Holt comes from the same south suburb base — people know him down there. The only way he won’t get 80,000+ votes in Milwaukee County is if there aren’t 80,000 Republicans IN Milwaukee County anymore. Given the do-nothing legislature, a terrible candidate in Mark Green, and the Bush Administration, 80,000 might be a stretch.

The interesting part of the equation is where the 15,000 Ed Thompson votes will go. Last time, they apparently went to Clarke.

The rest is in flux. Based on 2002 totals, first one to 130,000 votes wins. Holt needs all the help he can get and all the positive signs you can find. And he must raise his profile fast.

It will be curious to see what happens on Election Day, and to watch Clarke (and Plale) very closely thereafter.

Jeff Plale? We liked his votes against TABOR and that pernicious amendment. On the other hand, we broke the story on the Plale undemocratic airport authority plan and were active in support of Donovan Riley until we learned about his double voting.
http://watchdogmilwaukee.com/blog/index.php?s=Jeff+Plale

Milwaukee Dems bucked the out-of-touch party geniuses in Madison by encouraging Kathleen Falk to run against Peg Lautenschlager for AG. Nobody was shunned — in fact, Jon Richards and Pedro Colon are still running the Assembly Dems caucus w/ Jim Kreuser (Kenosha).

To breach the racial divide, you need competent and effective leaders. When Marvin Pratt botched his campaign finance record-keeping, we were all hurt by the racial implications. Remember, Mrs. Pratt called Milwaukee a trailer park and the New York Times seriously questioned Journal Sentinel motives in their editorial focus. It was a mess.

With Clarke, you are mired in the party mindset. The bottom line is that most black elected officials wanted to hold Clarke accountable and would not support him, but black voters said — No accountability, he is one of ours. These voters have nominated an empty symbol, a clown, and left the responsibility to remove him to white voters. The polarization stresses the Milwaukee racial schism.

This is not the late 1960s. The black community is empowered politically and advances political and cultural interests by electing people everybody can get behind. Same goes for white folks. Simple stuff. Fewer and fewer voters are getting behind Clarke. He has not been able to build off of his 2002 landslide (he won the primary easily and got 2/3 of the vote in the general). After four years in office, Clarke had to fight through the primary and now the general election for sheriff — usually an afterthought — is a showdown against Donald Holt. The smokescreen is lifting, and the poor job Clarke has done is to blame, not his detractors.

I wish this was not so racially polarizing, but the fact of the matter is that it has been designed that way, as strategists for the Republican party want to use Clarke as an inroad to win black votes for Mark Green. The congratulations telephone call that Green made to Clarke election night, dutifully reported on Fox news election coverage, was all about sending the message, however vain, to black voters that — Hey, I like Clarke too! … so think about voting for me.) Clarke is a black Republican experiment in Milwaukee. He is being used. HOWEVER - he would have been more useful to them 4 years ago with an R beside his name. But we all know that if that had happened, we could very well be talking about the reelection of Sheriff Pete Misko.

The Clarke job performance has been so poor that all bets are off. Now, he stands mainly as an embarassment to black voters who refused to hold him accountable Sept. 12.

You - JDM - are the one who brought up voter suppression, not me, I was merely playing the same cards that you were.

Could you imagine what the local dem party would have done had any of their elected officials (current and former) came out in support of Clarke instead of their man Bobot? They would have been shunned for the remainder of their short political lives. I have spoken to enough black elected officials to know that Clarke does enjoy support albeit somewhat quiet because they were afraid to publicly support him in fear of what Martha Love and company might do to them.

How does re-electing a black official further create a racial divide?? That’s absurd. Wouldn’t a further racial divide ensue after having too many non-minorities serve in public office??????

As far as I know, the Bobot-Holt connection is a rumor I’ve heard only from a blogger on this site, nowhere else. It’s possible — though campaign handler types often claim credit for things that they may have only had the loosest connection to, if any connection at all.

The county GOP of course has to front for Holt publicly — Holt is the guy with the R next to his name.

And rather than recognize the two black elected officials, one recent past and one present, who are the most popular elected black officials in Milwaukee history (Congresswoman Moore the most prominent in state history), you want to talk about tire slashing. You are well aware that Sheriff Dave got no support from Spencer Coggs, Tamara Grigsby, Lena Taylor, ET AL either, and is shunned by county and city pols at election time.

You conclude by saying no one cares that Clarke has run his department amok - just as you argued that no one cares that Clarke is mismanaging the jail that is his legal responsibility. Really now, registered voter turnout in the primary was only 15% statewide! Why talk about anything?

Obviously, too few on the north side cared or did not know — and decided to leave things as they are. I know this general nonreaction to Clarke surprised Eric Von when he raised the issue on his AM1290 radio show. Von, too, was a Bobot supporter.

The result is the election of an empty symbol that only serves to widen the Milwaukee racial schism; a symbol who will drive around in the divide in an expensive county-bought truck, appearing in the role of sheriff but accomplishing worse than nothing.

To say that Pratt and Moore are the democrat party among minorities in Milwaukee is quite sad really considering what little they have/haven’t done. And let us not forget that it was the children of Pratt and Moore who were suppressing thousands of votes on the north side of Milwaukee in 2004, not republicans.

The bottom line is that the average inner-city voter does not care about the daily minutiae of the sheriff’s department. They care about a qualified, well-educated person who happen to have their same skin color in positions of authority and leadership, like Clarke, in Milwaukee.

The Democratic Pary shuns Clarke because, for starters, he’s aligned with Republicans who’ve worked very hard to suppress the vote on the north side for the last two years; we don’t support him here because he’s run amok with the sheriff’s department and takes no responsibility for it. Hardly a role model.

Because Clarke gives GOPs a black face in a high place locally doesn’t give them cause for pollyanna statements about skin color from the plantation house porch.

I heard a rumor that the same people that pushed Bobot to run against Clarke for Sheriff, also hand-picked Holt. Is that possible?

No, it doesn’t look good for Holt. Clarke’s margin will be even bigger on the North Side in the general. Holt will have 80-85,000 Republican votes, minimum — but he’ll need 40,000 Dems to cast their ballots his way to be within shouting distance, based on 2002 returns.

Clarke got about 19,000 more votes than Gov. Doyle in Milwaukee County in 2002, which means he had some Independent (Ed Thompson voters) and some Republican (Scott McCallum) support. The dynamic’s different this time, the election hotter, and Clarke had 35,000+ people vote against him in the primary. The honeymoon’s over.

I suspect Bobot looked at those north side numbers too, and realized there was no way to reverse it, no matter how much money he raised and spent. The best he could have hoped for was to split the Dem vote for Holt, knowing he had no chance. Too much money to raise if you’re dealing from the bottom of the deck.