 Oh, welcome to the Donahue Group. Glad you could join us for some good conversation about issues facing the state. We're in a jolly mood here today, in spite of the trails and travails of the election. At least at the beginning of the program. At least in the beginning of the program. We've been progressively grim as we move on. And I'm gonna introduce my fellow grim reapers, Ken Risto, social studies head of everything in the Sheboygan area school district. I think that's a very sophisticated title. Choreograph popcorn. There you go. Kal Potter, former state senator, gracing us here today. Dirk Seilman is joining us. Tom Pineski was not able to be here because of his mom's death. And so we asked Dirk to join us. And Dirk, of course, is a radio personality. Was a radio personality. Was. I didn't know that. We don't have local radio anymore. Well, that's true. Well, we'll get into that. We might even get into that in any event. Dirk Seilman, former vice president of something or another at Lakeland College of Development and things like that at Lakeland. Now chair of the town of Mosul. And on the. Otherwise known as Paradise. Otherwise known as Paradise, where the taxes are low and the quality of leadership is high. And the people are happy. Yeah. Oh my. His annual meeting's coming up. So we're getting ready for that. Everybody above it. So, and I forgot to introduce myself last time. And so I'm gonna do that right now. And then the introductions will have taken up 10 minutes of our show and we'll be fine. Mary Lynn Donahue, small town lawyer at O'Neill Cannon, Holman D. Young. And a big firm. And I mentioned that because I was out in the community and somebody said that the name of this show was the Ronald McDonald group. And they got somehow Donahue and McDonald all messed up. So those individuals at Brennan's Tavern, it's not Ronald McDonald's. I think maybe after a few beers. And Mary Lynn, I would be offended if I were you. And I'm so offended all the time that it just kind of, you know, I wear out after a while. Well, and I'm mad. I'm mad about. See, we told you it was gonna get grim. I'm mad about the Supreme Court race. Mike Gabelman, 51% of the vote statewide, 62% of the vote in Sheboygan County. Lewis Butler, 49% statewide, 38% in the county. I think that race was a crying shame. I'm nearly speechless with my really deep dismay about the 527 or independent expenditure groups that in my opinion absolutely ruined this race and reduced it to, and let me just say, for Supreme Court justice, one expects some dignity, some truth, some attention to the qualities of the person who was running instead of Willie Horton ads and millions and millions and millions of dollars being spent, frankly, on both sides, distortions. I think clearly more on the Gabelman side, without a doubt, but you know, on both sides. And we're used to misrepresenting kinds of ads, but I guess my question is, when does this stop? Does it ever? I mean, we keep talking. Unless you have some type of change in law and how we finance court races. And I think it's, you're right on the money. I think people ought to not only be disgusted with the way the canteen was run, but how the campaign actually treated the voter. They took the voter and said, you're dumb as a box of rocks. You don't even know the difference between a Supreme Court race and a trial court. And we're gonna portray this in a way that you won't even know that it's, we're talking to you in an erroneous manner. I mean, they simply went, they went back and said, this is like a trial court judge and we're gonna take case, how they would rule in a trial court setting. And you don't know that, but we're gonna tell you which candidate is better based on this premise. And I think people ought to be ticked off that any group would come in and have you looked at in such a demeaning manner. Like you're a bunch of, you fell off the turnip truck or something yesterday. That's how this was really conducted. No, it's a dirty shame. I think there's some momentum for public financing of particularly judicial races. The challenge is I don't know if that's gonna solve anything unless you somehow figure out how to put a handle on those 527s because I don't know if I saw either a Gabelman ad or a Butler ad during the campaign. I saw all the special interest ads. Well, you did see the Gabelman ad where he, in my opinion, I'm not sure that the complaint with the Judicial Commission will go anywhere, but where the representation, it was a Willie Horton ad. They put Butler's face up with a guy that he represented who he did on a technicality, have the case dismissed, Supreme Court reinstated the sentence, the guy served a full term. After he's done, then he goes out and he reoffends, but the commercial leads you to think that Butler, number one, did it as a trial judge, not as a public defender, which is what he's paid to do, and that's why we have a constitution that says people are entitled to present a defense. I mean, it's a fairly key cornerstone of American philosophy. So there was all of that stuff going on, and that was Gabelman's ad that really incensed all sorts of newspapers and commentators and said to Gabelman, take it off the air, and he said, I'm not gonna do it. But as I understand, the Judicial Commission is already hedging its bet saying the Supreme Court has told us that misleading ads are okay. It's the ones that are outright lies that are not okay. And so- Right, the fact that you're a public defender, that is a position that should be respected. As you've said, people need, if they're brought to trial, if they're brought into court, they need somebody to defend them. And the people that do that are really, in many cases, the heroes of our society because they defend some of the people that are almost indefensible. But that's what our system is all about. And that was a very unfair ad. Some of the ads, though, against Gabelman were pretty unfair. The Bobbing head, he paid, gave a contribution to McCallum, and then he got his judgeship and all this sort of thing. And I think you have to, you can't forget that Butler four years ago ran and got whipped by Diane Sykes. And then was appointed to that position. We haven't had an incumbent Supreme Court Justice beaten in over four decades. It was George Curry from Schwagen who was defeated. But I think that what disturbs me, and I think that there were some challenges with Butler. I mean, he was way off on the edge in terms of some of his judicial decisions, particularly regarding business and that lit paint and all that sort of thing. But I just don't get the sense that Gabelman was very qualified. I mean, I would have been okay if Butler had lost, but had lost to a really quality, kind of middle of the road judicial candidate. But isn't it interesting because Butler is one of the centrists, or was, one of the centrists on the court. It was interesting to read that that he was kind of the conciliator on the court. Yeah, I think that's the point that you had on Dirk which disturbed me was the money that was funding those ads. It was distorted as they were primarily Wisconsin Association of Manufacturing. And their issues with Butler were exactly the ones you just outlined. That there was a variety, he was on a decision making process where they disagreed with his decisions. Well then let's talk about that. Let's talk about don't vote for Justice Butler because in those decisions, here's where he came down. This race never talked about a single decision he wrote while he was sitting on the Supreme Court bench. I don't think you have, there was a single positive ad on either side. It was always bashing. Exactly. And so Cal's point is not only the distortion that if you didn't know better, you'd think he's sitting in a trial court opening the jail cells. People were voting against Butler for an agenda that didn't exist so that the Wisconsin Association's hidden agenda is now very, very possible because we'll see how Justice, the new Justice Gabelman rules on some of these business decisions. Well, I mean, he's fairly beholden to, like Molly Ivan says, you gotta dance with them what brung ya. And I think, it's hard. It's a little scary he's what, 41 years old? So he could literally be on for a long time. And truly, Ibramson's gonna face the same nonsense. Well, we'll get to that in just a minute, but I wanna beat the Gabelman, Butler horse here just a little bit longer because first of all, it wasn't just Wisconsin manufacturer's commerce. It was WIAC and the Greater Wisconsin Coalition. And then it was WMC and the Coalition for Families and whatever silly names they wanna give these 527 groups. The plain fact is, as a friend of mine said, the WIAC people weren't as good as the WMC people. The candidates don't count anymore. The candidates don't count. And who wants to be a candidate? If you don't, I mean, it used to be you would say, I'm running for office. This is what I believe in and vote for me or don't vote for me. Now you say I'm gonna put my name in the ballot and then I could go on a vacation for four months because I'm going to be defined. There's gonna be some caricature created about me and of me that may have no relationship to reality and I can't do anything about it. You totally lost control over your own race. Newspaper reports said that Butler repeatedly asked groups that were campaigning for him or advertising for him to, as he said, stand down. Now, I don't know if those were, I mean, that would have been political suicide if they had really stood down because then there would have been no answer to the barrage more than $2 million spent on the, I was gonna say on the Republican side, more than $2 million spent on the Gabelman side and less on butlers, but still considerable funds. But it's true, you could go on vacation. You have no control. You aren't defining the issues. It's not about you. It's about various political groups. It's a struggle for power and you're just the pawn. So, if WMS, they need to get better at it. Well, the better meaning, let's be clear what better is, better means worse. Exactly. I mean, in this Orwellian conversation we're having now, is you have to be even more outrageous so that by the end it's both, you know, you destroyed the village to save the town. I mean, you have to out Willy Horton the other side. And there was sort of a feeble attempt to say, okay, now that the agenda is who's weak on criminals, whatever the heck that means, because they're not criminals while they're convicted. Last time I checked in this constitution. So they even try to make Gabelman look just as weak on criminals while that dog didn't hunt. Well, and the other thing is people don't realize what the justice system is like. They don't understand that plea bargaining is a critical piece of the system. They don't understand that judges never, well, rarely do what the district attorney wants because the district attorney always asks for more and the public defender always asks for less and it's a question of doing justice in the middle, usually not always. They don't understand, you know, what appeals are and what the Supreme Court does and how those issues get there. So there needs to be some education, I think, in the populace. A lot of education. A lot of education just about what the judiciary does. And judges are not supposed to announce their platform that I'm gonna vote pro-business or pro-union. Herein there is a jurist who's supposed to know the law and the constitution. And one of the things, and this is changing a little bit, but where we saw on the appellate race, Lisa Neubauer and Bill Gleisner. And he was basically saying how he was going to decide. If you elect me, I am pro-life, I'm this, I'm this, that was just, that was the strangest thing. Well, Bill Gleisner was an amicus, a briefwriter for the Wisconsin Association of Trial Lawyers which gave him all of his money. He's a liberal guy. You know, and so it's- That chameleon tried to change his color and it didn't work. That chameleon don't hunt. And I was surprised because I thought, Sheboygan County is getting conservative, although nobody really knew what conservative was because Lisa Neubauer, Mary DeGef Neubauer, former chair of the Democratic Party, and yet is a litigation partner, Follian Lardner. Representing insurance companies and presumably pretty Republican types for years. So she's a skilled litigator. She wins the county parallel to the state, 63% and to Gleisner's 38%. Marilyn, it must have been because you and I endorsed her. The only reason. You know the downside to all of this is how do you get good lawyers to run for a court position in the future? Who would want to put their family and themselves through this baloney? I don't think many people would. And then you end up getting the gablements. You know the guy's not married. I heard he was 18th on the list. And everybody else says no, right. And finally said, okay, I'll put my name up because it doesn't make any difference what you believe or how good a judge you are. It's what kind of ad campaign they're gonna run. Exactly, exactly. It really does have a dampening effect on judges running for the next level up. Or who want to run. Who want to run. Every decision, now how could an independent group take this decision and say I'm anti-crime or anti-crime? And that gets dangerous. I mean fundamentally, until the Supreme Court of the United States guts the exclusionary rule. We make our police respect the Bill of Rights by from time to time when they wander off as human beings do as James Madison said. We, when they wander off the plantation and they don't follow the rules the Constitution requires them to follow. We say you can't use that evidence and that puts the government at a disadvantage. Well we rely on judges to be the referee. And if you're thinking in the back of your head someday I want to be an appellate judge or someday I want to move up but this may mean that someday this one case out of the thousands of cases that I hear in a county court or a circuit court is gonna come back to haunt me. I mean it's really difficult. You can be right on 999 you can have something that you might even be right on but it's just gonna be tweaked a little bit and all of a sudden that one case becomes what your opponent runs on and tries to define you as. Yeah and I was just telling my friends do we really want to have a system of government? Do you have those? Some. I'm a guest here I'm sorry. Oh they're making believe. Whoa look. They're making believe. That was pretty good. I like that. I'm not used to it from that side of the room. I know. I'm used to it over here. Now I got a two front war. I was meant to an acquaintance. That do you really want to have a system of government where the judge determines what rights you have based upon his perception of whether you're guilty or not? Or her perception. Yeah. Really? Well speaking of hers and judges and I think it was timed with some vigor Shirley Abrahamson announced her decision to run for reelection. The date, I think it was the day after the election the Gabelman Butler Fiasco and so she will be running for her fourth tenure term or her fifth. I don't. A long time. And justices are elected for 10 years. Trial court and appellate court judges are elected for six years. And. Probably her fourth which would mean she'd have been on 39 years except was she appointed initially or did she get on the first time by running? I think she was appointed. So many of the judges are. Yeah and that's a typical path. And she's been Chief Justice now ever since Nat Heffernan retired and she's a remarkable justice. She has a mind that is stunningly bright and she is well educated. She's a delight to listen to. She's thoughtful. She's one of my favorites. Well she was a guest on our show. And she was a guest on our show. I had forgotten about that. You did better than that. That's right, yeah. And she didn't even like rule you out of order which clearly would have been appropriate. She was very tolerant. She was incredibly tolerant. So in any event. So we like. Well there's a drawback right there. Abraham Sena at least some of us do on the Donahue group but I think she's just saying come after me. Come after me because you know this may be my last term. She's in her late 70s. And which is like the median age for the US Supreme Court. She'd be one of the youngsters on the US Supreme Court. And I think this is my view of it is she's just saying bring them on because I'm gonna fight back. Let's hope that in the special session that's still on we can get at least public financing of the Supreme Court races. I would hope that people on both sides have got such a bad taste in their mouth right now that we gotta do better than this and hope we could before the next race we can move at least that part of the financing puzzle into the public sector. What I'd really like is if, Justice Abramson if you're listening. I'm sure she will be. Yeah I would really like her to say I will refuse to align myself in any fashion with 527 ads. I will move heaven and earth to make sure they don't do anything for me and I challenge my opponent to do the same. Except you have no control over that. I know. You're not even supposed to talk to those folks. Right. Right. Or coordinate campaigns or messages. She could do an ad that says this people who support me and I appreciate their support I don't want them to do this. This needs to be an election about issues and that's my dream. I think she'll do very well. I think as you said she's highly regarded. The other thing is just the nature of the Supreme Court. It was four to three if you want to classify liberals and so this was a battle by the conservatives to try to get one liberal seat. Now they have four to three. Surely Abramson is one of three. So it doesn't make, there won't be a change whether she loses or wins. And I think just the fact that she's chief justice she's so regarded. But it is interesting because as you said it's a 10 year term there's seven justices. So as long as it's close when you have it where it can tip the court one way or the other that's when they get contentious. So this was a contentious one. Abramson I don't think will be the next year as an off year and then Prosser. Who then you'll potentially have the more liberal side. Though the other thing that happens as Mary Lynn said is so often you get appointments in there. That's how so many of the Supreme Court justices get on the first time. Well and a thoughtful justice rules different ways at different times depending on the particular facts that come before the court. And they do try to choose cases that have wide application. Rather than coming in with a mindset then don't bother me with the facts. They listen and they digest the facts. And generally we have very very bright justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And so they can process information and so forth. I mean Prosser is a very bright guy. And but what I'd like to see is the requirement to all 527 contributions be listed. And so then in a Supreme Court race anyone who has contributed to one of those justices campaigns would have to the justice would have to recuse him or herself. So pretty soon we would have a court that couldn't rule on anything. Maybe that would oh well I'm beginning to fantasize. I am dreaming let's talk. That maybe is where you even started with the 527s where you just have to have that transparency and say okay we may you know because of speech issues we may not be able to stop you. But we certainly can say you have to show if you contributed and if you're a recipient of it you show your donor list. There's nothing wrong with that. From a purely political point of view and I was out of the, I was on break then last week leading up to the election so I wasn't around to watch TV. Did Justice Butler ever do an ad where he looks into the camera and talks about this is what I really do and address the Lupo-Louis argument? Well I think that's what's gonna have to happen with Shirley, she's got the gravitas and I'm sure Justice Butler did as well. I don't know if he did that. And he kind of made a joke of it. And he said Lupo-Louis was kind of an affectionate term and that was a mistake I think. Because I think really that's what's going to have to happen because you can't control these groups no matter how much you stand and say I don't want you to be involved in our races. I think you almost have to without talking about how you rule on cases. You really have to use your campaign ads as a way to educate the public about what really goes on in the Supreme Court and address those kinds of issues. And somebody like Averyson can do that. So what if she wins 60-40 instead of 80-20? She'll win and she can try to make a statement. I hope you'll give her that advice. But you'll remember that her last campaign or two campaigns ago against Sharon Rose from Green Bay was highly contentious and Sharon Rose went after the Chief Justice with everything she had. That was an ugly race. But they were funding it themselves and we were talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of millions and millions. Well, let's take a deep breath, put our dismay and our outrage down in a little corner here and talk about something else that can steam us up. Like the legislature. Wait, we don't, they're still in special, we do, they're still in special session. Cal, what's going on? If anything? Well they adjourned their regular session and I think in the end of March. And it was a very nondescript session. Very few bills passed. Of course, because you have a Democratic Senate and Republican Assembly. And as a result, most of the bills passed one House and not the other. And what you have now is the special session that Governor called way back in what, January? December. Yeah, it was December. And he at that time put on public financing of campaigns or campaign reform. But added most recently the fact that we need a budget review bill because the two year budget is going to be up to $500 million out of balance if we did not have a budget review bill. And so the sessions as far as not passed very much. They've got the budget review bill passing the Senate as the governor pretty well appropriated the bill. And then now the assembly that will, I think say we're going to cut taxes, we're going to cut spending, we're going to be the conservative and it will go to some type of conference committee. And hopefully with the governor intervening and compromising to some extent, we'll eventually get a budget review bill passed, but it will not be like what the governor and the Senate came up with. And the political climate for campaign reform, I don't know what will happen of course, as we get further and further towards campaigns, there's very little interest in debating whether the things are involved in at that particular time are illegal or bad public policy because they want to grant Garner as much special interest money as they can. The only thing that's really out there and I would, if I were the governor, I would bring up this Supreme Court race. And I would say you guys are not going to go home and to campaign or go anyplace until you do something substantive about public financing of court races. And I would call them back 10 times if I have to, simply because I think the editorial, hopefully boards around the state would be on the governor's side to say this thing stunk this high heaven. And we in needs at least, if we can't agree to legislative public financing, we can do it for the court system and take that road and just beat it as much as you can. But I don't know what the governor is gonna ultimately do. And maybe on the court races, but you're not gonna get substantive campaign finance reform in a campaign year. You gotta do it enough. And as we mentioned, as long as these 527s operate with impunity and total secrecy, it seems to be not particularly relevant. Would be disclosure of the names of the funders rather than the citizens for families or some baloney like that. I mean that is, it really ticks you off to have anybody say that this ad that literally assassinated verbally somebody is paid for by a group representing families. My gosh, what an insult. But the other issue that's pretty serious I think is the state budget. The legislature and the governor have always gone in and they've kind of said, okay, this is our expected revenue and we spend almost all of it. There's very little or any day fund. And then there's generally fairly positive revenue growth projections in there. You get this recession and if it gets worse, you're not only gonna get no revenue growth, you could have a revenue shortfall. And that 500 million, it could be more. And that's gonna work its way through schools and cities and counties will be saying, well, we're losing revenue. I mean, property taxes go down. Well, you can raise the rate, but that gets people mad. Oh, sure does. And so they're gonna be a little bit low. And they'll be looking to the state and the state won't have any money. This can be serious. We're in a climate now where even if the hospital tax, for example, which the hospital association is in favor of because it will be reimbursed by the federal government and so forth, is that legislators have painted themselves into a corner about no new taxes. And so even something that's pretty rational and good public policy just isn't gonna play well in the panders circuit. And so those kinds of things won't be taken advantage of and that's really too bad. We just have one minute left. Maybe we should just briefly talk about the Frankenstein veto, which I think was great. Passed by a huge margin. Democratic governor or Republican governor, it got to the point where it was outrageous where literally the governor could write policy with his stroke of a pen. And I think it's good that this thing passed. Yeah, it was bad when McCallum did it. It was bad when Tommy Thompson did it. The master, it was bad when Doyle did it. So in past 71%, I think. So at least the Frankenstein veto has gone. Part of the Wisconsin constitution or does it have to go another year? No, I think this is it. I got lost in the process. The referendum had to pass two successive sessions, then it voted upon, then it goes into effect. Okay. And there's still a pretty strong veto power for the governor. It's just that you can't change anything. He still has line item authority. The Frankenstein veto is done and so are we. Thank you all. We'll see you again.