 Hello, and welcome to the Donahue Group. We're happy that you're joining us again for a fun-filled half hour of political chatter and delightful insights into the wonderful state of affairs and our localities, our state, not so much the nation. That would probably take a good hour. But I'm joined today, as always, by Cal Potter, former state senator Tom Pineschi. Glad to be here. Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin Ken Risto, the king of social studies in the Sheboygan area school district, me. Just like the king of England. Completely ceremonial. Just, absolutely. Queen of the Lion. And me, I'm Mary Lynn Donahue, after whom this show is named. Queen of the Lion, Queen of the Lion, Queen of the Lion. Thank you. The Zarina, long live the Zarina. Finally getting just a tiny bit of the respected, to which I'm entitled. We're talking about state affairs and boy, it's been interesting lately, not so much in what the state has been doing, our wonderful legislators. Which is not much of anything. Yeah, they haven't been, but what people are thinking about, and I'm going to just take a half a second to read from the journal Sentinel on Sunday, a poll that came out with a lot of interesting information. This is the most interesting thing to me. Excuse me. The poll asked those who were polled, whose interests elected officials represented the most? Voters interest, special interest, or the elected officials interest? Lots of S's there. Only 6%, six. Not 16, not 60, but only 6% thought that their elected officials represented the voters best interest. 41% thought they were representing special interests, and 48% thought that politicians, elected officials were representing the elected officials interests. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty stunning number. That kind of tends to put politicians below lawyers. Car salesmen. Car salesmen. And other assorted ne'er-do-wells in the world. 6% thought that elected officials were representing the voters interests. What do you think? Well, I think it's just a low ranking that they've earned. Well, there you go. I always say you get the government... Merit pay. You get the government you deserve. And I think people have tended to ignore that we need a new financing system for our government. And as campaigns have become more and more expensive, we've seen people who have gone out and gotten in trouble, particularly in the Madison scene, shaking down people for money. We see it on a federal level. And indictments of people who have done cozy and illegal things with the financing of campaigns. I can't help but think people would draw a conclusion that either they're out for their own hides, protect their own hides, or they're out there serving their special interests who wrote the check. And I would agree that the system has got its flaws. And but people auto start thinking about what the solution is. And in my opinion, the solution is to get big money out of campaigns. But it's something that has evolved to be a system that has broken, I think. If you bring it down to numbers, see, 6%, there's, that'd be about one council member would be for the voters and the rest of the council members are for themselves or special interests. And where do you put the mayor and that is he for his own self or the special interests or is he for the city? You probably get one or two vote at 6% of 17, 18 elected officials. I think there's a problem, you know. But Americans have never liked legislatures a whole lot. I mean, can anybody name a Congress that was esteemed, you know, in public opinion polls? You got that. And secondly, you've got a whole industry of talk radio which exists to generate that discussion. I mean, you can't talk about, you can't get on the air and say, let's talk about how good government is lately and how they're providing us with services that we need, who wants to listen to that? It's not nearly sexy enough. Well, the media, the national media and the state media, all the media like to trash people. Not just talk radio. Well, I know. I mean, you've got talk radio and then you've got talk television and you've got, you know, Springsteen said 57 channels and nothing on. That's right. So you got to fill those channels with something and it's got to be 24 hours. What are you going to talk about? So whether you're talking about hardball by Chris Matthews, you got the whole personification of politics and politicians become celebrities and national and state. You got certainly that. And you got the, yeah, the reality of raising funds. I wouldn't even want to think about running for public office as much as I'm interested in current affairs. Well, there, bingo. I don't want to raise funds. I don't want to stand around prostituting myself quite frankly. One of the, I think it's incumbent on people who are interested in the political process to try to recruit people to run for whatever office, whether it's school board or city council or state legislature. And even at a very local level where you don't really have to raise a whole lot of money. I mean, you can run a good school board race for, you know, five or $600. I mean, it depends, but you know, you can do it for just that. The disrespect and it's not even the disrespect. It's the distaste, I think, that people have for being in the public eye is so intense that it's very difficult to get good people to run for anything. Three of the four of us have been local elected officials or state elected officials, but it's tough. You know, if you're out trying to recruit people, I know when I left the school board, I was just intent on trying to find somebody who would run in my place. And I did, but boy, it took a lot of work. And in those days, the school board was pretty calm and still is, but I mean, those were fairly calm times. I left things in such good shape, but you know, it really, I don't know, it was just the 6% that really hit me. You're really buffing up your resumes last couple of these couple of episodes. I can't imagine. I can't wonder if I'm thinking if you're thinking about contemplating a run for something. Oh yeah. Are you going to make an announcement here in the air? And you know, I keep batting this microphone and I'm sure I'm our producer's poor eye. And I think that's part of it too, is the culture's gotten a lot less civil. And so, when you're in public service. The culture is also less, I think, political in the sense that, yeah, Americans have never loved their public officials. They've always distressed everything's King George, I guess, but you know, one of the things about the public today is they are a product less of public discourse on issues. In other words, if you look at this, I always, when I was in Madison, I always tell the kids to look at this beautiful Capitol building and just ask yourself, do you think the taxpayers today will build a building with these mosaics and all this original art and this gold leaf? No, the answer is no. Well, they put a glance at it. But they probably would. And but what happened at that time is you had immigrants and sons and daughters of immigrants who had a great deal of pride in their new government in their new home. And they felt they wanted to house it in a distinct building that was fitting of the concept of democracy. Today, people are a product of sports, consumerism, just a culture that's not so much a tune to coming to this country because of political freedom or seeking a better economic life. They're just, they're on a different wavelength. And I'm noticing that as I get older, I guess, that the value system differs as you get older. And there are a lot of young people today who don't care about politics or politicians that just doesn't fit in their whole cultural milieu that they live in. And interestingly enough, and our Wisconsin Academy group has talked one evening about third party politics in the US and how really literally impossible it is for a third party candidate to get elected these days to any big office. But there's an interesting movement going on right now in Wisconsin, the Fighting Bob Party. It's not a party, but their motto is is a private fighter can anyone join. But kind of coming out of the Fighting Bob, La Follette tradition, and we've talked a little bit about it, but they had their people's legislature in, I think, Baraboo, and I believe this is the fourth year they've done it, and each year more and more people come. I think they had about 5,300 people this year if I'm not mistaken. And these are the folks that convene the people's legislature. Which is meeting tomorrow, I believe, is it not? In Madison? On Thursday, October 27th, they're doing a clean sweep. They're doing a little, they're a fun group. That's the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. And they're really talking democracy and they're equal opportunity hitters. I mean, they'll go after Doyle as much as they'll go after Guard. In fact, they seem to enjoy going after Doyle more than the Republicans. But there is at least a body of people who are thinking and trying to re-engage with the real political process which just has to segue into governing. Because you become a politician so that you can become a legislator and you can do good things. It doesn't New York State have umpteen political parties. They have a conservative party. They have some other kind of party. They have the liberal party. They have the Republican. They have about four, five or six parties. And candidates always try to get the endorsement, Republican and Democratic candidates, try to get the endorsement of the conservative party or the liberal party. So there's already a model out there for, you know. But I'm thinking that these fighting Bob folks are pretty active. I mean, it's certainly a small group when you take it in the vast cosmos of Wisconsin politics. But they're lively, they're fun. The internet allows them to communicate with people in ways that all these folks have their blogs. And so it is pretty interesting to me that if you have 6% who are happy with where things are going, maybe this is fertile ground for the growth of alternative views. Which leads me into the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign which actually has online since 1996, I believe, a record of all campaign contributions from all state elected officials right there. I mean, if you wanna see who Jim Baumgart got money from or Cal Potter or Joe Leibharm or you just click on and boy, it's right there and it's an interesting database. But they're a pretty lively group, I think. They're going after Doyle considering him a politician in the Tommy Thompson model which is get as much money as you can out of people. I think Doyle's got some problems. I personally really liked Jim Doyle and I think he's done a good job. And his veto pen I think has been for people who are progressive thinkers has been pretty important. But he's got trouble on this poll. Only 40% think that the state of Wisconsin is going in the right direction. 51% thought it was on the wrong track. The pollsters say this is the highest negative we've ever received on that question. Even though I think Doyle is generally fairly well regarded. Now he's got his own travel gate matters. I don't know, what do you think? I think the mud that drips off of Tom DeLay and Bill Frisk and George Bush. Okay, so what are they doing? I think all politicians are suffering and I don't think Doyle is, I would not put him in the same category as Tom DeLay. Although I did like Tom DeLay's mug shot. I thought he looked positively. Senator, by the way, I'm not calling. He has a mug shot in the favor too. My point is that I did the Burks and the Koalas and anybody who's gotten in any trouble in the console and people in Milwaukee and the recalls it's had. I think it's muddy to water so much that people, as I said before, who are really basically formed by their consumerism and their sports culture and their entertainment culture, say, a pox on alderhouses and so I don't know that push comes to shove when Doyle is up for re-election whether he's got to fight this but I'm not so sure that people examine the records closely and people who really know the individuals involved would come down with the same numbers. I think this is a generalized, again, politician, anti-politician viewpoint. What's interesting, again, is the same numbers can be brought for people's confidence in Congress. It's like 29%. But when you go back to their districts and say, well, what do you think of Congressman Petri or Sensenbrenner? All of a sudden the numbers are way up there. They love their Congressperson but they hate the institution. And so I think in this case- They love their local neighborhood schools when you get right down to it but when you ask about public schools there are shambles and we should destroy them all. So I think some of Doyle's numbers are a result of they don't like politicians but I'm not so sure push comes to shove that he's going to be viewed any worse than green or whatever whoever opponent ends up being his opposition. On the record and Tom, feel free to jabber back at me but I think Doyle's done a nice job. He survived. Well, he's brought in a balanced budget. He has certainly supported public education. Okay, he borrows from the left pocket to pay the right pocket. Sort of like robbing the entire tobacco settlement. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know for pennies on the dollar, I think- Yeah, that was a Democratic legislature. No, I think that was from the film. That was cool. Yeah, well, in any event, yeah. But yeah, you didn't take from transportation to pay, you know. Take from tobacco to pay, yeah, yeah. And I- I think some of the negatives that brought down delay and maybe bring down delay are I think the Republicans will use against Doyle in the contribution list that you just alluded to. I don't think it's that serious because I do believe that what the governor said is that he's known the Edelman family for years. I have known the Edelman when the Edelman served as the legislature, he's now a federal judge. That family has been politically active for a long time. Forever. And so I don't think it's unusual to have had contributions coming from someone like that family. I think if you look at where Doyle's got his money, it's like any other politician where you don't have public financing, they go out and raise it from whoever's got money. And I think Tommy Thompson was a master at it. And I think Doyle has learned well from it. The only thing that raises an issue in my mind is that the history of Edelman or whatever the gentleman's name is and was that he contributed at most $1,000 to any political campaign, whether it was Doyle's or any campaign. And within this time period of pre and post contracts for the travel agency, two people, himself and another person contributed $20,000 to Doyle's campaign. So it looks fishy from that viewpoint. But it may be a legit, but it looks pretty good. That's the point. I know that there's study after study that says you there's really, it's hard to prove that those kinds of contributions actually in the final analysis really make a difference in the kinds of laws legislatures make. But I never, it just looks bad and it always looks corrupt even when it isn't corrupt and who knows. And then whether it be the Democratic Party in the 1980s who controlled the wheels of power in Washington and in Madison and the Republican Party, you spend that much time raising funds and getting cozy with people. It gives, if nothing else, the appearance of impropriety. And that in a culture that you're talking about where the media is gonna pick up on that and play that and spin that as being corrupt or not, it just is going to make people extremely cynical about politicians and their intent. That's why I think the public's outrage against politicians has to take a step forward to say, all right, let's put some rules in here that makes sense. Like for example, no contributions during a legislative session only during the period of the campaign. There are things you can do either without public financing even. That would make a lot more sense and probably give people a better confidence that there isn't somebody on the take here. I know Jim Doyle personally and he's a very, very good politician. He's full of integrity. I have full confidence. He's a very decent person. He's a decent person. And I think this is a matter of timing. I think if you go back and you look at the state, the state is always entering into contracts. We do business with people who do laundry. We do people who do road work. SBC does contracts for the phone service. And I think if you go back to Tommy Thompson's years, you probably find executives from SBC who have given money to Tommy Thompson. Well, their company had a contract with the state for phone service. And you could probably draw all kinds of conclusions if you wanted to from that type of interaction. But the fact of the matter is government doesn't provide all the services. It does contract with the private sector. And people who are in the private sector do give to politicians. And so that's the bad part about the whole public, to me, private corporations and so on being involved in campaigns. And if people don't wanna change that to public financing, then we have to do another thing and that is control when those contributions are made. And we don't wanna seem to wanna do that either. So it's really a dilemma that it's in people's hands to start asking and expecting these changes, but they don't take the next step. And I attribute it to I guess the fact that they just are so apolitical. I've stepped back so much from their previous generations that that's nobody says has a sense of urgency to fix it. I don't have, you mentioned Adelman, the company. I figured they'd select him because they're Wisconsin. I mean, homegrown, give it to the agency if it was close. Well there was a thing on Channel 40 a night about Doyle driving in an SUV, a General Motors SUV, made in Jamesville. And they were saying, well, doesn't this guzzled gas? Well he said, I'd buy it because it's the only vehicle that's made by Wisconsin Company. That's why I'm using this vehicle. But I'm thinking also, I mean, Republicans in Cheney get the slam bastard for Halliburton. But Halliburton can do a lot of things that other oil companies can't do and they know what they can do. Well they can sure make money. And they know how to do it. And they do know how to do it. Do how to make money. They do how to do oil work successfully. Not give it to somebody who's going to screw it up. Well, there's a can of fish for you, but I wanted to. I just thought I'd throw that out to you. I thought I'd ask Professor Risto here just for a little historical perspective. You know, we can be in real despair. I mean, 6% to me is a despairing kind of number. Depressive. Yeah, and as much as I like the Fighting Bob people, it's 5,300 people, not 53,000. Not 5.3 million as a resident state. Exactly. It's a small percentage. Things have been worse in American history, right? Oh yeah. Congresses, I mean, you go to the Gilded Age and go back about 108, no, 1880s, 1890s, prior to the Progressive Movement. It was an unbelievable war. I mean, it was unbelievably corrupt. And the Progressive Movement grew out of that. Part of that, the Progressive Movement, was the real feeling that government no longer was responsive to average people and that the United States Senate was nothing more than a million years club or a formal lobby of the industrial forces. Is our current Congress as bad as the Gilded Age Congress? In my view? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yes. But I want to step back. Where's the Progressive Party coming from? Part of it's that. But part of it is that I think as a society, we're just deeply split about some really fundamental issues in our history. And so when I see the Congress being extremely partisan, so I want to separate that, there's certain things that the Congress is extremely partisan about. And I think it's because we just are extremely divided as a people. But then you start looking at the sort of tax legislation and the loopholes and the less energy bill. I mean, say what you want, Democrats and Republicans were both in the trough and the transportation bill. And we're not even thinking about cutting those programs to fund supporting New Orleans reconstruction. In fact, right now it looks like the house on the one side wants to take monies out of the food stamp program to rebuild New Orleans and the Democrats and Republicans, they seem to have a coalition to be able to do that. The Senate is thinking about leaning toward Medicare cuts for goodness sakes. Well, they want to take what I heard just to put it in balance. I heard that there's a lot of money in the food stamp program that's not being used. That's because we don't advertise it. Use it somewhere else, put it in the context. But so I guess I want to separate some issues we're partisan because we just start in a part in our history where we're deeply like pre-civil war. It's really strongly, there's no consensus. And there's other things, you start looking at the kinds of legislation that's passed. And it's just obviously those guys are right in the checks and they're getting what they want. And it's pandering to groups that have evolved to be very strongly in the hearts of voters. I have seen it over the years, I spent in the office more and more one issue. I mean, there's a gun group out there that's all they care about is gun legislation. There's abortion, anti-abortion group that's all they care about that issue. And then there's some people that are homophobic. You can go right down the line. And so politicians not only do they pander to the checkwriters, they pander to a constituency out there that follows very intently and evaluates candidates on one issue. On one issue, yeah. And so that's the interesting part here, two people say very bad things about politicians in general. But when you start getting into these camps of the one issue voter, they'll say, oh yeah, I like this person immensely because they vote right on my issue, even though I don't like any politician. I love this person 99.9% of the time. And so when you've got that type of perception of what politicians should be doing for you and how well they're doing is based on one issue, that's another complicating factor that has evolved. Well, and that brings up also, there used to be in the Congress and in other legislatures, some real party discipline. And part of that was political parties were stronger. Now, sometimes we don't like that. We don't like having, you know, say what you want about Tom DeLay, but he delivered the votes on the floor. Sometimes he had to extend voting time, but he delivered and there was some real party discipline. And that could be good news or bad news, depending on where you are on that issue. But what happens when a candidate can raise the kind of funds independently of the party, they get awfully independent and it's awfully tough than to find compromises and consensus like you say, like you had in the 50s and the 60s. And television has changed that too. It allows candidates to really develop a base of support outside of the party. And parties have gotten weaker and weaker and weaker. To the point where, to the point, and I don't care if it happens to be Tom DeLay right now because they're in power, but in the 80s, it was Jim Wright or somebody else. Those guys are raising so much funds in terms of their own personal personality, they're like the godfather of politics. They're writing checks out to people who need campaign funds. And looking for creative issues. Chucks the same way, right? Looking for creative issues wasn't the mode of operation. It was keeping your power, raising funds, and trying to be creative about something didn't exist. So what you want, Newt Gennrich is the first to be talking about the fact that this is the party that I supposedly helped, you know, bringing the being 20 years ago but he had creative ideas, he wanted good ideas. Well, and I do think that there are just some things that happen and it's just endemic in the, I mean, politicians are gonna have to be politicians to raise money and they're going to have to please certain interest groups and so forth. But it just seems like the threat is becoming undone and the ends are fraying and I have some fear for, or just look at opportunities. I keep coming back to, we talked about episodes ago, is that most districts aren't competitive anymore. Exactly. And so why reach consensus and reach out to the people in your district when you know that you're a shoe-in? And you gotta keep those particular people happy. So you got that dynamic going on as well. Sure. Well, that's another one of those reforms. Not only can you reform the political contribution thing by controlling when those contributions are given, but you could also have a commission that now sets up the districts to try to provide some competitiveness. And Iowa does that real well. Right. And there's some states that have taken that step, but they're probably two out of 50 that have done that. They've done it. Schwarzenegger's trying to do that in California and he's running to resistance because all their state officials, every district, they ran and got reelected. Even though he campaigned against some of them, they still got reelected. And redistricting was a real art in California. Phil Burton of the Hill Burton Act. Phil Burton had so much power in California, but he was always very careful as he exercised his redistricting power to make sure that there were at least some districts that were competitive and some districts that the Democrats could, that it was balanced. So that in spite of having this huge amount of power, he's just a fascinating political figure, having this huge amount of power that he kept things competitive. And I think understanding that if you don't do that, the whole system does fall down. Well, that's the old saying. If you've got power, you put a little, leave a little on the table. Leave a little on the table. And that's exactly the point, is that even the minority prefers the situation this way because at least they're getting reelected and they're getting funds from the light. Well, most of us who have run for office, and I've said this before too, is that we're fully in favor of competitive districts and elections, but isn't it nice when you don't have an opponent? I mean, it really is. We've got to wrap up and just got a couple of minutes left, but any bets on Pegglaut and Schlager, the polls came out a little more favorably than we might have thought. This woman is a scrapper. She is a hard worker and boy, she is undaunted after the drunk driving charge facing breast cancer and has really come back from that and is doing fairly well in the polling against two Republicans, Paul Bucher, whose name is somewhat known, and Van, somebody, I apologize. Whose name is it? I can't remember that fellow's name. Van Hollen, I think the name is. Will Peggwin in 2006? Will Kathleen Falk jump into the race? If Kathleen Falk, okay, I'll go right on the line. Kathleen Falk steps in, she's toast. If Falk doesn't, she's gonna be fine. I'm surprised by the number, but then again, we're not in campaign time. She's coming off on not only the positives of time passage since those acts, but also the conviction of the first that deer hunter up in Northern Wisconsin, where she took on the trial. Well, we'll see. Thanks, it's been fun.