Editor’s Note – I received a nice email from Peter Williams, the former MMSD board member, to correct me on the term Baby Boomer. “In your Reflections piece this past week you made the claim that “Joe Biden is the last of the Baby Boom presidents.” He is not a boomer (1946-1964 births) but, having been born in 1942, he is from The Silent Generation. Trump is a boomer. So is Kamala Harris.” Peter, I thank you for the correction and equally important, I thank you for reading The Hues.

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I first became politically conscious as a Republican in grade school and high school, probably due to my dear father’s influence. I was actually a member of the Young Republicans during the first part of high school. I grew up in the Waukesha County portion of the west Milwaukee suburbs after all. And then I started leaning Democrat in my senior year as the anti-war movement gained traction and my tutoring in the inner-city opened my eyes to racial inequities.

When I was becoming more politically conscious and started to study political science at UW-Madison and interned with a state senator from Milwaukee, it was a golden age for Wisconsin and U.S. politics.