Sunday, March 16, 2008

Lena Taylor’s Amateurish Campaign

I must admit, I’ve been a bit surprised by how the race for Milwaukee County Executive is unfolding.  Senator Lena Taylor is challenging the current executive, Scott Walker, for the seat.  When she announced, I thought she would mount a formidable challenge.  I thought that she’d have a lot of money to bring to bear and would be running a top tier campaign with A List people. 

To date, however, her campaign has been rather anemic.  She’s making a lot of noise, but isn’t running a good campaign.  For example, her first television ad stinks.  She just kind of throws everything out there all at once.  A political ad should have a point that is stated, reinforced, and reinforced again.  It should drive home a clear message.  Her ad is a jumbled mess.

Furthermore, she’s a very clumsy debater.  For example, let’s pick through this account a bit. 

“The county executive has a give and take relationship,” she said, in the forum’s final moments. “He gives the crap and he takes the credit.”


Seriously?  “Gives the crap?”  Is Taylor running for the highest office in the largest county in the state or for block captain?  That kind of rhetoric may play well in her district, but it’s quite juvenile for a serious candidate. 

She called Walker’s explanation of a reduction in use of local buses “falsehoods.” He had said the biggest reason for a drop in ridership was due to Milwaukee Public Schools stopping its practice of purchasing weekly bus passes for students in favor of individual tickets.

She blamed the ridership downturn on route cuts and fare hikes during Walker’s nearly six-year tenure as county executive. But Taylor acknowledged that up to 50% of the ridership decline was due to the MPS move.

She tried to attack Walker and basically called him a liar, but then had to concede that he was right.  It’s kind of a rule of campaigning that you shouldn’t attack an opponent on an issue when your opponent is demonstrably right.  And what’s amateurish about Taylor’s move is that she didn’t have to do it.  She can beat up on Walker all she wants for his management of the bus system, and she could do it in a way that resonates with a lot of Milwaukeeans.  But she reached too far with a specific accusation and had to concede that her accusation was off base.  Not good. 

Taylor charged Walker with “flat-out lies,” for claiming credit for the county’s $6 million 2007 surplus. Though she didn’t give details at the debate, she has credited the surplus to the County Board because Walker vetoed the entire ‘07 budget that included health care savings.

Um, it’s pretty common practice for politicians to take credit for things in which they are involved but for which they are not entirely responsible.  For example, Senator Taylor takes credit for legislation that resulted in more state money being sent to Milwaukee.  Under her standards, is she engaging in “flat-out lies?”  After all, that legislation had to be passed by both houses of the legislature and signed by the governor.  Can she legitimately claim any more credit for that than Scott Walker can for a budget that he was charged with executing? 

Again, she could have made the point that he can’t claim full credit for the surplus with relative ease.  She could have pointed out that he vetoed the budget and his veto was overridden.  She could have pointed out that the surplus can also be credited to department managers and front line people who worked to keep the spending within or under budget.  All of this would have diluted Walker’s claim.  But she overreached again.  She chose to call Walker a liar.  If the head of the executive branch can’t take any credit for budget surpluses, then we’ve had centuries of liars.  Furthermore, I have no doubt that had there been a deficit, she’d blame Walker for it.  Do you?

Taylor also called out Walker when he mistakenly said she’d been the state Senate five years; she actually has served there three years. Walker later said he meant to say she’d been in the Legislature five years, the tally of her time in the Assembly and the Senate combined.

 
Why would she even make an issue of this?  She begins to look a bit obsessive when she bickers over nothing. 

This is my favorite. 

She said he harbored ambitions to run for governor again in 2010 and wouldn’t complete the four-year term he’s now asking voters for as county executive. Walker ran for the GOP nomination for governor in 2005, but dropped out citing fund raising problems.

Neither Walker nor Taylor directly answered a question about whether they would, if elected, complete the four-year county executive term they’re seeking.

Part of her campaign’s strategy is to criticize Walker because he might run for governor and, if he wins, he wouldn’t finish his term.  This is a such a pointless line of attack that I hope she keeps it up. 

First, it was well known in 2004 that Walker had ambitions to run for governor.  Yet the citizens of Milwaukee County elected him that year by nearly a 15 point margin.  This message didn’t sell well then and it won’t sell well now. 

Second, Lena Taylor is hardly in a position to be critical of people for not finishing terms.  Not only will she not promise to finish her term if she wins the seat, she has been elected to two offices and has never finished a term.  She was elected to the Assembly in 2003 and elected to the State Senate in 2004 without finishing her term in the Assembly.  Now she is running for County Executive and will not finish her term in the Senate if she wins.  Meanwhile, Walker finished several terms in the Assembly and has finished a full term as county executive.  Taylor doesn’t have a legitimate leg to stand on with this issue. 

As I said at the beginning, I really expected Lena Taylor to run a top-notch campaign.  But with only 15 days left until the election, all I have seen in an amateurish effort.  I suppose that given the fact that Taylor has never had to run a hard-nosed campaign, I shouldn’t be too surprised.  In her first test in a serious campaign, she’s earning about a C-.

(4) Comments
Posted by Owen at 0911 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin

  1. Leaving my office friday some guy was handing out little green half-sheet flyers on the corner of water and wisconsin.  I took one and it turns out it was a Lena Taylor campaign piece of “literature”.

    I should have read the whole thing, but I ended up throwing it in the garbage.  I do recall that the headline was “Throw the bum out”

    It just seemed so childish.  And I know alls fair in love war and political campaigns, but “bum”???  Just seems totally inapplicable and the piece of paper didn’t substantiate it at all. 

    The only other piece of info I noticed before I threw it out was it showed what bus fare was before he took office and now.  IIRC it was $1.10 when he took office and $2.00 now (recalling from the flyer)

    I wanted to turn around and write the diesel price when Scott Walker took office ($1.30) and the diesel price now ($4.09)on the piece of paper and ask the guy if that was scott walkers fault too.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 16, 2008 at 1133 hrs


  2. I have had personal experience with Lena Taylor, and I can attest to her being overall childish when it comes to her duties as a Senator.  I mean, she did some things in the committee hearings that I went to that a 4-year-old would do, and I would gladly go into details, but I probably shouldn’t because of my employer at that time.  Anyway, my point being that her childish behavior might be one of the reasons that her campaign is being run so sloppily…

    Posted by Brandon on March 16, 2008 at 1329 hrs


  3. Maybe she’s just confused again.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 16, 2008 at 2303 hrs


  4. It is notable that support for Taylor has been very low-key, after the usual “endorsement gala” noises.

    Apparently the big-time Democrats also think Lena’s a loose nut.

    Posted by dad29 on March 17, 2008 at 0640 hrs


Commenting is not available in this channel entry.