April
2007
Supreme Court Race was Unfortunate but Predictable
I know there are people who will say I’m insane for thinking this race couldn’t be won, but I’m a numbers guy and after the primary race it was obvious that Linda Clifford wasn’t going to be able to overcome Annette Ziegler’s large lead.
Percentages don’t lie and Ziegler had over twice the amount of votes that Clifford had after the race was narrowed to just two candidates.
Could it have been won? The short answer is yes, but it was very, very unlikely.
Clifford would have had to cement herself into voters minds as the perfect candidate. She would have needed to focus her commercials entirely on herself and let the independent expenditures bring out Ziegler’s shortcomings. Her public face needed to be the only one who had argued a case before the supreme court. Clifford also faced another problem — she isn’t a judge and it’s pretty safe to say that people prefer someone to be a judge before elevating them to be a justice.
Other groups needed to point out that Ziegler is only a Judge because Daddy bought her a seat and without the big donations to former Governor Tommy Thompson, she wouldn’t have gotten the appointment.
Ziegler also would have needed to really screw up and her shortcomings needed to become public. For the most part, that did happen and that is the only reason Clifford ended up having a chance.
Add to the soup the fact that Ziegler had an unprecedented amount of special interest spending on her behalf. Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce spent $1.45 million to buy Ziegler the seat and clearly they were successful. Compare that to the mere $300,000 that was spent by a pro-Clifford group and you can see how Ziegler had an upper hand in this race.
Some will say that all of this is just Monday morning quarterbacking. To a small extent extent that’s true, but at the same time I’ve been the quarterback and I know how the game is played. Most “Monday morning quarterbacks” have never picked up the football.
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“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Jim McGuigan
Jim McGuigan, Watchdogging Campaigns, Watchdogging the Judiciary
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No judicial experience = no confidence in the minds of most voters. That’s precisely why Clifford lost.
Clifford lost because she didn’t try. I won’t blame you for starting the “Ziegler is a pedophile” or whatever the hell that was, but I saw it here first. Maybe you are insane if you didn’t believe a democrat could not beat a republican in a statewide race. Perhaps if she had run as a democrat she would have won. Or run as anything. After 1000 commercials my question is this– who the hell is Linda Clifford?
Oh, she’s the lady who doesn’t like child molesters. What a joke.
It was all very predictable, nearly every race. Clifford never had a shot, and no one is going to believe that Washington County had a pro-sex offender judge for the last ten years. Of course, they didn’t.
Maybe this time some campaign consultants in this state will finally get the axe.
Let’s be fair on this one too… Clifford ran a bunk campaign. They seemed to not realize that there was an election coming up.
Plenty of campaigns have had less money than there opponent, and won, so clearly, Clifford’s campaign had something to do with the loss… it wasn’t just inevitable, and it wasn’t just fate. It irks me when progressives won’t take a moment to stop, talk about where this race went wrong and what we need to do next time…
50,000 less votes than Brunner got in losing the last open seat Supreme Court race.
No amount of negative campaigning is going to pull Republican voters from the WMC candidate, so the challenge was to convince 482,665 folks to show up and vote for you.
The early work on Louis re-election is deeper education on the role of the Court. The currently framing is a gimme for a “tough on crime” campaing from the other side.
Ziegler bought her election with special interest money just the same as Doyle did this past November with casino money, teacher’s union money, etc.
It would be against tradition for a governor in Wisconsin to refuse casino dough! When casino Tommy was on the take he just said, “who cares - everybody gives me money - I don’t keep track of it.” Tommy gave his personal lawyer a big slice of the tobacco lawsuit, and it didn’t seem to bother anyone but Ed Garvey. Now casino Tommy’s running for president! But it’s a good parallel - Green was a lousy candidate, was clobbered on nearly every issue that counted and never made a case for why he should be governor. Same problem Clifford had in this race.
Clifford and Ziegler were both out to buy this seat. Ziegler and family bought her judicial appointment in Washington County from King Tommy ten years ago, and they gave heavily over the years in preparation for a future run like this one. Clifford and hubby tried to buy a state Supreme court appointment from Doyle, donating $40,000-plus to the guv since ‘01-02. Clifford applied for the Supreme Court seat Doyle appointed to Butler (a wise choice). The Doyle machine and Xoff (Greater Wisconsin Committee) were obligated to let her have this race all to herself - and the Madison Dems. I think a lot of Dems around the state decided to save their money …
From the start of commentary on this race, we said the state deserved better candidates than these two. The result was perhaps the nastiest state Supreme Court race ever, a disgraceful affront to the common law principles that our state Supreme Court safeguards. This was the least judicial race judicial race in state history, and the folks who thought it was OK to hack away at a sitting Washington County judge lost sight of how society prefers to think of judges and our courts: as the unimpeachable last line of defense against all politics and stupidity. One would have thought folks would have learned after the unfair attack on JB Van Hollen didn’t lead to a win in the AG’s race. Might Falk be AG if Greater Wisconsin Committee had run positive ads about Falk’s managerial experience and her history of looking out for the little guy consumer? What if they had actually tried to redefine for the voting public the role of the AG instead of playing sexual predator games?
Shame on everybody involved in the AG and this Supreme Court race. The conservatives (dammit Fraley and company) have us whipped in these races.
We all know the Clifford race was over before it started, but some new ideas before Justice Louis Butler defends his seat would go a long way toward preserving the state constitution. The common law as well.