 Hello, welcome to the Donahue Group. Glad you could join us for this interesting half-hour of conversation. We are delighted to welcome back into our midst our dear Republican friend who's sort of dressed all in purple today, which I think is a nice sign of a moderating influence, Tom Pineski. He's gone bipartisan. He's gone bipartisan. The spirit of the... Rush Limbaugh is going to hear about this, right? But Tom is here, Cal Potter, formerly of the state senate. Ken Ristow, formerly of the central part of the Ashwaginiri school district, now a humble school teacher. I'm Mary Lynn Donahue, a lawyer with Hop Newman Humkey. We've got a lot to talk about today. It's really pretty exciting, and Tom, I just want you to know I'm like really sorry. I had my smile a few years ago. There you go. You got yours now. Well, we... We were talking in our last segment about how nice election nights that you win are, but soon enough the worm turns and life isn't quite so good. It just has a tendency to do that, but in any event. People now start to ask questions. Wisconsin, though, was very interesting in the election. First of all, it was blue, blue, blue. Wisconsin won 56% to McCain's 46%, I think. Ashwagin County went again. It did. Yes, it did. We talked to... Good old Ashwagin County. Yeah, but barely by 400 votes, and if you take the 382 votes that Nader got in Ashwagin County and put them in Obama's column, it could have been. But in any event, nonetheless, there were some interesting, I think 56 out of 72 counties went for Obama. That's about Russ Feingold's percentage in his last election, and I think he's become pretty popular. Wisconsin had the second highest percentage turnout in the nation, and it was even down a little bit from 2004. So what do you think? Are we turning into a great Obama nation here in Wisconsin? Was it the candidate? What do you think? Sarah Palin. Really? I think... You're getting into words, all right. Yeah, Sarah Palin. Go for it. No, I really think that as I talk to a good number of friends of mine... These are all anecdotal. I didn't take any polls. I can't speak for weather, but I talked to a lot of friends of mine, not including my good friend here to my right, metaphorically and politically. But they said they just... They loved John McCain, but they just couldn't see that woman being a heartbeat away from the presidency, and they were people who really believed in fiscal restraint. There were people that... They all tried true Republican values, but they just couldn't stomach her. I concur. I mean, I'm sure she did well in Waukesha County, but I think there were a lot of people in Wisconsin who are considered themselves moderate Republicans who just couldn't accept the style of campaigning and the fact that they didn't think she was ready. I mean, I was surprised. I know a few of my family members who I think are fairly... Well, a family member who's my son, who's an entrepreneur and a Republican in a sense. And he just couldn't stomach Sarah Palin, and I couldn't believe he voted the way he did. It was a close bid. He's in Colorado. He's his mother again. He's in Colorado. He was in Colorado. But I mean... And then I've talked to others, and they just said the same thing, Sarah Palin. Just like you said. Yep. And it was also the right time for Obama. It was just the right time, I think. Well, the economy went the heck in Wisconsin. It was not spared from that. I mean, so Jamesville Plant and the other closings, I think, just added to the image that most 62% of the people said it was the economy. So I think Wisconsin shared in that. Yeah. It was a perfect storm, I think, for the Democrats. Yeah, it was a perfect storm. Democrats, you know, did a good job of McCain and Bush, couldn't separate, and the people were anxious to get rid of Bush, and vote for a young face, and Obama was the young face. Yeah. I had a good number of people tell me that after watching the concession speech, if they had seen that John McCain during the campaign, they would have really thought long and hard about whether they would have voted for Obama. That speech was, I assume, written by Stalter, or Salter, one of his names, Stalter Salter, who has sort of been with McCain for quite some time, helped write his books, and was always pushing that the narrative of John McCain as being the maverick and the one who stood for this, but that just, he never won that argument during that campaign. So, I think there were people that, they kept talking about who's Barack Obama, well, who is John McCain. John McCain actually had a reasonably intelligent immigration policy, which he moved away from. He was against the Bush tax cuts, he moved away from that. I mean, there were people who just simply said, where is this, where is this all? And then Sarah Palin gave it to him. Exactly. Well, who's John McCain picking Sarah Palin? It was a lovely concession speech. It's been a season of good concession speeches. And I think Hillary Clinton's concession speech was absolutely the best speech of her career, and she's had some good ones, so in my mind at least it was pretty high. I thought McCain was, it was wonderful. Ken and I have been, we're West Wing fans, to put it mildly, and the seventh season of West Wing was scarily close to this particular election. I remember we said, oh, a scenario like that would never play out. The Republicans would never nominate somebody moderate. I think Obama is hardly left wing in spite of all the ads and so forth, and Matt Santos, the Democratic candidate, had a good wife and two children and the issues and on and on and on. But it was really pretty remarkable. And I remember in Santos's, we're reliving this, in his speech as he was getting the accepting, not accepting the nomination, but acknowledging his win, talked about what a great guy his opponent was. And it was very gracious, and I think that McCain did that in spades. And I think you're right that a lot of people who, we talk about people being put off by negative ads, but all the research seems to indicate that that's a pretty important decision maker for people as they're deciding who they're going to vote for. But I think the concern over the economy finally swamped all the negative stuff. I think it really was just a lot of background noise. And I talked to a lot of people, and they weren't Democrats, who really found, I don't know if all of you did, but everyone was literally every day, I've got a chunk of something from not the McCain campaign, per se, maybe the Republican National Committee or whatever, but you know, Flyers and things, it was Jeremiah Johnson, it was, you know, the weatherman connection, errors, and it was just a steady stream of that stuff coming in the house. And a lot of people really were turned off by it. And that was all the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Those all came from the state party. I was really surprised. I mean, they were vicious. There were a couple there that were really ugly. But we also saw the internet campaign this year, which was a new mode of campaigning, so I think that's going to continue in the future and it would be interesting campaigns. I mean, when you saw Biden's was announced first through the internet, you know, through cell phone announcements, text messaging, and you're going to see a lot more of that. I think Obama really started writing a new chapter of campaigning that's going to be imitated by lots of folks now in the years to come. Although when you think about it, although Obama's electoral college percentage or margin was overwhelming, the popular vote was closer than I thought it was going to be. And I mean, there was no question that he won the popular vote as opposed to 2000. But the amount of money that Obama spent compared to what McCain spent in Indiana and Florida, and I mean, the Florida, as I just saw this on TV, Obama spent over $11 million, McCain spent over $3 million, well, Obama won, but just by a little. And he had real grassroots organizers out there, you know, he had a volunteer cadre of people, but just tons of money. And so what would have happened if the money had been more evenly balanced? So I knew that Clinton was going to lose way back when I saw the difference in money being raised. I mean, Obama, the money was just showering in, and Clinton was struggling, and I think with small donations like that, it indicates people were enthusiastic about Obama, but he was lucky to have that much money because you wonder what would have happened had that not been the case. Well, what's going on in the state? Well, I was going to say circling back to the state, and poor Tom. Well, we lost the assembly, too, so, okay, well, we've got a democratic state. Let's move on to something else. Well, what do you think, you know, I have had some Republican friends come up to me in shortle and say, ha, ha, ha, well, what are you going to do in the legislature now? And I think the state of Wisconsin is in dire straits. Things are looking grim, and do you want to be the full, completely in charge when things are that bad? Well, you don't want to be because you can't do anything proactive, but you want to be also because you control where the damage is going to go. You know, Republicans would say, well, we're going to downsize government and we'll take a meat ax to the university or DNR or whatever to make it, to balance it. Democrats, I think, will start looking at certain things with greater vision and saying we're going to downsize this because it's not as important as something else. And they may say, well, we've got to keep investment in education, and we've got to do this or that. So I think you take your lumps, but you like to be in power because you can control where the damage is going to be. And there's no doubt that there have to be cuts. It's just a matter of where they should go. I wonder, municipalities as opposed to education really don't have not either under Republican or Democratic leaders come out very well in the past few years. And so the state revenues which come into municipalities have really been frozen. And so it's an actual decline when you look at inflation and so forth. It will be interesting to see how all of that plays out. We were talking off screen about whether or not Tom Barrett, who was an early Obama supporter and certainly Jim Doyle was without hesitation. And whether or not they'll be around if they'll be spots. Well, actually, no offense, but Barrett has the same executive experience as Sarah Palin just in terms of size because Milwaukee, sorry. So I was Sylla versus Milwaukee. No, no, there's as many people in Milwaukee as there are in the state of Alaska. Oh, OK, I was going to say that you're comparing mayors. Yeah, mayor to governor and there is some discussion in Washington. It'll be interesting to see what the Democrats do once they take the Congress in January, there's talk that part of the next stimulus package may be direct aid to state governments to help make those cuts a little less painful, but I can't imagine that the national government is going to hand the state of Wisconsin. What's the hole in the budget? Two billion, two billion dollars. No, I'm not going to happen. Yeah, no, exactly. But there might be some some relief for infrastructure roads, highways, that kind of thing, which which is going to get there. I know that's going to come out. It'll be interesting, unless it's filibustered in the Senate. But. But yeah, we're planning at the school district that we've been told pretty much flat out next year, probably about a $500,000 to $700,000 cut. And they're starting to plan on where we're going to cut and what we're going to do. Staffing is extremely tight at both north and south. I don't know what they're like in the elementary and middle schools, but we had to cut some classes that we normally would offer, and class sizes are bigger than we'd want them to be. And so things are going to start really, and Sheboygan, the district is locked into a labor agreement until 2011. So those costs are pretty well fixed. So if they've got a cut, it's going to be layoffs of staff at the bottom of the seniority list. There's not too much room to maneuver as far as packaging there. They can reopen certain things, but not a whole lot. So. Yeah, I think I think I think it's going to be tough, but it'll be interesting to see. Newspaper points out there's a four way, apparently a four way race for assembly speaker. How, Cal, just you were in the assembly before you went to the Senate. How important a position is that? Well, it's the officer that everybody looks to to run the show. I mean, out of that office, which has expanded staff, you come together with the scheduling, what bills get scheduled and so on. So that that person is not only the presiding officer over the body, they're presiding officer over the leadership committee. You know, as a majority leader and assistant majority leader. They meet weekly to establish what's going to be on the floor after things are kicked out of committee with a favorable vote. They don't have to schedule things. They can let things set in what is known as the rules committee. So it is a very, very important position without a doubt. And so we have three from Milwaukee vying for the position. And then Mike Sheridan from Janesville, who I understand is Doyle's candidate. Usually the out state candidate does have the advantage simply because there's always that feeling amongst some out state legislators that Milwaukee is already a big demander of funds for schools and shared revenue and so on. So and it's used by sometimes by conservatives as they get more than their share and when actuality because they got the big population, they don't get a lot more than their share, but that's an image thing. Sure. Just switching gears a little bit. I was surprised and I'm thinking of John Gard was assembly speaker for a number of years and kind of ran it with an iron fist as I had heard and read. I was surprised that Kagan defeated Gard as soundly as he did and I don't remember what the percentage was, but it wasn't close. No, it was a fairly decent margin, yes. And I don't think Steve Kagan from the Green Bay area, I think he's got a lot of... I don't think he made any mistakes. I followed that race last time because I knew Gard and Kagan, I think, held his own in this first two years in Congress. He didn't go off the deep end with some type of proposals and I think his looking at his ads were still focused on the bread and butter things. He talked about people's pain, social security needs to be protected, people need health care. He talked about issues that I think people related to and they said, well, in the last two years he didn't screw up and he's talking about issues that I relate to and here's John Gard, really, because he was behind, was throwing some very mean ads at Kagan, but I don't think they stuck because Kagan created an image that was agreeable to most voters. And I think there was an Obama co-tail. True. Yeah. And it really helped. Yeah. They have turned on high and they have it... Yeah. Obama win is decisive. Because one of the districts that did go in the assembly, one of the three that did go to the Democrats was the Lusace seat and that's part of Brown County down south into Manitowal County. It's a rural district, but it did put a Democrat into that assembly seat after many, many years of having been under Frank Lusace. Well, and we wanted to just say a word of thanks to Frank Lusace and his years of service. Frank was an original. Yes, he was. I was on his list of emails every week. He did an electronic thing and every newsletter was always filled with liberal leftist and I said, how can this guy repeatedly position himself way over here when I know suburban Green Bay and parts of Manitowal County are not over on the right wing? They're in the middle, like most people are. And I think it did kind of catch up with him because Ted Zegman, who was on the radio in Manitowal County for many years and was known, did paint him in his ads and so on, in outer space as extreme. And I think that caught up with Frank Lusace. Well, my favorite position because it brought national notoriety to this area was Frank Lusace's proposition that teachers be allowed to have guns in the classroom. And Stephen Colbert really focused on that in the Colbert Report. You spent any time in a faculty lounge, you realize what a foolish proposition that is. Well, on all sorts of levels. Those plastic sporks for the comes with the hot lunches? I don't even trust some of my colleagues with that. Really, you don't want anybody. So you had sporks in your back and yeah. No, you just don't want. That was a very, very not thought out idea. Exactly. Well, and as Colbert said it, he said, face it folks, this is chalk and awe. And so I thought it was pretty funny. Alberta Darling was the darling of the Republicans and I think Sheldon Wasserman was fairly gutsy for for taking that on. And I think he was generally very well liked and energetic and He would have had that simple seat for many years. Exactly. But the Senate seat got into areas that were not always friendly for Democrats. Exactly. So that's that's interesting as well. One of the other interesting, we don't have a whole lot of time left. One of the interesting votes in Milwaukee was on the mandatory sick leave referendum, which is a binding referendum placed on the ballot only because 40,000 people in the city of Milwaukee signed a petition to have it put on the ballot requiring employers of various sizes to have to have paid sick leave. Now there's depending on your size, the Wisconsin State Family Medical Leave Act will generally provide for unpaid leave for a certain period of time. And the Chamber of Commerce in Milwaukee is indicating it's going to file suit. It passed really overwhelmingly 68%. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I was stunned because I thought people would just really reject that out of out of hand. But I read the chamber decided it was going to lose that they put their money into the suit rather than put their money into campaigning against it because they figured it was going to win. So they thought, well, we're going to garner our money, collect our money and put it into a suit to see if we could defeat the defeated. What are the girls in the suit? I don't know, but they're going to work on the suit. That's what I read. Well, typically, I mean, one of the arguments that you would make is that this is not something like this is not anything that a city has the authority to legislate. You argue that these are statewide issues and the legislature should do that. Whenever cities get into enacting ordinances that have really, really substantial impact, it gets a bit more tenuous. There's another city, right? San Francisco has done it, and isn't there a third city that's done it? Well, there are some cities that have enacted living wage ordinances that require contractors who do business with the city. That's the nexus, is that you're doing business with the city, and if you're doing that, you have to pay a minimum wage of whatever is determined. The living wage now, if you don't have insurance, is $12 or $13 an hour. That'll just get you just above poverty, but that's not for the whole community. That's for employers who do business with the city. As I understand, the Milwaukee piece is that it's for the entire city. It's good that employers could afford it because I think it's critically important for particularly low-income workers who have tenuous arrangements for childcare. When you have sick children, you have no place to go with a sick child because you can't take the child to the daycare center or whatever. To have paid sick leave is a wonderful, wonderful benefit, but can you legislate it? We legislate minimum wage. We legislate no smoking in the workplace. It would be interesting to see the spin-off. If I were a young entrepreneur, I might want to start a business not in the city of Milwaukee, maybe on the suburbs of Milwaukee. I don't know how the businesses are going to do in the city. They might decide, I was thinking about moving. This might just encourage me to make the move. The flip side of it is, Tom, though, is that you would tend to have a more stable workforce because people who can take a little bit of paid time off, either because they're ill or because their kids are ill, tend to stay around. If you miss a couple of days of work, then you're fired, and they bring in somebody. But you've got to have a job. You've got to have a job to take a dime off, and the company can't afford the job anymore, so they let you lay you off. So I don't know if it's more stable workforce or not. I might disagree with that. Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. But again, to get 40,000 people to sign petitions, to get something on a ballot, and then pass it by 68%, that to me is sort of an overwhelming response to this is a critical need for people to have this basic benefit, and it's low income benefits because most people who have decent regular jobs have paid sick leave. It's just the folks that are really kind of at the bottom of the pile. I think in a way it kind of shows that the motivation that people have to have benefits is being expressed to the ballot box and not through unionization. We're down to only about 12% in union membership. The Zenith was about 40%, I think, in 1965, so we've dropped tremendously in the area where unions used to negotiate those type of things for their employees. So I think there's a pent up desire to have healthcare and sick leave and all these things and people are not seeing union for whatever reason, maybe size of employers because we've had the industrialization in this country. But they're seeing the ballot box as a place where they're going to express themselves. So when you say they got 40,000 signatures, you go back 50 years, people expressed a lot of that through their union negotiations. Today they're signing petitions saying, yeah, I need this type of thing. I'm not going to get it because of the type of employment I have, so let's mandate it through the city or whatever other avenue that they can find. Was it Mayor Barrett opposed to the sledge as well? Well, and I mean there is a financial cost certainly. There's no doubt about that, but it'll be interesting to see what happens. Attorney General Van Hollen is going to appeal his loss in Judge Sumi's court. I think in late October he had, as you remember, filed suit to force the Government Accountability Board to do these fairly intense fact checking, I guess I would call it, before the election. And so it'll be interesting to see what course that takes as it goes through an appeal. I suppose there was not much talk of fraud in this particular election, but part of that is because it was so, I mean there were very few really, really close races. Jess King lost her Senate race to her opponent in the Oshkosh, I think the 18th Senate district. Close enough, I guess my understanding is there'll be a recount, but generally when you've got fairly wide margins, fraud is not really an issue, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. The early voting, I think, was a plus, because I guess I even saw lines of people waiting for early voting, so the people didn't have the rush at the voting polls on Election Day that they could handle it on a staggered basis, so maybe the early voting helped out too. We were talking about that, that none of us had a bad voting experience, did you? No. You're in the town of Sheboygan Falls? Right. Yeah. Walked right in, no problem. Yeah, I was in and out ten minutes, it was very interesting. Just in our remaining time, interesting, the Milwaukee school district is really struggling. Twenty thousand kids on vouchers, twenty thousand fewer in the district, the economic impact, I think, to the district is substantial? Yes. Twenty thousand. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Milwaukee's school district is really in a crisis, MPS is really facing some very difficult times, because that's a, when you do the mathematics, the voucher program costs the taxpayers of Milwaukee, the city of Milwaukee, a substantial amount of money. So that's a city that can't, I mean, always facing tremendous burdens. Maybe with a Democrat majority in both houses, we'll finally get some accountability on that program. Right. There's no reason why that money should be just gifted. Time to wrap it up. Thank you for joining us.