-be would admit that DEI is at best ineffectual and at worst harmful and cooperate in re-evaluating these programs.

In any event. LeMahieu might be getting his footing in standing up to the even harder right (he’s plenty conservative himself) in his own caucus and Vos is at least partially joining him. This is good.