David Michael Miller
Kermit the Frog said it’s not easy being green. Veteran Supv. Dave Ripp may wear red but he can relate. He’s the only remaining conservative on the Dane County Board.
“There are a couple moderates. But it’s true,” Ripp says. “I don’t care if it’s one philosophy, one party, it’s not good for one group to control everything. It’s unfortunate but a lot of times you have this why bother feeling.”
Somebody get this guy a banjo.
Conservative stalwarts Mike Willett and Ronn Ferrell retired from the county board this year, as did right-leaning Supv. Dennis O’Laughlin. On April 3, all three were replaced by candidates endorsed by the Democratic Party of Dane County. While technically nonpartisan, political parties have been supporting candidates at the local level for decades.
With Ferrell and Willett gone, Ripp is left carrying the conservative banner on the 37-member county board. Michael Basford, chair of the Democratic Party of Dane County, says Republicans can now “hold their caucus in a phonebooth.”
“It really is staggering how quickly things have changed in a relatively short amount of time,” Basford says. “I don’t think it speaks well to the marketplace of ideas at the local level but that’s not going to stop us. We’re going to keep running Democrats and good progressives regardless of the competition.”
It wasn’t always one-party rule in Dane County. Conservatives were the majority on the county board from 1992 to 1996. Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson won Dane County with nearly 52 percent of the vote in 1994. Especially when aligned with moderates, conservatives wielded real power through the 2000s. They kept a liberal from chairing the board by electing middle-of-the-road Supv. Kevin Kesterson to the top post from 1998 to 2005. As late as 2011, a “gang of 10” conservatives sought to curb county borrowing by threatening to block capital projects — which require a supermajority approval by the board.
“There used to be pretty intense debates on the board floor in the 1990s and the 2000s,” says Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, who served on the county board from 1996 to 2013. “It wasn’t that long ago when conservatives ran the zoning committee.”
Then along came Scott Walker with his brown-bag lunch.
In 2012, the conservative faction on the county board dwindled to single digits following the political upheaval sparked by Gov. Walker’s union-busting Act 10. Liberals also redrew the district maps in 2011, which 10-term conservative incumbent Dave Wiganowsky blamed for his loss in 2014.
Right-wing rabble-rouser David Blaska, a former county board supervisor, says state politics have made the GOP toxic in Dane County.
“Dane County didn’t like Tommy Thompson. But they didn’t hate him. Walker could walk on water and they’d accuse him of not being able to swim,” Blaska says. He says that political polarization has silenced even right-leaning moderates on the local level.
“The county board used to be the sound that democracy makes. The issues got debated. But since Act 10, the ground has not been fertile for electing Republicans to the county board,” says Blaska. “I think it was needed legislation but Act 10 hit Dane County the hardest. . . . It radicalized the average voter. Anger and revenge are very empowering motivators in politics.”
Basford agrees, though he frames it differently.
“In the wake of Act 10, the communities outside of Madison started organizing. They realized when they were marching around the Square that they had Republicans trying to enact Scott Walker policies at the local level,” Basford says. “The far-right Republicans who run things on the state and national level have also left a lot of voters in the dust. Nowadays, there’s a place for moderate Republicans in Dane County. It’s called the Democratic party.”
The GOP isn’t putting up much of a fight. The county party didn’t officially support any local candidates for this year’ elections. Even so, Jacob Luginbuhl campaigned in the Verona district to carry on Willett’s conservative legacy. He lost by 27 points to Jason Knoll, the candidate supported by Democrats. Brent Renteria — who led the Pledge of Allegiance at this year’s Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner, the annual fundraiser for the Republican Party of Dane County — ran for the town of Middleton board. He was trounced by nearly 35 points by Steven Peters, a legislative aide to state Assembly Rep. Eric Genrich (D-Green Bay).
Just one of 52 local candidates endorsed by the Dane Dems lost in this April’s election. The Dems endorsed both candidates in three of the five competitive county board races. Knoll and Peters won the other two.
Basford says up until a few years ago Republicans fought hard for local seats.
“But as we kept winning more and more elections, they have engaged less and less in local government,” Basford says. “I think Dane County Republicans are content to take it down the street to the Capitol and undo whatever policies they don’t like.”
Hillary Clinton dominated Dane County with 70.4 percent of the vote in 2016. But Scott Grabins, chair of the Republican Party of Dane County, says the county still turned out more than 71,000 votes for Donald Trump — the third highest among Wisconsin’s 72 counties.
“There are a large number of Republicans in Dane County,” says Grabins. “But no, there isn’t a good conservative presence on the county board by any stretch.”
National politics are playing a role as well — Trump is helping to drain conservatives from the local swamp.
Supv. Shelia Stubbs — heir-apparent to succeed retiring state Rep. Terese Berceau (D-Madison) in the Assembly — has served on the county board for 12 years. She’s witnessed a shift in voter priorities since first elected.
“I think people care more about human services. I think they care more about the jail. I think they care more about racial disparities. The national conversation has influenced what happens on the local level,” says Stubbs. “Lately, I’ve noticed that when people feel their issues aren’t being heard, they show up at the polls. Just look at all the women voting and running for office. There’s an energy out there that’s building.”
McDonell says demographic shifts that reflect broader political trends have also pushed Dane County to the left. For example, lakeside mansion-dwellers in the village of Maple Bluff, who used to support Republicans, now regularly elect Democrats.
“[Democrats] are winning in Verona, in Stoughton, in Sun Prairie — areas that used to elect conservatives. There is a critical mass when elections aren’t competitive anymore,” says McDonell. “I think we’re at that point.”
But he doesn’t predict the political harmony will last for long.
Fissures among liberal supervisors have already surfaced regarding the $72 million dollar overhaul of the Dane County Jail; it was approved last year with support by County Executive Joe Parisi and board chair Sharon Corrigan, but opposed by some supervisors aligned with Progressive Dane.
“I expect that once this status quo really sets in, the left will fight the left,” McDonell says. “That’s just how the game goes.”
The few remaining moderates on the Dane County Board are shying away from political labels altogether. Supv. Bill Clausius, once counted among the conservative ranks, says his Sun Prairie district has shifted since he was first elected in 2010.
“I know my district has become more left of center. My votes reflect the views of my constituents, not my personal ideology,” Clausius says. “On the local level, the usual political labels don’t seem to apply or mean much anyway.”
Supv. Bob Salov — another moderate — agrees with Clausius that local politics are more nuanced than the right-left dichotomy seen on the state and federal levels.
“My constituents are concerned about local control, local economic development and getting a fair share of resources for law enforcement and human services. These aren’t partisan issues,” Salov says. “As far as factions on the board, I see it as more of an urban and rural split than a partisan split. Supervisors from rural districts are naturally aligned because our issues, our needs, are different than the urban areas of the county.”
But Salov, too, believes that the GOP brand lost any remaining luster with Dane County voters when Republicans took full control of state government in 2010. He says the party “pissed away support” by usurping local control on zoning and other issues.
Ripp — who has represented the northern part of Dane County for 34 years — says whatever party is in charge of state government tends to “go too far.”
What's new is that on the county level, Ripp can’t get a word in edgewise.
“Even in committee, I can’t get a second on a motion to just discuss an issue further. Give-and-take on policy is completely gone. Certain people make decisions and that’s just how it goes,” Ripp says. “[The county board] should at least listen to different ideas or a different approach. Nobody is right all the time.”