 Hello, welcome to the Donahue group. Glad you could join us for a half an hour of interesting conversation of mostly local flavor. We're a little bit smaller today. I'm gonna introduce Ken Risto, social studies teacher and Bon Vivant, we're just all around South High School. Cal Potter, former state senator, just a maven of political life. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue with the firm of Hop Newman Humkey, just a simple city lawyer. Our dear friend Tom Pineski is not with us during this taping, and we're not exactly sure why. Now, just because the Republicans lost, and- That may be the reason. That may, I think not. I think actually- It's dangerous morning. He may just not have been able to find a completely black outfit to show up in, and so he decided to skip, but in any event, we're sad that Tom's not here, but Tom, too bad buddy. What? There are elections every four years. There are elections every four years. And listen, the one lesson that I've learned, there's nothing like a victory night on election night. You know, that feeling of euphoria when you have won, I think is pretty hard to duplicate, but there's always a fall. I mean, after the, you know, the dizzying highs, there's always a fall of some kind in it, so- The realities of the economy and everything else. Right, right. The economy of kind of sympathy for the poor president. Exactly, exactly. Well, I thought we would start out by talking about local results. I was, as usual, at the administration building reporting votes for the League of Women Voters to the Wisconsin Election Service. I left at about quarter to 12 in town of Wilson, town of Sheboygan. We're still not in. And Obama, who had been ahead the entire night, much to my enormous surprise here in Sheboygan County, was ahead by 81 votes. And I thought, eh, with the town of Wilson and Sheboygan coming in, in fact, it would end up that he would lose. And he did, but boy, not by much. And it was a great turnout. McCain, 30,796. Obama, 30,392. So just, just about 400 votes. Who'd have thunk it? We're still one of only 13 counties in the state that was red instead of blue, but... And interesting, there were a bunch, too. Washington, Ozaki, Sheboygan, Waukesha, compared to... Those are well-to-do communities. Yeah, and that's probably part of it. You'd expect that from Waukesha. I mean, clearly. I mean, Washington, Ozaki counties, they'll never go blue, I don't think. But, I mean, Sheboygan County is, I mean, certainly we're prosperous enough here, but it's hardly the richest state in the county by any, by... But you saw the traditional split. Democrats did well in the city and took a bath in the rural area. And when you add the two together, it was a close loss for Obama. Interestingly enough, Obama lost every village and town except for Glenn Bula. Glenn Bula, yes. You live out in the country. What's going on in Glenn Bula? Well, I think Glenn Bula is not the hotbed of a certain philosophy. I think when you think of Republican hotbeds, you think particularly of Oostburg, and when you think of Cedar Grove and the towns of Lima and towns of Holland, that area of the county, I don't think Democrats do well ever. And when you start getting out of that area, you start getting into a good mix of people Germans probably go back far enough, you'll find German socialists who settled there. And I think the political thought is not so rigid. I think that's part of it. Plus, it's not a real affluent community. I mean, it's not a caller. I mean, caller's got a lot of professionals. So I don't think Glenn Bula fits the social economic niche that a caller is in. So I think that's probably part of it. I just thought it was swell. That there would be at least a villager, a town that didn't go red. What was your experience in voting? I voted, we had state testing over at the high school and I didn't have to proctor on Tuesday. So I came into my polling area at about 8.30 in the morning and I was in and out in 10 minutes and everything was running like clockwork. There were, it appeared, I mean, poll watchers for both parties there. I didn't have the heart to tell them they were in violation of state law. They were supposed to keep a 10 foot distance away from the workers, but there was no place for them to stand and the way they had laid things out. But they were just observing and watching and I think things were going really well. I just breezed in. I breezed in at 7.30. I was the 205th voter, which was pretty amazing for my little ward. And from what I understand, that experience was relatively universal. There were little bunches right before work and after work, but by and large it was much more smooth than it was in 2004. I think the new rules for the election observers are very good. The government accountability board put in place a whole raft of rules. I know in 2004 when my son tried to vote and he was just 18 and he had registered and voted in the primary, but for some reason there was some glitch. I went in to help him and there were these people just kind of swarming around us and there were loud voices and I was getting a little feisty in my own way, like back off and that sort of thing. Well, I think this is much more peaceable. The observers need to be six or 10 feet, whatever it is, away from the voters and the everybody. They're not allowed to talk to anybody, but the chief, whoever the chief poll person is. So there's no interaction, because I was yelling at this, not me, I don't yell. My voice was slightly raised. You educated me personally. Thank you. Were you admonishing him? I was admonishing him for his surly behavior, but in any event, so I do think that that went better. But if you look at the photo that was in the Sheboygan Press, it is my understanding that the city clerk's office was inundated with voters for weeks, for weeks. And Kevin Kennedy has said that that's something that needs to be addressed because it's really absentee voting is what we have. We don't have advanced voting as what 29 other states do. So we really need to address that problem if that's gonna be more the norm of how people vote, this application stuff and then filling it out. And it's just a lengthy process that needs to be looked at, I think. I think there was a recommendation today, right? Well, Kevin Kennedy said he was going to meet with municipal clerks, but he had some suggestions and I don't know if he's advanced those or not. I think there was some discussion that they would allow for early voting and do away with absentee ballots is the discussion that they were talking about, which would make some sense because they were, when I was there, they were opening, I think when you vote, if I understand the process of the city, they take those ballots and move them to the precincts because they were calling out, there were some people that were busy and they were calling those out and counting those while I was there. Because I recognized a couple of my neighbor's names who had voted early. My wife had voted early and she walked up and said it was in and out. You still do need to have absentee voters or voting for the people who can't make it into the polls and old people and my mom got her absentee ballot for every election and they made that easier and the old days you had to actually, I think have your signature notarized if I'm not mistaken and that, of course, would be very difficult for housebound people and so forth. So I think that those new ideas are good ones. You can ask for a ballot after 65 years old to be mailed to you, was that my understanding? Or if you're disabled or are you disabled? And my son, Michael, is in Milwaukee and he had his ballot mailed to him because he's registered in Sheboygan County but wouldn't be in town for the election and military folks and so forth. So I think there still is a place for absentee balloting it's just now it's become early voting and there's gotta be a slightly better way. One of the problems if you'll recall from the live ham bomb guard recount is that when they were manually feeding every single ballot through the machines again to verify counts, absentee ballots because of where they're folded it can interfere with the connecting arrow and so that makes it more difficult as well. And so I think there are certainly better ways of doing it. We will get into this if we have time in our state section but Attorney General Van Hollen after losing his voter registration lawsuit is now going to appeal and is going to file with court of appeals but they'll probably certify it up to the Supreme Court right away. So that'll be interesting to see if and how that's taken care of. In any event we had some other winners it was certainly generally a time for incumbents Terry Van Akron won handily. Well many of us yeah I mean it was 16,000 to 8,000 pretty much you just didn't see much of a Piper, Alex Piper the opponent did not see much of a race. I didn't think. Well I heard he didn't qualify for public financing which was something that Jose did and so that means you didn't get a grant of what's $8,000 which puts you out in the media at least. So if you're relying on whatever comes in the coffee can as you're campaigning you're not gonna be able to do too much of visible media stuff. Right, well I didn't know I saw it. It's just not surprising because all you need is I think 10% of your spending limit which is a heck of a lot. Usually Republicans have an easy time of it because I just get a few fat cats to rate a $100 check and pretty soon. Now Cal. Well it is. I had to go out and beg barrel $20 from this person and $10 from that person. I didn't have a lot of people writing $100 checks but no that's from experience. I mean what was the. We don't have Tom here. No and I wasn't in the legislature. It wasn't uncommon for candidates on the other ticket to have a number of checks written in the zip code of River Hills and so on and by people who could write those checks for $100 or more. And you add those up and pretty soon you get the qualifying threshold to give that candidate $8,000 for at least buy some media time. Right. So by not doing it it means somebody dropped the ball on a very elementary thing of a couple just a little bit of effort. You could have got a number of $100 checks signed by people who had died in the world Republicans and that person then would have gotten the grant. Yeah and I think, I don't think the Republicans were gonna put any money into this race and so there you go. Steve Castell won handily against his opponent, Bob Cox. Yeah his opponent unfortunately had bypass surgery I believe in the middle of the campaign which took him out of commission so. Well then his vote total is not too bad. It was $14,000 to $7,000 essentially so. Yeah I don't think he campaigned early at all. I knew he was at the fair and after that his health problems got him and that's the last I saw of him really. And Glenn Grossman was challenged by an independent. Senator Grossman absolutely schvets Mr. Winter. It was almost 10,000 votes to about 2,000 votes and so I think. It's not surprising I mean he really beat Mary Panzer very handily. Oh he did. He did. That was somewhat of a surprise because she was an incumbent and I thought a reasonable lady and she really got beat by Glenn Grossman so that shows the devotion to the conservative side in that Senate district. He's astonishingly conservative as well. Yes he is very much so. When I was still in the school board I went to legislative breakfast and then also with our representation of the county go to legislative breakfast from time to time. And I was really astonished sometimes by just some of his proposals. They were really, to me, seemed substantially to the right of live ham or castell. So that was interesting. And but he's a character. He's an interesting guy. He's a lawyer. He's one of four lawyers in the Senate. And so and I don't want any smart talk from anybody about that. I, Kittleson, Petri beat Kittleson pretty handily. I don't think anybody really expected anything different there. No, Kittleson didn't have any money really compared to the big account that Petri had plus the years of incumbency that Petri had plus his reputation. I think he's viewed as a, not a more of a moderate Republican. I think so. So how much his voting record really matches that, but that's his image at least. One of the, one of the interesting pieces of, and it's just gotten to be a tradition and I don't think it was always a tradition. I was out of town for a couple of days after the election. I came back and you can't really, I'm not even gonna show it on screen because I don't think the camera could pick it up, even though we have wonderful cameramen who are just so terrific and able to do all sorts of interesting things. But it was the sign waivers at 14th and Erie. And you know, when I ran for judge, we had a whole contingent of people there the entire day. Maeve Quinn is very good at organizing people up for the Eighth Street Rotary. And they have McCain and Obama people sharing the same corner and so forth. And I thought it was great fun. It's just, people who really are too shy to knock on doors, they don't wanna make telephone calls, give them a sign and they'll stand out on corners and stand there. Take the yelling in the gestures. Exactly. Or the horn honking. I was, I don't know, I stood on a corner for three, four hours and people were great. It was just wonderful. And, you know, if they're impolite, at least you just don't see it. So it's not too bad. Does it really make it? I mean, do you think anybody's actually persuaded by that? I think what it does is it tends to pump people up. We're gonna pump you up. And I do think it does. It may remind people to vote. And of course, on a presidential election, that's not a big deal. But, you know, in April elections and so forth, it reminds people that, oh, that's right, it's a voting day. And it makes people feel excited about their candidates and, you know, who knows? You know, I don't know how well it worked, but the Obama Observer in my polling area, I don't think was at all concerned about nefarious activity at the polls. I think what she was doing was, it seemed like she was crossing names off of lists. And I know the National Obama Plan, I don't know if they did it in Sheboygan, was to, in real time, at a certain point in the day, at noon, I guess at three o'clock, and again at six o'clock, they were going to see who had not, from their lists of likely candidate and voters from the canvassing in the neighborhoods, they were gonna compare that list to who hadn't voted yet and make telephone calls and see if they can actually help people get there and remind people to get through who hadn't voted yet. And I've never seen that happen before. That was pretty interesting business. It's called the Houdini system. And yeah, and that's why the poll worker said, you need to say your name and address loudly. So they can hear and check off. So they could check off. I was listening to National Public Radio discussion of how different Obama's campaign had been, just in terms of doing those intense kind of grassroots things, that your two four have been relatively unknown so that you would actually, and I know when I've been doing canvassing, they want a lot of information from people. And so it's not just going up to the door and saying, gee, I wish you'd vote for Obama or I wish you'd vote for McCain. It's like, what are your issues? Anon, anon, anon, all gets entered into a database. And so that is just one of the ways because the bottom line is you have to get people out to vote. And unless you're in Oregon where you vote by mail and who knows how that system works, but. So I don't know how well it worked really. I heard not very. Well, if you gotta be 10 feet away, you have to have better hearing than I have, I guess to hear somebody's name and then check it off. Well, again, my polling area, they weren't. They were sitting literally right at the end of the table, both of them. Because of the way the room was set up, I'm not quite sure where they could have stood. That would have been in compliance with the law. Incidentally, speaking of compliance with the law. Oh! The lawyer, the lawyer that you are. Oh, this is exciting. Polling signs, yard signs, distance from a polling area. 200 feet. Is it 200 or 300? 200 feet. Doesn't make any difference of its private or public property. It's gotta be 200 feet. Well, you shouldn't have signs on public property for goodness sake. Right. I know that happened in a school board race once. Distant Galaxy many, many years ago where we had a particular candidate's signs in school yards and thankfully that didn't last too long. Yeah, they should be a public property ever. No, okay. But it is, it can be very tricky when you are the candidate to drive around and make sure that there are no signs within X number of feet. I usually, when I ran, I usually took them up, down whether if they were in a block or so of it. So nobody started saying, where does it 200 feet begin or 300 feet? Doesn't begin from, like at Wilson School. Is it across, is it the sidewalk of Wilson School or is it the front door? So I just took them down. There were campaign signs right on the entryway of the parking lot of my precinct. Well, that probably was not a good thing. Yeah. And I think what happened was, I think folks from that particular party just in the evening just put them up in the hopes that nobody would notice. And my view is, if you're going into a polling place and you're gonna make your decision based on a yard sign that is within 100 feet of the poll. That's really an undecided voter. That's really an undecided voter. And so I think, in my view, it's probably not a big deal. But in any event, it was an historic election and we'll talk, as I said, more in our next exciting segment about state results and so forth. But it definitely is a sea change. Just wanted to talk about a couple of other things. Coming up at long last, and I think we're all delighted about it, November 15th at 9.30 a.m., the opening of the ribbon cutting for the new police station, which really looks like a police station if you've driven by it. There's nothing pretentious. Charming about the building. I mean, it's all business, which is as it should be. And came in $500,000 under budget. And so I think that's actually a pretty exciting time for. It looks very functional. It does, doesn't it? And so there was a long article in the newspaper about being able to move into bigger offices and they really did deserve a better space. So I think that's pretty exciting. It'll be interesting to see how City Hall gets remodeled. My own view is the mayor's office should be on the first floor. You shouldn't have to truck up two flights of stairs to get to the mayor's office. And so it's hard to know. Except for security, I don't know if I'd want to be on the first floor. That's what I was thinking. We had that problem in the Capitol. It was always nice for people to say, well, I'd like to be on the first floor. He says, you don't want to be on the first floor. A lot of people who walk into the first floor looking very lost. And you end up with people that are there that might not normally come into your office in these public buildings. And of course, it won't be a police department there to protect the mayor. Well, I think they'll have to consider. Unfortunately, given the times we live in, they're going to have to really think about that in the remodeling process about the accessibility, of course, that you want of a City Hall, but also those kinds of issues. Well, there's nothing that irritates me more. The clerk of court's office and the DA's office are now both behind glass in the courthouse. And particularly with the clerk of court's office, and I don't mean to underestimate the issues that people right at the front have to deal with in terms of people who come in who are irate or whatever. But when you have to yell to get through those plexiglass windows and so forth, those are things that I just think are, I think they're horrible. So, and right now the mayor's office, I think is probably off the screen enough. So you're probably right there. So we'll see how that happens. And then I do think we're getting close to the end, but just talking about the layoffs that are now starting to affect the community. And the colors laying off 80, they had previously laid off 50 in the hospitality, the 80 as I understand is in the brass division. So I think my senses, hard times are coming. Sure, I don't think we've really seen the ripple effect of the downturn in the auto industry and other industries. When people lose their jobs in those industries and dealerships and others don't do well, it just keeps on feeding on itself. So I think, you know, most people said we haven't seen the worst of it yet. Right. And I think Lyra is going to be laying off whenever the auto industry is in trouble. Lyra is in trouble, so I think that's going to be tough. This is a little off point, but do you conceive of the big automakers like literally shutting down, going out of business? I mean. I don't know. No, I don't either. I know that there's discussion of course with the new administration coming in and already some discussion, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid met with UAW and General Motors and Ford. I know General Motors was in the room, I'm not sure about Ford. And they're looking for another what, $35 billion, another $30 billion to get them through the next year. So, because I think that if they get out at the end of that year, they're going to be okay. But you're right. You know, we were talking off camera before the show started that we're starting to see this deindustrialization of Sheboygan really have an effect on the kids that come into our school buildings. It used to be not that terribly long ago that maybe 20% of our students would qualify for free or reduced hot lunch. That's sort of the standard we use to designate kids of poverty. And I think we're close in the district of 40% now are getting real close to that number when I looked at the third Friday counts. And there are more and more people working at night and working two jobs. And it's really having a strain on families and it really affects kids. And then on top of that, because I work in high school trying to find, talking to students who are looking for summer work, it's going to be very, very difficult this year for kids to find summer work or part-time work. And even the kids coming back from college or even the alumni come back and talk and check in a little bit with me and they are having the same experiences too. So it's going to be a tough summer all the way around for employment. I think you'll recall that when Reagan was elected, certainly the country was in the midst of a pretty nasty recession. And there was a short recovery and then it re-recessed. And I think I remember Reagan saying stay the course. So I think that Obama in many ways, because we haven't, as far as I can tell, in my limited understanding, we haven't even begun to bottom out in terms of the ripple effect of the job losses and just the difficulties that we're going to see. And so I think my own view is that it's interesting. It's just where does the money keep coming from and how big can the deficit get? How much can countries in the Middle East and China own in America? Apparently quite a lot, at least as things are going now. But I think it'll be interesting. Coler, I mean, the Coler company, considering that it has, I think, 35,000 employees worldwide, has been very loyal to Shabuigan and loyal to a workforce, a good workforce, but one that's been obviously unionized for many years and is well-paid and has decent benefits and long and hard fought over. But I just don't see any light at the end of this particular grim, grisly tunnel. And just the election of Obama, I don't think that solves those problems. Absolutely. Well, you look at the state, we'll maybe talk maybe the next segment of our show about the state budget, but I don't know how, given the state finances, they're going to be able to meet their commitments to local education, this next budget. Exactly. And if that happens, you're going to see local school districts like Shabuigan, whose student enrollment has really pretty much leveled out now, give or take, 10,000, give or take a couple of dozen here and there, they're going to have some really difficult times. And so there's going to be some real tough choices facing our local school board, I suspect. We're already talking about cuts. Some places where the referendum didn't pass and they were a low spending district to start out with. Yeah. And boy, Mark Ryan in particular worked that very hard and Clark Reinkie, the superintendent, and that really is a heartbreaker for those folks. Well, we must bid adieu, but hope that we will see you again.