July
2006
Lautenschlager Leads in Primary Race but…
It's beginning to look like Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager just might have a chance to pull off a primary victory against Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. In a recent press release, Lautenschlager points out that she's leading in a Badger poll by 14% but it's still a long way off until the September primary. The question that makes dems squeamish is whether she can pull out a general election win with the baggage she's got.
Peg's endorsement list is large and is growing. She's managed to get an impressive amount of union backing but there have been plenty of races where the democrat who has the union endorsements ends up getting smoked in the primary election. Still, Peg had the support of a majority of the delegates at the State convention last month in LaCrosse.
Few State Attorneys General can point to the successes that Lautenschlager can brag about. Her work to shut down methamphetamine labs is impressive and Wisconsin has fewer meth labs than all other midwestern states. Her website brags:
The number of meth labs in Wisconsin is down, and has continued down for three years. Compared to our neighboring states, Wisconsin meth labs (where drug manufacturers "cook" lethal batches of highly addictive meth causing health and environmental hazards) is well below the average. In 2005, 56 clandestine laboratories were processed in Wisconsin. In comparison, during 2005, Iowa had 336 labs, Illinois had 833 labs, Michigan had 224 labs, and Minnesota had 123 labs. Agents predict the number of labs in Wisconsin to decrease even more in 2006.
Peg has requested that Kathleen Falk sign a clean campaign pledge — an offer that Falk would have to be insane to sign. If she signed Lautenschlager's version, she would not be able to air the video footage of a roadside sobriety test that Lautenschlager failed last year. Here's the rub — if Falk doesn't air the ads and Lautenschlager makes it through the primary, the Republican nominee will run that footage again and again and in the end, Lautenschlager may fall to the ads. If Falk runs the ads and Lautenschlager still emerges from the primary, it may signal that the people have forgiven her and are willing to look past the DUI.
Either way, Peg will continue to live this nightmare until she either wins re-election or doesn't win and is finally able to get some closure.
Jim McGuigan
Jim McGuigan, Watchdogging Campaigns
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Newsflash: The cop that busted Lautenschlager for DUI has endorsed her for re-election!
http://tinyurl.com/g6l6k
Officer Mark Handel said: “I’ve pulled over many police officers, and a lot would start flashing their badges and expecting a break.” Lautenschlager did not.
The clean campaign pledge was a gambit on the advice of Ed Garvey and or Barbara Lawton, the ticket that ran against the Thompson machine in 1998 — now staunch supporters of Lautenschlager. There were also some fundraising limits tied to this pledge, also part of the Garvey-Lawton strategy. If you’re clean, which Garvey and Lawton were, and you want to run a grassroots campaign, which Garvey and Lawton did, and if you’re David running against Goliath, which Garvey-Lawton certainly were, then making clean campaign proposals makes sense.
If you’re Peg Lautenschlager and you’re not clean, and you’re afraid Falk or her supporters are going blast with you a big, bad and expensive ad campaign, your clean campaign pledge is nothing more than a ploy. It’s clumsy mudslinging against an opponent, Falk, who happens to be very difficult to dirty up.
It’s good for Peg that her friends are sticking by her. Some of those friends [Garvey for one]have pending suits against the state. [Garvey's been doing a lot of great work on prison issues in the last few years.]
The governor, however, isn’t sticking by her, and many Milwaukee members of the state Senate and Assembly practically begged Falk to run against her. I sometimes wonder whether Madison insider pols really get a sense of the kind of dogfights we get into with conservative media around here. The state is just not the kind and gentle place they seem to think it is.
If Falk doesn’t win the primary, Lautenschlager is DOA in the general.
On another note: I seriously question whether those low meth labs shutdown figures in Wisconsin, compared to other states, represents success. Meth is all over the place in some parts of the state, so there are a lot of labs law enforcement is missing. What’s to brag about? The fact that Wisconsin isn’t as good at shutting down meth labs as Minnesota is? Or is she patting herself on the back because the meth epidemic (apparently) came late to the state?
Do arrest figures do anything but measure law enforcement activity?