Murphy's Law

It’s ugly.

Challenger Michael Gableman is doing a nasty ad charging that Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler “found a loophole” to get a convicted child molester, Reuben Lee Mitchell, off on a technicality and that Mitchell went on to commit another crime. As news coverage has suggested, the ad is untrue: Butler was working as a public defender at the time, his appeal was unsuccessful, and Mitchell served 11 years in jail, and committed a crime after getting released.

But it gets worse. As Mike Plaisted has noted, given the years Butler spent as a public defender, it’s quite likely there was some accused person Butler successfully defended who did in fact go free and commit a crime. So why did Gableman pick someone who actually went to jail and served his time? Is it because Mitchell’s black and Gableman wanted to remind voters that Butler is too, and by intimation equate the two?

It’s also shocking that the Gableman campaign, rather than some third-party group, ran this ad. Normally a candidate doesn’t want to be associated with an ad so vicious and misleading. This either suggests desperation by the Gableman campaign (and it seems too early for that), or their confidence that voters won’t be repelled by such garbage. The idea that any political strategists in 21st century Wisconsin would believe voters capable of such knee-jerk racism is by itself ugly to contemplate.

And if they are right? One can’t help thinking ahead to the presidential election, should Barack Obama be the Democratic nominee. If Gableman’s attack ad succeeds in defeating a black incumbent Supreme Court justice, why not use a similar approach to target Obama? Wisconsin is a swing state that has been crucial in the last two elections, and is likely to be a battleground in November. Are we in for more race-baiting, or will the voters see through this?

The State of Mediocrity

Wisconsin is not one of the nation’s best-managed states. Such is the conclusion of Governing Magazine in its March cover story. The magazine’s annual report card, done in conjunction with the Pew Center on the States, gives Wisconsin a B-minus, ranking it above just 19 states, including big loser New Hampshire (D-plus).

But 30 states ranked above Wisconsin, including such paragons as Utah and Virginia, which both got an A-minus.

The report ranked states on money (including budget and finances), people (hiring, training, retaining employees), infrastructure (maintenance, capital planning) and information (auditing and evaluation, etc.).

Wisconsin got a black eye for how it is handling state employees. “Hiring freezes, ongoing budget disputes and lagging pay scale help explain why Wisconsin has the second-highest turnover rate in the country for veteran employees,” the story noted.

Readers of this column will recall my questioning whether Gov. Jim Doyle has been cutting state employees at all

The magazine also notes the saga of civil-service employee Georgia Thompson, whose life was made a hell because of an unnecessary prosecution by U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic. True enough, but I question whether this anomaly of a case, which was thrown out on appeal, has led to any turnover.

The story also notes the state’s continuing structural deficit, which has been around forever, probably since Jim Doyle had hair, and was estimated at $2.4 billion at the end of fiscal 2007.

For spice, the story quotes UW-Milwaukee professor Mordecai Lee, who declares that “policy-making by crossing their fingers is the best way to explain what long-term planning means in Wisconsin.” The good professor didn’t divulge whether he operated that way in his years as a legislator.

Finally, the story praised the Legislative Audit Bureau as “among the most important and credible audit shops in the country.”

All told, not a disastrous rating, but nothing to write the kids about.

The Buzz

My column last week questioned why Gableman charged the state for a day of work as an administrative law judge when he was actually attending a fundraiser for then-Gov. Scott McCallum. Gableman’s campaign manager Darren Schmitz called to say that Gableman was given permission by his supervisor, Sandra Schultz, to take this day as comp time. Schultz did not respond to my call, so I couldn’t verify this. But it’s worth noting that state legislative aides are not allowed to take comp time to campaign, for obvious reasons, as it opens the door to wholesale campaigning on state time.

-Bad news always gets more prominence, so it’s worth noting a story last week that crime in Milwaukee declined by 2 percent in 2007. Don’t expect any coverage of this on talk radio.

-Was former Milwaukee Art Museum director Russell Bowman fired back in 2003? It’s always been called a resignation, but his comments to The New York Times suggest otherwise.

-Newspapers hate to undercut their authority, so it’s refreshing how frequently the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Sunday Crossroads has offered correctives that serve the readers. Sunday’s op-ed by the authors of the ongoing study on voucher schools tells readers the study made no conclusions as to whether choice schools perform better or worse than Milwaukee Public Schools, thereby repudiating the JS front page story that had claimed otherwise. It’s an important service to readers.

And the Sports Nut, I kid you not, explains how to win a prize from John McCain.