A Birds Eye View by Jimmy Cardinal Well it’s time for yet another gubernatorial race. With the recall two years ago, it’ll be the third time in four years that Governor Scott Walker will have to campaign for the governor’s job. The race will no doubt cost millions of dollars, which both sides will happily spend in pursuit of the governor’s mansion. With all of the money involved it is probably too much to hope for but maybe, just maybe, this year’s governor’s race can be one about the actual issues that face us, the citizens of the state of Wisconsin, rather than yet another business-as-usual petty political race. Wisconsin politics have been downright ugly throughout Governor Walker’s first term. Both sides are guilty of dragging what should be the high-minded business of governing this state down into and through the mud. Would it be too much to ask that Governor Walker and Democratic candidate for governor, Mary Burke, stay clear of the venom and take the high road in this election? Rather than tearing down the ideas of the other side and pointing out the long list of flaws of the opposing candidate, would it be too much to expect both candidates to provide a vision of where they want to take Wisconsin over the course of the next four years? Even though it’s only April, a Marquette Univer-sity Law School Poll already shows that the incumbent Walker leads the challenger Burke by six points, 48%-41%. Governor Walker isn’t a gray area guy, you either love him or you hate him, but no one is ambivalent towards him. The results of his controversial first term are a deeply divided state in which, according to that same Marquette Poll, 49% of the state’s citizens view him favorably and 47% view him unfavorably.\That same contro-versial first term will no doubt be put under the microscope in the coming months as he makes his case for a second term. It has been a busy four years for Governor Walker and everything he has done will be up for debate. From his first major act which stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights to his notable tax cuts to his refusal of federal funds to his rejection of a high-speed rail line between Milwaukee and Madison, we have gotten a pretty good view of Governor Walker’s vision for Wisconsin. He hit the ground running upon his inauguration and never apolo-gized for any of the actions he took. He has been a champion of conservative causes and a villain to liberals within the state. He represents the values and ideas of 50% of Wisconsinites. That also means that he has failed to represent the other half of his citizens throughout his first term. No doubt his challenger will also focus on his unfilled promise of 250,000 jobs. She is right to focus on job creation, which continues to lag within Wisconsin while our neighbors have seen steady improvement. In the recall two years ago, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Governor Walker combined to spend $81 million, a record for Wisconsin guberna-torial races. The previous record was the first race between those two candidates in 2010. The two spent $36 million in that race. It remains to be seen if that trend will continue this year and yet another record will be set, but regardless millions of dollars will be spent by both sides in the race. That would be fine if both candidates were using the money to provide us with a vision for Wiscon-sin. But we know better than that; the vast majori-ty of that money will be spent tearing the other side down, not building a vision. My challenge to you is this: tune the ads out. This is nearly an impossible task. The ads will be everywhere you turn, you won’t be able to turn on your television without getting bombarded with them, your favorite webpages will be filled with them, and there isn’t even going to be any refuge in your car if you want to listen to the radio. Candidates do what works; if we simply reward the candidate who runs the most negative campaign, we will end up with the governor we deserve, and we can expect the same kind of campaign four years from now. We deserve better, so let’s opt, instead, for the candidate with the best vision for the next four years. Let’s pay attention to what the candidates are actually saying and hold them accountable to their messages rather than allowing their opponents to define them for us. That’s lazy and it’s bad for democracy, we can do better.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 18:56:29 +0000
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