Bridget Maniaci: Under Pressure
Many years ago, I knew an elected official from the downtown area who will remain nameless. He was in a tough primary election fight and was seriously feeling the pressure. So one night in late January, he went out with his campaign manager. They walked out to the middle of a frozen Lake Mendota and the official, facing a bracing wind, screamed his lungs out. He screamed out his fears and frustrations and emotions and let it all out. About an hour later, after he had screamed himself horse, the pair walked back to shore and on to the Plaza for a couple beers and called it a night.
That's one way to handle the pressure of a campaign. Another way to do it is to unload on your blog at 2:30 in the morning. Go ahead, read the whole thing. I'll wait...
Bridget Maniaci's official line is now that, among other things, Brenda Konkel is an ineffectual alder and the housing stock in District 2 has deteriorated as a direct result of her neglect. Plus, the agency she works for in her day job (the Tenant Resource Center), their employees, volunteers and supporters do not help renters. That's news to a lot of people.
I get it. Maniaci doesn't like what Erik Paulson wrote in the Badger Herald last week. But I thought her campaign's main issue was how Brenda Konkel wasn't effective because of how she reacts to people with whom she doesn't agree. If a Badger Herald editorial is going to set Maniaci off like that, I have to wonder what the rough-and-tumble action in the Common Council chambers is going to inspire.
Police Union Going All-In
Usually, when a candidate gets an endorsement from a union or other interest group, the result is pretty good - you can use the organization's name, you get a check for $200 and you probably get a few volunteers for phone calls and lit drops.
A new standard has been set in the District 2 race with the activity of the Madison Professional Police Officer's Association. They blow the spending wide open (PDF) by sinking nearly (as reported to-date) $4,300 on behalf of Maniaci and against Konkel. Already, those eye-popping numbers are causing a lot of discussion among people who work with similar organizations. Will we now start seeing billboards (in addition to the one I wrote about earlier, there's now a second pro-Maniaci one placed on the corner of First and East Johnson - technically in District 12) as part of city council and county board races? How soon until we get radio and TV ads?
If you read only one blog post...
...that references the County Executive race and it's not Spin City, read Dustin Weis' very moving post about the Brittany Zimmerman memorial from Thursday. The best part about the post is that it gives the average reader a look inside the mind of a journalist doing his job covering tragedy and I very much appreciated the insight it provided.
What's also very important is the damning indictment of more bad behavior from Nancy Mistele. Dustin (no raging leftist, he) writes:
In hindsight, I should not have been surprised to see county executive candidate Nancy Mistele there. She's staked her entire campaign on faulting incumbent Kathleen Falk for the tragedy, sometimes fairly, but usually in ways that make me nauseous. Without the murder on Doty Street, Mistele's campaign platform would be bereft of all but one knotty plank -- some rural residents' regressive, irrational fear of bringing commuter rail to Dane County, but that's another issue entirely and couldn't win her 30 percent of the vote.
No one has managed to wring more personal benefit from this innocent young girl's death than Mistele. If there weren't laws against such a thing, she would probably try to dig up Brittany Zimmermann's body and ride it straight into the county executive's office like a sled.
Read the post in its entirety here.
Again, Nancy Mistele reaches new lows with her cynical exploitation of the Zimmerman murder. In 2007, the Onion ran a satirical story about Rudy Giuliani running for "President of 9/11". Mistele's campaign to run for County Executive of 911 has been anything but amusing. I wanted to write a post about the disaster Scott Walker has been for Milwaukee County as an idea of what Dane County under a Mistele administration would look like. But why? When you have one candidate displaying basic human decency and the other not, everything else is just details.
Spin City Deep thought of the Day
Yes, we've heard how horrible it was that Kathleen Falk twice ran for higher office - so says the Republican Party's candidate. In the interest of consistency, Mistele and her fellow Republicans should swear on the Bible that they will not support Scott Walker in his second run for Governor. I'll just hold my breath here.
