ENDORSEMENT: Joseph Thomas Klein for Milwaukee County (WI) Executive

While many people are trying to paint next year’s race for Milwaukee County (WI) Executive as a two-way race between conservative incumbent Chris “Boss” Abele and Wisconsin State Senator Chris Larson, I’m not endorsing either of those candidates. Instead, I’m endorsing Joseph Thomas Klein, who is also running for Milwaukee County Executive.

You may remember Klein from his failed Pirate Party bid in the 19th Assembly District of Wisconsin last year. Now, Klein is running in an officially non-partisan race in a bid to become the chief executive of Wisconsin’s most populous county. I’m not sure if he was an ancestor of the Joseph Klein who is currently running for Milwaukee County Executive, but an individual named Joseph Klein (not the same Joseph Klein who is running for Milwaukee County Executive today) was a Socialist member of the Wisconsin State Assembly for one term from 1919 to 1921.

While Klein’s campaign has gotten virtually zero attention by the corporate media, the Milwaukee-area webgazine Urban Milwaukee recently published this article on their website about the GO Pass program. The GO Pass program is a program that allows disabled people and senior citizens to ride Milwaukee County’s bus system for free, and it’s running a massive budget deficit. Klein has a very interesting idea on how he’d fix Milwaukee County’s GO Pass shortfall:

The other candidate in the county executive election is Joseph Thomas Klein, the Wisconsin Pirate Party organizer. His position on the Go Pass program?

He notes that the Milwaukee County Transit System suffers from the fact that it has little support from the current majority in the state legislature. “MCTS is in need of a dedicated funding source, such as the before proposed additional sales tax,” he continues. “I would also like to see parking revenues from County-owned parking lots, street parking, and structures go into the transit budget. I would not be adverse to metering on Lincoln Memorial Drive (or in any park served by MCTS) if the revenue could make a summertime ‘Beach-Bus’ and Park service possible.”

“I like the GO Pass idea,” Klein says, “but perhaps it should have been better planned with a goal of minimizing erosion of fare-box revenue. The fact that the GO Pass has created a budget shortfall is more a function of poor planning and a lack of realistic budgeting by the County Board, than a condemnation of a program that should have innumerable social benefits.”

I love the idea of using parking fares to fund public transit! If elected Milwaukee County Executive, Joseph Klein will bring fresh, common-sense ideas to Milwaukee County. The same can’t be said for Abele and Larson, both of whom serve political power brokers and their own egos. As county executive, Abele has repeatedly attacked organized labor, progressives, and anyone else who disagrees with him, and he’s one of Scott Walker’s biggest allies. Among the things that Abele has done in office have included pushing to gut the Milwaukee public school system, pushing to prohibit Wisconsin counties from enacting living wage ordinances, defending money in politics, and being worse than Scott Walker on labor issues. Larson, on the other hand, is best-known for handing Republican Howard Marklein a seat in the Wisconsin State Senate (17th Senate District, 2014 election) by backing establishment lackey Pat Bomhack over progressive patriot Ernie Wittwer in the Democratic primary.

Should more than two candidates make the ballot, the non-partisan primary for Milwaukee County Executive would be held in February of next year, and the two highest vote-getters would move on to the general election. The general election for Milwaukee County Executive, also officially non-partisan, will be held in April of next year.

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Wisconsin Democratic convention provides first real sign of Berniementum

Although Hillary Clinton received the most votes among the 511 individuals who voted in the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) Convention straw poll, Hillary received only a plurality of the vote in the straw poll, with progressives mostly united around Bernie Sanders, who came in a surprisingly close (even to a Sanders supporter like myself) second place.

Here are the results of the Wisconsin Democratic presidential straw poll:

• 1st – Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of New York – 252 (49.32%)
• 2nd – U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont – 208 (40.70%)
• T-3rd – Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware – 16 (3.13%)
• T-3rd – Former Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland – 16 (3.13%)
• 5th – Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia – 8 (1.57%)
• 6th – Former Governor Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island – 5 (0.98%)
• 7th – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (write-in) – 4 (0.78%)
• 8th – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack of Iowa (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)

Of the 511 straw poll voters, 1 voter, or 0.20% of the total straw poll electorate, did not cast a valid vote for any candidate or write-in candidate in the presidential portion of the straw poll. Of the candidates who received at least one vote, Clinton, Sanders, O’Malley, and Chafee are officially running for the Democratic presidential nomination. A total of 8 candidates received at least one vote. Percentages given for each candidate’s vote total are percentages of the total straw poll electorate.

To say the least, this is the first real sign of trouble for the Hillary Clinton campaign in regards to the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Despite being perceived as the heavy favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary couldn’t even get a majority of the vote in the Wisconsin Democratic straw poll, whose electorate usually consists of Democratic diehards in Wisconsin. More importantly, the Wisconsin straw poll shows that Bernie’s campaign is gaining momentum in a huge way, as he received over 40% of the vote despite a near-blackout of Bernie’s campaign by the corporate media and the political establishment in this country.

The Wisconsin Democratic convention straw poll also featured a gubernatorial straw poll, in which no candidate came even close to a majority of the vote, although there is currently a very strong preference for a gubernatorial candidate from the western part of Wisconsin among many of the Wisconsin Democrats who participated in the straw poll. Here are the results of the gubernatorial straw poll, which also saw 511 ballots cast:

• 1st – State Senator Kathleen Vinehout of Alma – 149 (29.16%)
• 2nd – State Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling of La Crosse – 89 (17.42%)
• 3rd – U.S. Representative Ron Kind of La Crosse – 85 (16.63%)
• 4th – State Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca of Kenosha – 64 (12.52%)
• 5th – Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson of Kaukauna – 55 (10.76%)
• 6th – Dane County Executive Joe Parisi of Madison – 11 (2.15%)
• T-7th – Former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk of Madison (write-in) – 3 (0.59%)
• T-7th – Former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold of Middleton (write-in) – 3 (0.59%)
• T-7th – State Senator Chris Larson of Milwaukee (write-in) – 3 (0.59%)
• T-7th – State Assembly Assistant Minority Leader Katrina Shankland of Stevens Point (write-in) – 3 (0.59%)
• T-11th – Business executive Kevin Conroy of Madison (write-in) – 2 (0.39%)
• T-11th – Jefferson County District Attorney Susan Happ of Jefferson (write-in) – 2 (0.39%)
• T-11th – Former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Mike Tate of Milwaukee (write-in) – 2 (0.39%)
• T-11th – State Representative Chris Taylor of Madison (write-in) – 2 (0.39%)
• T-11th – State Senator Lena Taylor of Milwaukee (write-in) – 2 (0.39%)
• T-16th – State Representative Mandela Barnes of Milwaukee (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – Madison Metropolitan School Board Member Mary Burke of Madison (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – Mayor John Dickert of Racine (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – State Senator Dave Hansen of Green Bay (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – Political activist Mike McCabe of Madison (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – U.S. Representative Gwen Moore of Milwaukee (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – Mayor Justin Nickels of Manitowoc (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – U.S. Representative Mark Pocan of Town of Vermont (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – Manufacturers’ sales representative Neal Plotkin of Milwaukee (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)
• T-16th – State Representative Dana Wachs of Eau Claire (write-in) – 1 (0.20%)

Of the 511 straw poll voters, 25 voters, or 4.89% of the total electorate, did not cast a valid vote for any candidate or write-in candidate in the gubernatorial portion of the straw poll. I am unsure about which municipalities Joe Parisi and Mike Tate live in; as a result, I listed either the county seat of their home county (for Parisi) or their birthplace (for Tate). Some sources list Mark Pocan as living in either Madison or Black Earth; Pocan’s campaign website lists him as a resident of the Town of Vermont in Dane County. WisPolitics.com misspelled the name of Justin Nickels on their online results sheet; they listed Nickels as “Justin Nichols”, likely due to the individual who wrote-in Nickels misspelling his last name. The only information I could find about anyone from Wisconsin named Neal Plotkin is from a 2012 article in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle that listed Plotkin as a manufacturers’ sales representative from Milwaukee, so this is presumably the Neal Plotkin that the individual cast a write-in vote for. A total of 26 candidates received at least one vote. Percentages given for each candidate’s vote total are percentages of the total straw poll electorate.

While the race for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Wisconsin hasn’t really begun to take shape three and a half years from the next gubernatorial election in Wisconsin, there is already a strong preference for a candidate from the western part of Wisconsin. While Kathleen Vinehout got a plurality of the straw poll vote, she didn’t even come close to a majority of the vote, and the top three candidates, which received a combined 63.21% of the vote, all come from the western part of Wisconsin.

If I had been a Wisconsin resident, a delegate to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin convention, and a participant in the straw poll, I would have voted for Bernie Sanders in the presidential portion of the straw poll and would have wrote-in Lori Compas in the gubernatorial portion of the straw poll (I would never write-in my own name in a straw poll, even though I would be open to the idea of running for Governor of Wisconsin in 2018 if I move to Wisconsin before 2018). Of the candidates who received at least one vote in the gubernatorial portion of the straw poll, I have a favorable opinion of Parisi, Feingold, Shankland, Chris Taylor, Barnes, Hansen, McCabe, Moore, and Pocan, with McCabe, the head of the progressive group Blue Jean Nation, being my favorite of those.