Posted on 06/23/2006 9:40:45 AM PDT by sbMKE
Original Story URL: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=439958
Group seeks to pull left together Organization aims to be one-stop political shop for liberals in state By CRAIG GILBERT cgilbert@journalsentinel.com Posted: June 22, 2006 Last year, after the 2004 elections, leaders of liberal groups across Wisconsin embarked on a long series of private strategy sessions.
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The topic?
Revitalizing the left, in a state where conservatives dominate the legislative agenda.
"We are on defense every single day," is how one top activist, who asked not to be identified, summed up the mood of frustration.
What began in those meetings has evolved into an unusual, unpublicized and very ambitious political project, described by one participant as "at least a $3 million effort" funded by liberal donors inside and outside Wisconsin.
One centerpiece of that effort will be unveiled today: a new one-stop-shopping political organization called One Wisconsin Now, designed to serve as a strategic hub for the left, with a policy institute, a "message" shop and an elections arm.
"This isn't an election-year, fly-by-night P.O. box operation. This is a long-term operation that's being built to last," said John Kraus, the group's executive director and a former aide to U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).
What part the new group will play in the 2006 elections and beyond is unclear. But its formation reflects political currents both in Wisconsin and around the country: the Democratic Party's abysmal performance in legislative races in Wisconsin; the "progressive" movement's difficulties nationally setting the political agenda; and new strains of thinking among liberal strategists about how to get unstuck.
One growing sentiment on the organized left is that it needs to emulate the long-term thinking, collaboration and discipline of the organized right, which set out successfully a generation ago to build an "infrastructure" and "echo chamber" of think tanks, advocates and political networks.
"This is all about coordinating the independent activities of independent groups," said Mike Wittenwyler, a Madison lawyer who advises One Wisconsin Now and other groups across the political spectrum on election and lobbying law.
"On the right, it's always been done kind of informally but methodically. I think what the left is realizing is they need to do the same thing, which is come together in a forum where they can collaborate and share ideas and work to gain efficiencies," Wittenwyler said.
Pooling resources Mike Theo of the Wisconsin Realtors Association, an active player in conservative, pro-business and Republican coalitions, said that like-minded groups such as his and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce have worked hand-in-glove politically for so long, "I can't think of a time where we sat down and said, 'We're going to do an expenditure in an area,' without finding out what everyone else is doing. . . . None of us anymore just do our own thing."
While the Realtors and Republican-friendly allies pool their resources to poll "all year long" and refine their voter lists, Theo said he sees little evidence of that degree of strategic research or coordination on the left.
"There's been a huge vacuum on the Democratic side and the liberal side for a long time," Theo said, a vacuum that Kraus' group was created to fill.
The Wisconsin effort also embodies other currents on the left. One is the determination to build a political structure beyond the Democratic Party. Another is a shift in focus from Washington, D.C. (where Democrats are shut out of power), to state and local politics. That's the credo of such groups as Progressive Majority, which recruits and supports candidates for state and local office, and has made Wisconsin one of its top targets.
"The general consensus among progressive activists is that the only place for real change is at the state level," said John Halpin, a fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, a D.C. think tank.
Halpin said that Wisconsin "was really out front in many ways" of a wave of state-based efforts in places such as Minnesota, Washington state and Colorado.
State viewed as natural model The planning and strategizing in Wisconsin began in 2005 under the name of the Blueprint project. It brought together more than 100 organizers and activists from labor and liberal advocacy groups in the state, and it was partly funded by a liberal foundation based in Massachusetts, the Proteus Fund, which has put money into a similar effort in Maine.
Described as a 10-year strategy, the idea was to fund something ongoing, permanent and local - unlike, for example, the massive voter drive that big Democratic donors bankrolled in Wisconsin and other swing states in 2004, which was instantly dismantled after the election.
Donors viewed Wisconsin as a natural model: a super-competitive battleground state, with a politically experienced activist corps, but where their side was seen in some ways as woefully under-performing.
At a national conference of progressive activists in D.C. last week, longtime Democratic organizer Heather Booth outlined the Wisconsin effort in a session on state-level organizing.
Booth, a strategist for Proteus Fund, noted the state's liberal image, bolstered in Washington, D.C., by politicians such as Feingold in the Senate and Madison's Tammy Baldwin in the House.
But she reeled off the problem signs for the left: a state Assembly in which Republicans hold 19 seats in Democratic-leaning districts; a wave of conservative legislation (on guns, civil unions, tax limits, immigration, stem cells) either introduced, passed or vetoed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle; a huge drop-off from the Feingold vote in 2004 to the John Kerry vote that same year; and 16 years of GOP governors followed by Doyle, who "won with only 45 percent of the vote, and so he is weakened in his position."
Progressive groups need to start working much better together on message, policy and elections, Booth said, and need to start "talking to other people in the rest of the state," not just Milwaukee and Madison.
She described the start-up costs of the overall effort in Wisconsin, for both One Wisconsin Now and for the work of allied groups, as at least $3 million.
"This probably doesn't include additional election work," she said.
Kraus said that figure includes future costs and does not refer to what has been spent to date.
The new organization is really three affiliated groups that are distinct for legal reasons: one a tax-exempt policy research institute; one an advocacy group; and one a "527" political group that would spend money on ads and other election work.
With offices in Milwaukee's Bay View neighborhood, it has five staffers, Kraus said. Its declared mission: to "relight the flame of Wisconsin's proud progressive tradition."
Active in fall elections In a kind of trial run, the group this year helped elect a school board and a county board member in Eau Claire. It will be active in the fall elections, Kraus said, though he wouldn't say how much it expected to raise or spend or who its donors are. Donors to the political arm will have to be disclosed, but those who give to the other two entities will not. In a year-end filing under a name it no longer uses, the group's political committee reported two donations totaling $147,000, of which $139,000 came from the director of the Solidago Foundation, a left-leaning Massachusetts group.
Where will all the strategizing lead?
Theo, of the Wisconsin Realtors, argued that although groups on the left might benefit from getting their political act together, "if the public truly isn't as liberal as these organizations are, they can try 'til hell freezes over to craft a message . . . but if the public's not there, they'll always lose."
Kraus sees it differently.
"The general public has had a hard time knowing what progressives stand for. I think that's something we can help address. There's no confusion among progressives about what we stand for. We just need to do a better job communicating the values we think the country and state should focus on," he said.
From the June 23, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- Mike Theo, Wisconsin Realtors Association
Bay View (Milwaukee) is really becoming a hub for moonbats in the state of Wisconsin. And now, outside-of-state money is starting to pour in. Nice.
If "Conservatives" dominate Wis then why is Feindgold a Wis Senator then? He is as batty leftist nut case and there is in politics. I suspect this group would find Mao and Stalin "too Conservative".
Victim mentality. The poor mistreated underdog.
The whole article was like a step into the surreal. They have no basic idea of who populates this country. Total disconnect. They are using the exact same stratedgy that cost them ever major election for the past 10 years. That's right, keep moving farther to the left. Pathetic idiots.
It's because of the University of Wisconsin - Madison
"Milwaukee becoming a hub for Moonbats"??????? The citizens of this state, outside of the Milwaukee-Madison Axis of Evil have known this for quite some time!
"The general public has had a hard time knowing what progressives stand for."
PROGRESSIVES = MARXISTS
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