REFLECTIONS/Jonathan Gramling

Jonathan Gramling

Vote and Say No

Editor’s Note – I received a nice email from Peter Williams, the foirmer 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. During Watergate, it was the Republican leadership that convinced Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency in 1974. It was President Ronald Reagan who signed legislation that instituted MBE, DBE and other Affirmative Action programs for business. Wisconsin legislators, Democrat and Republican, I’ve heard, would gather at the Hotel Lorraine after work sessions and have a brew or two together.

The point is that the legislators lived in the same reality, read the same news sources and probably most of them fought in World War II, where you relied on people no matter what their background or political beliefs were. They all believed in democracy and fought Nazi Germany and Japan to preserve it. They respected each other as human beings.

My how the civility has ebbed and the divisiveness risen in the past 50 years. Instead of encouraging everyone to exercise their constitutional right to vote. People are making it harder for people to vote, especially for their opponents. We denigrate each other in political contests instead of discussing the issues. Everyone has their own source of news that reinforces their own world view. And often times a different reality. People are nominated for political office based on their authoritarian, non-democratic views. We are no longer a country. We are a collection of fractured pieces that occupy the same space.

On August 13th, we have a primary election going on and everyone needs to exercise their constitutional right and vote. In many Reflections, I’ve urged people to vote and put people who represent them — or at least for the most part represents them — in office. And if they don’t vote, it’s like letting the person who opposes their interests and extra vote to make it more likely that someone who opposes their interests gets into office. People have to vote.

There is a lot at stake this primary election. I received a letter from four out of five Democratic candidates for the District 48 Assembly seat claiming the fifth candidate was a Republican in Democratic clothing and has traditionally donated to Republican candidates. I wouldn’t be surprised the way that people don’t follow the rules anymore because power is more important than the rule of law.

The September 13th primary features a lot of candidates of color for the Dane County Executive. State Assembly and State Senate. It is awesome to see the high level of participation by quality candidates of color in Dane County elections, up and down the ballot. I know who I get to vote for. Samba Baldeh for Senate District 16 and  Joe Maldonado for Assembly District 47. It’s hard for me to choose between the Dane County Executive candidates because they have their own strengths and weaknesses although I have known Wes Sparkman the longest.

And there are also the two Constitutional Questions on the ballot. These two questions have the potential to radically change the relationship between the governor and the legislature. If anyone would listen to me once this year, I would urge them to VOTE NO on these questions.

Wisconsin Speaker of the Assembly Robin Voz, it seems, has always wanted to be the governor. Due to his views and representation of Burlington, a homogeneous South Central Wisconsin community, Voz could never be elected governor. And so he has rigged the rules — gerrymandering anyone — to give him enormous power as the Assembly Speaker so that he is, in essence, a shadow governor who can block the Evers Administration initiatives anytime he wants and can decide when budget-approved funds can be dispersed. Remember it was he who blocked Wisconsin from expanding Medicaid through Affordable Care Act funds because people would be given — read poor people — too much for “free.”

And so now Voz wants to determine how emergency federal funds are allocated in Wisconsin. Let’s say, there are floods throughout Wisconsin that makes Wisconsin eligible for federal assistance to ease the financial hardship. Well instead of Governor Evers deciding how to distribute the funds based upon scientific evidence on where the flooding occurred and where the damage occurred, through these state constitutional amendments, Voz wants the legislature to decide how the funds are directed, probably to his political supporters and not to the people who need it the most.

And since the legislature ended their legislative session in February and went home — even though taxpayers are paying them to be full-time legislators — the bureaucratic process of reconvening the legislature and all of the pushing and pulling of legislators ensuring that an oversized portion of the funds went to their district, people’s lives would be devastated by the time the funds were released and there would be no guarantee that the funds would go where they are needed.

These two constitutional amendments are purposely worded in a confusing manner. JUST VOTE NO to keep Wisconsin government less dysfunctional than it already is.