 Welcome to the Donahue Group. We're glad you could join us for another episode. Coming on the heels of the April nonpartisan election, we have lots of interesting things to talk about today. Going to ask our group to go around and introduce ourselves. Cal, do you want to start? Cal Potter, I live in the town of Sheboygan Falls. Occupation, mostly retired. Very good. Tom Plesky, professor of math at UW Sheboygan, former alderman. I'm Ken Risto. I'm the social studies curriculum assessment specialist for the Sheboygan Area School District and teach at South Part Time. And I'm, as I always say, just a simple city lawyer. So, so true. As I indicated, we're just after the April nonpartisan elections here in Sheboygan County. And there was just one statewide race. So there wasn't a whole lot of state interest, a couple of referenda. But certainly an interesting race here in Sheboygan. We have a new mayor, or we will have a new mayor, as of April 18th. And quite a change in the city of Sheboygan City Council. Who wants to start? I think of local races. There probably were two areas that people focused on. One was the town of Sheboygan Falls, or Sheboygan wanting to see whether the Walmart longstanding debate had any effect on the town chairman, as well as the incumbent town members, board members, who had voted for the, to go ahead with the project. And then, of course, the city of Sheboygan, where the focal point was another sort of project. And that was the police station being located in Sheridan Park. So I think both of those provided intense interest. And we saw a fairly decent voter turnout, as a result of it, compared to some spring elections, about 41% in the city. I didn't see what it was in the town, as far as a turnout is concerned. Well, when you contrast that, particularly in the city, would be 16% turnout in the primary. I thought the Aldermanic race results were fascinating. Going into Tuesday night, I would not have thought that Mike Warner could be beat. I thought Renee Sush had run a pretty spirited campaign against Don Van Akron, but at least in my household, there was a phone call from Terry Van Akron, his son, urging me to vote, or urging our household to vote for Don. And the third race escapes me right at this point. Those were interesting results. Ratke, Ratke, Ratke, Ratke, Ratke, Ratke, Ratke. Now, Gary Laux, he beat Gary Laux. Gary had not been on the council very long, but I think was pretty much associated with the clearly a supporter of the mayor and a supporter of putting the police station in Sheridan Park. And that, I mean, Ratke won handily. I think you've got statistics there if I'm not mistaken. Clean sweep, does anybody wanna take a bite on that? Well, you know, the Sheridan Park issue brought a lot of people to the council. And not only through the referendum, by signing the petitions, but they actually showed up in meetings and wanted to speak. And I've watched a couple of the council meetings. It seemed like the council discounted the people in the audience. They wouldn't let them speak or let them speak only very briefly, if not at all. And they said, that opinion's been already said. We don't wanna hear anybody else saying that and kind of shut down just. And that probably also one of my colleagues at the campus said that council and Alderman Werner typified that, unfortunately, probably energized these people to say, hey, we don't need that. And that sort of was one of the bases of Juan Perez's. It didn't surprise me a bit. I interacted in any way with anybody who was an existing administration person. I would say, you know, there's a semi coming right at ya and you just better not stand in the middle of the road. It's not a smart thing to do. And being a non-resident of the city, you know, you get to sense from people what their feelings are when you're talking with them. And I think I could be somewhat very objective in doing that. And I just saw when I saw the three council members change as well as the mayor, it didn't surprise me a bit. Well, I was surprised. I thought it was gonna be a little bit closer. I thought it was gonna be really close race because we talked about it in a couple episodes back about, you know, in the primary, you have lots of people unhappy that tend to turn out the vote, but then when the general election comes, you begin to wonder, well, now how is it gonna play out? It was kind of playing around with numbers here. The ones the press put out this morning. And what was interesting is that net, you know, you subtract, actually Juan Perez turned out almost about 800 more voters than the mayor supporters did. Each, the mayor ran about, got about 3100 more votes from the primary to the general election. And Juan Perez turned out about 3,800. You know, so, boy, I mean, you would think that, so clearly more people got energized by the campaign or maybe the weather was a little bit better who only knows, but that's what surprised me. I thought that, you know, obviously Juan would gain some votes by the other candidates who were eliminated by the primary. The leader came out for him, a couple hundred votes here and there, but he was able to still generate some even more support. I don't know if that's because of the ethanol issue, which gave people hope that Juan would probably tend to listen to people more often or not, but it was, and I just didn't know politically how everything was gonna take place because how are labor, you know, how are employees, city employees, and labor going to vote? You know, Juan Perez has always been sort of, you know, connected with the labor movement. On the other hand, Mayor Sram had some real support among unions as well. You know, I was just looking at the numbers and what I find interesting was, and it was almost dramatic, is that, you know, you've got Susha, Mayer, and Ratke, you know, obviously three people who weren't considered or are not gonna be considered the former mayor's supporters, they're gonna be on the board, whether they're gonna agree with Juan Perez about everything while it rains to be seen, but as I, you know, Juan Perez got more votes in those aldermanic districts than the winners of those aldermanic districts got in their own districts. In the Susha, in Aldermanic Ward two, Susha got about 85 votes less. So even though there's this, I mean, so the support for Juan was even stronger than the support for, if you will, the change agents in those. And even in Ward one, Walderman Berg got 973 votes and Juan Perez got 986. So, you know, you walk in there with a pretty strong constituency, and that was a ward that, that was a particularly interesting ward because Perez had lost that in the primary. He had won in the second ward, I believe, but had lost the first ward, which is the far northeast side. And so that was really a pretty strong showing. And then you also have just new people. Jean Davis is new to the council. I believe Jean was on the county board for a number of years, but he was unopposed. And Marilyn Montemayor is back, you know, unopposed. Graf came through okay, but I think the new people will. Graf's employer, Graf's opponent dropped out with about a week to go or something like that, found out there wasn't any differences between he and Mike, so why am I running? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And there was one other unopposed spot that I am blanking on again. No, I don't think so. The two that I had for mine was for the Davis race and the Montemayor. That was a race. Yeah, Kittleson had a race, and Kittleson, a new appointee, generally viewed, is being favorable to the mayor, so it'll be fair. Although she signed the letter to the editor supporting Jim Schramm. Right, I meant the old mayor. Oh. And so I think, I think it's a whole new ball game. And I think there was more than one issue. I think Kim was surprised at the victory of how broad it was, but I think Sheridan Park is by far the number one issue, but I don't think that Stromsorffy won any converts either. I mean, it might be necessary because of the budget crunch and so on, but there were particularly churches and nonprofit groups who were not too happy with getting a bill like that all of a sudden, that particularly if you're a large institution, that it was a chunk of change that they didn't have in their kitty and they were not real happy about it. And I think we talked before we went on a program of a number of mayors, particularly to the south of here in some suburban Milwaukee area, incumbent mayors who lost their jobs. And I would suspect that I wouldn't doubt that there was a lot of anti-property tax feeling amongst people. It is a regressive tax. It is a difficult tax. I mean, particularly when houses today are averaged, what, $250,000. I mean, you know, it's not uncommon for people that four or $5,000 property tax bills and those are, if you're of any age, you have a number of miles under your belt in life. You can remember the time when your property tax bill was $500 or $1,000 and all of a sudden $5,000 is a lot of sticker shock for some people. And so while other prices in society and price of cars and homes in the area have gone up, well, it's tough to relate to a property tax bill that you get that's, you know, many dollars. As big as your mortgage. That's right. That's right. So I think, you know, there's always gonna be that as long as we have the property taxes, a dominant tax in Wisconsin, it's gonna be an albatross around mayors and people in public office. So I think that rang true with some people. And I said, go ahead. We had a couple other issues that were, you know, the Sheridan Park kind of was the straw. But there was the attorney's fee on the Blue Harbor that created an issue for a while. Then there was the rush to do Blue Harbor to make PGA kind of thing. And it just kind of bypassed people again in the attorney's fee. We just bypassed people, you know, look into it. So a couple issues on community, kinds of, you know, getting the community involved. Well, in building on that, I think for me it was a real eye-opener to just get a little bit more information about the approaching the city debt limit, where the city is in terms of, in one of the pieces of literature I got, had a graph, which I'm gonna presume is correct, of, you know, fairly dramatic increase in the last few years in that debt limit. Now the city has imposed a 3% instead of the maximum statutorily allowed, 5% ceiling on its debt. But there's not a whole lot more money to borrow unless the city decides that it will go back to that 5% instead of that good 3% that it held itself to. And those are, I mean, not only are taxes really quite high, but the debt load is pretty significant and... So there were more issues, I think, in the city than in the town of Sheboygan where the town chairman was re-elected and one of the supervisors who voted for the Walmart was re-elected, like one incumbent lost about five votes. And then, of course, they expanded their board and I don't know the feelings of the new board members, but there wasn't a groundswell to throw the bombs out, so to speak, in the town of Sheboygan. Because I think the issue was, not in my backyard issue with Walmart particularly. I think you're absolutely right that there's lots of things that play, but what Perez was really able to do and to do well was really send two messages, both of which are very general, almost vague-like that people appeal to. So he's not in a box when he comes in, certainly in a lot of whole specifics beyond talking about a very general budget prioritization process. First of all, was the park issue, which is tapped into the fact that people felt that city government wasn't responsible anymore, we talked about that. And that's sort of a kind of populist issue. And when you look at some of the wards, where he was really, really strong, the north side, especially the northeast side and far northwest side, tremendous strength there. That's where his big margins are. Ward two, he had 59% of the vote in that ward. My ward. And then the park, not just surprisingly. And that's a big improvement as well from the primary. I mean, Perez won the Ward two in the primary, but not as my memory, but not by anywhere near that amount. I was trying to think of his constituency. Mon was on the school board. He had a lot of people with children in school and also the teacher's new one, what kind of person he was. Then I was thinking, and he was educated. He still has a little background. So he brings some education and maybe might appeal to some business people who are looking for a person that they could talk to and reason with. And then he worked out here at the university. So there, I know there were some students certainly supporting him and probably helping him. So he picked up a little, some maybe youth supporters. So I was trying to, and then I'm assuming, and I don't know that he might have had some minority, the minority of vote. So I was trying to decide where, where his support would come before looking at numbers and just where it would come. The support's clearly all the way across the board. I mean, he, you know, he went almost every ward. One is Thai and there's the, where the mirror, the current mirror lives and where the police department may be located. He lost in that ward. But not by much. Not by much. But now when you look at the park, the park ward five. You know, 60% of the vote goes to, you know, to Perez. You know, so you could see that the people in that neighborhood certainly were generated. And I think he's really raised expectations. I mean, he's, I guess he had two messages at the first one. The second one was one of really fiscal responsibility and fiscal prudence, which appeals to a whole different set of voters. And it'll be interesting to see how that's going to play out because he wasn't ever forced in the campaign. The mayor, the current mayor tried to, you know, time to, if we get rid of the sewer fee tax, well, we're going to lose 50, you know, X number of city jobs. And of course, then try to play into, you know, concerns about unemployment amongst, you know, try to, how do you, but that never really stuck. You know, so he was able to say, we're going to do this and the money's there. We're going to do budget prioritization. And he kind of reminds me of how, you know, FDR got away with 1932 with basically sounding like a fiscal responsible person and not being, and being not, you know, just being very general. You're not being tied to anything. Well, don't you think though, I mean, the state of American politics these days is that if you do put out a specific proposal, then. It's microanalyzed to the point that you become almost discredited and you try to do something that people expect you to do, you know, give answers, be very specific. And I think it's. We generate our own, you know, an image of Canada. And I think it just goes to a different issue as well because I did have people come up to me and say, well, you know, what is Perez specifically, you know, proposing and so forth. And I don't, like you say, Ken, I don't think there were a lot of specific proposals, but I think what most people were looking for was a leader. And a leader who would listen and, you know, as George, the first George Bush would say that vision thing. And I think that the vision that Perez was able to articulate, people are willing to say, well, let's fill in the details later and. I just think he's raised expectations dramatically from a wide variety of different people. I think the ethanol neighborhood concerns, I think they think they have a friend in city hall now. I think people think that city taxes are going to be dramatically improved and there's going to be some real fiscal restraints. And I think he's got, you know, that's the nature of running for elections. You try to generate support and get yourself a coalition to get elected, and then you get the job and you say, oh boy, how am I going to meet all these expectations? He's got it with a city council that, you know, in the past has really supported the previous, I mean. No, but you mentioned ethanol. But still, the plan commission already made a recommendation on the site and said no. So it's not like, whereas in the shared and in the police station, the plan commission recommended the 23rd Street site. So already you have, you know, one of the commissions of the city was pushing 23rd Street site or saying that was a better site versus the park. Well, I think. Now the ethanol site, they're saying, no, this is not what we want to, how do we want the city to grow? But building on what Ken said, I think it is true that what a brutal job, in part you want to say to whoever's running from air, what's wrong with you? This is an impossible job because the squeeze from both sides is so intense that I, if you have an open, which I think you touched on, you know, having an open government, you're never going to have a consensus. So you plead, you. It's how you relate to the people. How you relate to the people. They could say, I don't agree with you, but you've treated me fair. Right, and you listened. And you listened. I know it's not a process, but I still think you're wrong. But I don't hate you for it. I don't hate you for it, that's right, that's right. And then just segueing back with respect to that, I think in the town of Sheboygan, there was certainly lots of opportunity and time for discussion. And I also think the difference there was just the specter of city annexation. Now, I don't know if that would have happened or. I think people who were in the immediate lights of the Walmart parking lot, I think eventually saw this as something as a boon. I mean, this is going to be in many millions of dollars in development. It's going to be. Help them tax. Tax base. It will surely help the tax base. So once you start getting six blocks away, you know, it starts taking on a little different, I think viewpoint, unless you're just very much anti-Walmart due to their lawsuits and labor practices or whatever else, people don't like Walmart for. But I think that that was a distinct difference. I think the Sheridan Park issue rang intense whether you lived on North 23rd Street or South 23rd Street, you felt something about a park. Walmart I think had a little different dimension because people who were impacted negatively by the traffic or whatever would have a lot different intensity about it than somebody who's a mile away. Well, and now that that season is over and now we start to watch to see, you know, what rabbit is pulled out of the hat or what miracle of loaves and fishes there might be. The signs come down and all the letters to the editor, which I found to be, no matter what side you were on, hugely entertaining. You know, you open the newspaper up and say, now who's going to have what idea about this? And of course we have some favorite letter writers who are just funny to read and express themselves in a pretty idiosyncratic way, but it's kind of fun so that's all over. So we kind of get back to a dull political season. Speaking of which, on the state level, the Burmester-Underheim race was less than. Underwhelming. Underwhelming, thank you. Less than exciting. You used to work with Libby Burmester. Yes, she was my boss for a number of years. Here's a fairly liberal woman who, I mean, I think you could characterize her. She makes no bones to the fact that she supported in the presidential race the Kerry Edwards ticket. She supports the governor, Governor Doyle. And here she wins 60% of the vote in Sheboygan County. Which is. And she did very well statewide. I think part of it is the fact that she was a very strong educator background, whereas Greg Underheim, who I served with in the state legislature, spent many years here. I think he began his work life in a teaching capacity, but then went to work for Congressman Petrae. And then after that, ran for the legislature. So he's really been more, most of his work life has been in a sort of an elective arena. And I think people, I think when they think who are they gonna have as the overseer of their child's education felt comfortable with someone who's had almost 40 years, maybe of experience in some form of education, who was a third generation teacher in her family versus Greg Underheim, who really, I didn't think articulated education issues very well in this campaign. Well, not at all. You know, he really got off on whether she supported a property tax freeze. Artists almost sort of issues that are legislative more than they are the state superintendent, which is an administrative post. And so I think he did not do a very, I think he tried to get some hot button issues going such as property taxes. But I think people are sophisticated enough to realize that the state superintendent's job doesn't control your property tax and they saw through that. Interestingly enough, the commercials, the TV commercials funded by the Wisconsin Education Association Council. I want my money back. Tell us why. Well, I mean, they were pretty, it was a pretty, the one ad that I saw. I thought the ad was pathetic. And there was just one, right? I only saw one. I don't even know which row you're talking about. Well, I did. You watched any kind of NCA basketball over the weekend. I got back from break and there was only the one. And the first part of it was fine. She did, Wisconsin schools are fine. We, our students do the best for this and that and everything else and was strong. And that was fine. Then of course we shoot to the black and white and this kind of insidious little person sitting there. And what I found pathetic was is that we act and I, I can say this, this is these are my people. We act doesn't have the courage of their convictions. They never have and they, if what was the two things that criticized him for? One was because he wanted to write, I mean, I proposed to someone on the way to write off gambling losses. What, you know, talk about something has got nothing to do with education. You know, talk about not in the second one. And the second one was he voted against, I think, reduce childhood, which was an education issue. Reduce class size. Right. But why didn't we act, you know, put on the board? Well, you know, this guy's against the QEO. You know, well, because we don't want to, if this guy's against the QEO, we're actually gonna generate more votes. So I found the whole, the whole ad just disingenuous and other thing, I don't think the Republican party ever put up a fight. They didn't. I mean, it's been a nickel. I didn't see, it wasn't any counter-counter ad. I was somewhat surprised by that, but I guess they probably did their polling data and saw that they didn't need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a race that they weren't gonna win. That they weren't gonna win. So it's offensive that we, act me, spent a fairly substantial sum of money. The last time I read was just under $400,000 on that really stupid TV ad. I mean, it was scurrilous and did not advance any kind of reason discussion. So of course it was a political ad. What, it met the definition per se. There were also some referenda on the ballot and I was glad that I had read in advance what they were going to be about. So you could understand them. I walked into the polling booth at war two and they said, don't forget there's a referendum. And I said, referendum? I did not even know they were a referendum on the ballot. Well, one that has been slogged about forever is to change a number of elected offices from a two-year to a four-year cycle. Which was strongly supported by the voters. Which I think appreciation that every two years for many of these administrative offices is not something that we ought to put these folks through. And which in many respects should not be partisan elections. I mean, we go back to the clerk of courts and the register of deeds and coroner and even the district attorney, from my perspective who cares if the district attorney is a Republican or Democrat. So I, and I understand that those were sort of from the old days in terms of supporting and preserving political parties. But I think that's changed. So I think the four-year decision is a good one. And then again, we're subjected to fewer of those ads and. And then in the fourth of July parade you'll have fewer and fewer of the official. I love that though. So that'll be a little bit of a thing. I always loved Jim Sensenbrenner coming on our parade because he always had on great sneakers and then kind of like a little parking vest. He still has a two-year term, but you won't see him anymore. But we don't see him anymore. Yeah, you won't, you won't see the register of deeds coming down, the green outfit. But I always liked his little bib that he wore, you know, I always thought, it must be two-year-old or something in there. But no, those I'm sure will remain as two-year. And I know you having been both a two-year and a four-year elected official. I think you told me once that four years is a lot easier on the soul. Because you actually start campaigning with circulation of papers in June. So you actually are in office a year and a half and then you're circulating papers again. So and with the cost of elections today, it's really something that ought of should have been changed many years ago. We just have a couple minutes left but kind of the fun throw away referendum on the Shwayne County ballots about, excuse me, the state assuming the cost of mandated human services and also the court system. The state currently pays for judges and I believe, and DAs and court reporters, but the county pays for the buildings and the support staff and so forth. As I was watching the votes come in last night in the administration building, it seemed to me that the vote was 89, 90% in favor. And will it make any difference? I saw you, there's no such thing as a pre-lunch. There's no, it's gotta come around. It comes around. Be the economics teacher. Everybody says, oh yeah, let the state pay it as if we're not the state. Yeah. So okay, the state's going to pay it. Well, it's a way of probably being more equitably spending this kind of money across districts which have different levels of economic development. So it might be a little fairer than it might make sense. Well, and certainly income tax systems can be structured more flexibly, I think, than property tax. Yes, and so it probably would make some sense to do that. The question becomes when you start changing physical plans, when you want to add on, more courtrooms and things. There's a tendency of somebody else is paying the piper to start doing those kinds of things. And so you'll end up just like with school districts making commitments to the state, to fund school districts. They found very early on, well we're not necessarily going to fund capital improvements because pretty soon everybody's building their buildings. So will it change anything? It's up to the legislature. The legislature has really kind of made these referendums exist. It's the county level people who have said we can't take your mandated passage of requirements on us and you don't pay for them. Therefore, let's ask the people if you want the state to stop. But the state stops, does it isn't stopping because they don't have any money either. Exactly. They've been in debt and so as a result you're gonna have to have a whole different mindset on the state legislators part to start saying we owe it to the local folks to pick up the stuff we mandate and then they haven't been actually been fulfilling that in recent years. The election is over and we won't have election topics to talk about for a few more months but I'm sure that in future episodes we'll have lots of interesting issues coming up with those rascals in the legislature. Voter ID is interesting to me. So thanks for being with us and we'll be together again soon.