Northfield, MN — Over the weekend, the Watchdog faithful were treated to a rousing Democratic convention in LaCrosse, brought to you live via intrepid blogging by Watchdog Publisher Jim McGuigan. Unveiled at the convention was a statewide platform to make Wisconsin work for working families, and commitments from the governor on health care and K-12 and UW-System education.

Viewed from the Minnesota side of the river, from a sunny chair on a backporch in Northfield, the state of Wisconsin politics in election year 2006 — and the fate of Gov. Jim Doyle — comes into focus with a look back to 2004: Heading into campaign season, Doyle is talking tough, and standing more like populist Russ Feingold than defensive presidential candidate John Kerry, unable to convince voters he knew what to do about the war or the economy.

Did the Kerry campaign ever "get" the Midwest?  Even as voters in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin put their shoulders to the Mason-Dixon line in 2004, setting the stage for a showdown in Ohio for the votes of working families, there was a sense that Kerry and the national Dem Party didn't quite get working families in the Midwest and their core issues:

Jobs, health care, taking care of family. 

Facing a tough reelection, Jim Doyle does get it. Coming out of the state Dem convention, a strong "Wisconsin Way" platform has emerged: Jobs, policies that improve the lives of working families in Wisconsin, progressive health care policies, and a premium on education.

It's simple stuff. Do we care about these values as a state, or are we more intersted in cynical election gimmicks designed to hurt certain families: gay and nontraditional families, hardworking immigrant households and African-American families in Milwaukee?

In Doyle, we have a governor who protected all of these values, held the line of property taxes and still balanced the state budget — in the face of Republican opposition. Is Doyle the governor Wisconsin wants? Or do we want a politician who takes his walking orders from the Republican National Committee and appeals to divisive special interests on the far right?

Again, pretty simple stuff, the kind of tough, good sense talk about values and priorities that the middle class and every Wisconsin resident working hard to get to the middle class needs to hear from a governor as they look to the future.

Doyle's opponent, Green Bay Congressman Mark Green, looks and sounds by comparison a lot more like an uncertain Kerry heading into campaign season. In Congress, Green voted against embryonic stem cell research, sponsored House legislation to criminalize stem cell research, and supports state law that would do the same in Wisconsin. Despite those votes, he's trying to distort his record, just as he tried to distort his record on Medicaid cuts last fall.

Green is ducking a lot lately. Once, twice, three times he ducked the question of whether or not he would pardon convicted former GOP Assembly leader Scott Jensen. Jensen's been sentenced to 16 months in prison for directing Assembly aides to electioneer on the taxpayer dime. It wasn't a campaign issue until Green refused to say whether he would pardon Jensen. It seems such a simple matter – but Green won't say.

So what does Green stand for? Not the common law that everyone else lives under. Apparently, Green thinks his friends are above the law. Or perhaps the state GOP, snide and arrogant when it comes to accountability, just can't admit to any wrongdoing.  The flap over pardoning Jensen, such a small thing on the surface, would point to the flaw that has crippled Green at the core: an appalling lack of integrity.

Clearly, the party of Wisconsin values is the Democratic party, a message Doyle delivered powerfully in LaCrosse. Jim Doyle is not Russ Feingold, who has achieved folk hero status in the state. But Gov. Doyle is standing and talking tall on a record that reflects the true values of Wisconsin working families — while his opponent disguises and distorts his congressional voting record and presses perceived election year hot buttons.

From where I sit on a sunny porch in Minnesota, sipping a beer made in Milwaukee, the view says it's a good time to be a Democrat governor in Wisconsin, running for reelection.

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