August Primary Recommendations

If you’re a center-left moderate in Dane County, well, you don’t have much to choose from in the Democratic primaries. All the candidates are pretty much the same, which is to say hard, not center, left. Election day is August 13th, but early voting is open now.

The sprawling research staff and all the summer interns on the 15th floor of YSDA Tower have been pouring over the available public statements, questionnaire responses and other data. They’ve been looking — in vain as it turns out — for any candidate who made a single reference to cutting costs or restraining taxes, any candidate who wasn’t looking for those illusive “root causes” of crime but just was, you know, against crime, any candidate who did not use the word “equity.” We even dismissed all those standards and would have supported any candidate who wrote or spoke like a human being as opposed to an AI program trained by listening in to conversations in the UW School of Education faculty lounge. No dice.

So, with every single candidate running for every office from County Executive to open Assembly seats to one open State Senate seat — there are a total of 14 — spouting the same kind of mushy progressive-speak, we clung to any slight indication of reasonableness that they might have (inadvertently, probably) allowed to slip in between the lines. Here goes.

Constitutional Amendments. Let’s start with the statewide constitutional amendments. We’re against them both and so we recommend a “no” vote on each. They were put on the ballot by the Republican Legislature which wants to control the spending of federal money as opposed to allowing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to do it. They’re especially sore that Evers got all the credit for spending the billions of dollars in emergency COVID aid.

To be honest, if the roles were reversed and it was a Democratically controlled Legislature and a Republican Governor, the Democrats would be proposing these very same amendments. But despite the hypocrisy, it’s just a bad idea — no matter which party controls what — for the Legislature to mess around in spending what are intended to be emergency relief funds. The idea is that when there is an emergency it requires quick action, something deliberative bodies are not designed to be very good at.

Dane County Executive. Normally a spring election, this is coming up now because long-time Executive Joe Parisi retired mid-term. There are four candidates, all fine people and all standard issue Dane County liberals. But the executive job is just that. It’s only half politics. You really do need to run the place. So, we like Regina Vidaver because she has the most impressive management experience combined with service as a Madison alder. Two of the other candidates — Wes Sparkman and Dana Pellebon — do have management experience as well, but Vidaver managed larger agencies in the public health arena at the state level, something relevant to a large part of the county budget. State Sen. Melissa Agard has no executive experience and is the least qualified candidate, but she’ll win the primary because she snagged all the big endorsements. (Sorry, but YSDA does not qualify as a major endorsement.) Still, if Vidaver can finish a respectable second she’ll have an outside chance in November’s general election. You can read the candidate responses to Cap Times questions here. Spoiler alert: none of them say anything.

16th State Senate District. Because Agard figures she’ll win the County Exec’s job, she didn’t bother to move back into the district she was redistricted out of. It now runs from the far Northeast Side of Madison down to Stoughton and east to Lake Mills. Of the three candidates we like Samba Baldeh. In his written responses to a Wisconsin State Journal questionaire, Baldeh actually boldly touted his experience in the private sector: “Working in corporate America for decades and small business owner for years.” That’s it. That’s the thin reed to which we must cling. But at least Baldeh acknowledges that there IS a private sector, which — if you study this closely — you’ll find pays all the bills for the public sector.

78th Assembly District. Rep. Shelia Stubbs was redistricted out of her district and must now compete for an open seat covering Madison’s South Side, Monona and McFarland. She’s up against Madison school board member Maia Pearson. We’re tempted to support Pearson just to get her off the board, where she is part of a group that has produced low test scores and high truancy rates. But we’re not that cynical. Stubbs has done a fine job in the Legislature, even finding ways to work with Republicans now and then. Most notably, she co-chaired Speaker Robin Vos’ Racial Disparities Task Force in the wake of the George Floyd murder. We like Stubbs.

77th Assembly District. Stubbs was redistricted out of this one on the near West Side (where YSDA Tower is located), which made it an open seat for which three candidates are contesting: Chuck Erickson, Thad Schumacher and Renuka Mayadev. They’re all pretty much the same, but we like Chuck Erickson. We know him. He’s a good guy with a good heart who has put in the time at the Dane County Board. That’s ample preparation in one legislative body for another. The others have no such training. But he faces an uphill battle with two men and one woman in the race. Mayadev may win simply because of identity politics, all the more reason to support Erickson.

80th Assembly District. Incumbent Mike Bare takes on challenger Nasra Wehelie in this district centered in Verona and also covering the far West Side of Madison and points west. We like this quote from Bare’s State Journal answers: “I have a proven record of setting aside my party label and working across the aisle on bipartisan efforts to invest a half billion dollars in workforce housing, help teachers, add bus drivers, recognize our veterans, help Wisconsinites plan for retirement, and guarantee contraception access. I also have valuable governing experience for when Democrats take the majority.” He promises to work to get Democrats back into the majority and he seems to understand that to do so they need to win outside of Dane County. Wehelie seems to be running mostly on her identity as a Black, Muslim woman. That thing about echoes of Education School faculty lounge language applies especially strongly to her comments in the same questionnaire in which Bare shined. We like Bare.

So that’s what you get. There once was a competitive Republican Party in Dane County. In fact, there was once a mainstream Democratic Party. Now everybody who is viable is hard-left. We have no real choices. But there are shades of far-left and we’ve chosen the lightest shades for your consideration.

Unrelated to Dane County or even Wisconsin, we hope that St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell will defeat hard-left Congresswoman Cori Bush in Missouri’s First Congressional District in this Tuesday’s primary. If Bell can defeat her in the August 6th primary, it would mean the second loss in as many months for the hard-left wing of the Democratic Party. Last month, New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman was beaten by moderate George Latimer. A Bell victory would send the message that moderates are back in control of the party and just in time for the convention.