No Runny Eggs

Brian Fraley, who engineered one of the two lone bright spots in Wisconsin, asks what the license plate of the truck that ran over us is. Let’s see if I can’t help answer the question after sobering up some:

– Taxes are dead as a campaign issue. – If you’ve read this blog at all, you know I’ve pimped the tax issue since I started. I hate to admit it has failed spectacularily, but it has.

Let’s take a look at two races; the 21st Senate and the Oak Creek/Franklin school referendum, both in areas that have been historically anti-tax. Before the now-retired Cathy Stepp, the previous two senators from the Racine area were tossed out because they advocated higher taxes. Indeed, George Petak suffered the first successful recall of a senator in ages over voting for the Miller Park sales tax. Running to replace Stepp were Bill McReynolds, who demonstrated fiscal responsibility as Racine County executive, and John Lehman, who actually said that Wisconsin was not a tax hell. The tax-and-spender won by 5 percentage points.

In Oak Creek and eastern Franklin, the school board sought a third spending referendum in a decade, one that costs more than either of the two previously passed, and made no effort to hide that they’ll be back for much more to address “needs” that were allegedly addressed by those two previous referenda as soon as the building authorized by that referendum is completed. Thanks in no small part to all these referenda, property taxes in the district rose to among the highest in the county. On the other hand, this was one of the hotbeds of the revolt of 2002, with Oak Creek sending a tax-freezing Republican to the Assembly, breaking 80 years of Democrat dominance of the district. That representative has run unopposed in both 2004 and 2006. The latest jam to the taxpayers won by 4 percentage points.

– Ethics is a “break”, not “make” issue for Republicans. – A LOT of Republicans with at best tenuous ties to Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley went down in flames. Meanwhile, Jim Doyle, Rod Blagojevich, Bob Menendez and William Jefferson, all Democrats being criminally investigated for various corruption charges, live on to collect more taxpayer-funded paychecks.

– Negative campaigning works, at least if you start early. – Let’s take a look at the governor’s and attorney general’s races. Jim Doyle’s campaign team started attacking Mark Green the moment Scott Walker dropped out of the race. Green’s campaign remained silent until September, and then didn’t go negative right away.

Similarily, JB Van Hollen’s campaign team started pointing out Kathleen Falk’s complete lack of prosecutorial experience the day after the primaries. Falk went very negative very late in the race.

– The “dinosaur” media still has a lot of sharp teeth. – As invested as talk radio and right-wing bloggers were in trying to stop the Democrat tsunami, the traditional media became invested in creating said tsunami. Guess who won.

– Pushing social conservative values still works most of the time. – Defenses of traditional marriage passed in almost every state in which it was an issue, and the return of the death penalty in Wisconsin was strongly endorsed. Balancing that out was the marriage defense failure in Arizona and the rejection of a strong anti-abortion initiative in South Dakota.

– Similarily, law and order is a winning issue. – See the attorney general race. Also, note that David Clarke, who is still working on turning the Milwaukee County Sheriff Department into a professional urban police force, handily defeated Don Holt, who wanted to return the department into solely a revenue generator. Further, John Chisholm, who at least says he wants to prosecute aggressively, handily whipped Lew Wasserman, who wanted to expand the catch-and-release program that is the DA’s office.

Revisions/extensions (9:30 am 11/8/2006) – Thanks for trying to talk me down, Charlie. I am going to need a lot of help with this one.