YSDA’s Spring Election Choices

Wisconsin’s spring voting season opened last week. Me? I’m a vote-on-election-day guy. I like the ritual. And also, you never know what might happen in the two weeks between the opening of early voting on March 18th and the real election day of April 1st. I could actually change my mind.

Nonetheless, a whole lot of people do vote early and every damn one of them has one question on their minds: Who is YSDA recommending?

Without further ado, here are our thoughts.

For Supreme Court: Susan Crawford. We recommend Crawford without enthusiasm for her but with great enthusiasm for voting against her opponent, Brad Schimel. Just as Schimel has distorted her record, she has had no compunction about distorting his, and just as Schimel has made it clear that he has already decided how he’ll vote on key cases, so has she, Neither candidate has covered themselves in glory in this awful campaign. We’d really like to vote for someone with a distinguished legal background and no obvious partisan leanings. But we don’t have that choice. It’s a choice between Crawford, a liberal Democratic partisan, or Schimel, a conservative Republican partisan. Since we lean center-left, we’ll vote for Crawford. If you’re conservative you’ll probably vote for Schimel. Well, unless you’re a conservative who still cares about democracy. Schimel super-charged our desire to keep him off the Court when he showed up at an event with Donald Trump, Jr., last week. At that event Schimel said that, “Do you think the job is finished? We have to stay vigilant.” In other words, at a time when Trump is attacking the courts, Schimel is saying he’ll vote Trump’s way no matter the details. He’ll finish the job of dismantling every check on Trump’s power. This is no small matter as the Wisconsin Court came within one vote of taking a case that aimed at overturning the 2020 election here. So, no, we’re not wildly enthusiastic about Crawford, but we are excited to do all we can to keep a guy like Schimel off the Court.

For State Superintendent: Brittany Kinser. We’re voting for Kinser as much as we’re voting against incumbent Jill Underly. Underly is underwhelming. In our view, she rigged state test scores just before the election to make her record look better. Even Gov. Tony Evers, who once held her job, disagreed with her. Then she further eroded her credibility by submitting a budget that spent all of the state’s $4 billion surplus on public schools. For one thing, once the surplus has been spent, what do you do in the next biennium? For another thing, nobody takes a proposal like that seriously. It’s just transparent pandering. And finally, it continues the very problem that Kinser might address: the see-no-evil nature of the public schools establishment. Their idea is that all you need to do is spend more money on the same failing system and everything will be fine. It’s like owning a car with a busted transmission and thinking you can fix it by filling up the gas tank. Kinser would be a breath of fresh air. She’s got great experience, having been a special ed teacher in the Chicago public schools. She was even a union member and was an opponent of charter schools and vouchers. Then she experienced them and became a convert. But that’s not all she’s about. She’s young and energetic and not at all partisan. It’s unfortunate that she’s gotten the backing of big Republican donors because it paints her as something she’s not. But campaigns need money and Democrats and the teachers union have fallen in behind Underly and the same old, same old failing establishment. Moreover, Underly hasn’t shown up for a single forum, while Kinser has taken every invitation. Underly doesn’t even feel the need to defend her positions. (I can’t blame her for that.) She figures she’ll just ride on Crawford’s coattails. She doesn’t deserve another four years. DPI needs big changes. Kinser might provide them.

For Madison School Board: Bret Wagner. Our view of the MMSD is clear and dim. Awful test scores, high truancy, a yawning achievement gap and terrible fiscal management — and yet two of the primary culprits in all of this on the Board are going unopposed. Our only hope to add a little bit of sanity is the open seat being contested by newcomers Wagner and Martha Siravo. Neither candidate strikes us as a big change agent, but we like Wagner’s emphasis on the basics of student performance. He sees reading skills as the portal to all learning and he has an ambitious agenda to get reading scores up. In this case, we’d actually like to see someone who was more outspoken against the hard-left ideology that dominates MMSD. But a candidate like that couldn’t get elected and Wagner’s a level-headed guy who will be an improvement nonetheless.

Constitutional Amendment: No. Republican legislators put a constitutional amendment on the ballot which would codify existing law on voter identification. It will pass overwhelmingly, but we’ll vote against it anyway. While we don’t have any problem with the id requirements, there’s no reason for this to be in the constitution. It’s a sham that Republicans put on the spring ballot in the hopes of driving turnout for Schimel. So, screw ’em. We’ll vote no.

YSDA stands for:

Free speech.

The rule of law.

Reason.

Tolerance.

Pluralism.