Dylan Brogan
SaveMadison billboards
This fall billboards popped up around Madison making a simple case. Shootings are up 78 percent in the city and yet some members of the Madison Common Council want to defund the police.
Both assertions are essentially true. To be clear, shots fired incidents are up by almost 80 percent, not the number of people hit by gunfire. But it seems to me to be in bounds to call these “shootings.” The dictionary definition of shooting is “the action or practice of shooting with a gun.”
And it’s also true that some Madison alders, most members of the local party Progressive Dane, support some form of “defunding” the police. Whether or not they actually used the word, they’ve supported policies that can be fairly characterized as critical of the police department or shifting resources away from it. The word “defund” has been interpreted to mean anything from literally shutting down police departments to spending more money on things like mental health treatment and community programs instead of increasing police budgets.
So the basic juxtaposition in the message of an increase in shootings while some council members focus, not on the shooters, but on the cops trying to stop the shootings, is fair.
By the way, in my view, the call to “defund” the police in the wake of the killing of George Floyd last summer is political malpractice. Lots of voters would support more creative approaches to crime, but few would support slashing police budgets. Why use a term that drives voters away if what you actually want is something that would attract voters to your cause?
So, while I don’t see any issue with the billboards’ message, I do wish there was a local, transparent and ongoing political entity that was behind them. Instead, the billboards were funded by something called Save Madison. It turns out that Save Madison is funded by former Republican U.S. Senate candidate and local developer Eric Hovde.
We only know that thanks to the dogged work of Isthmus reporter Dylan Brogan. But when Dylan finally tracked him down Hovde talked freely.
And let’s take a moment right here to be fair about this issue of transparency. As I reported in a feature story for Isthmus almost a year ago, the liberal activist group One Wisconsin Now has been critical of the conservative activist group the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty for the source of its funding. Much of their money comes from the hyper-conservative Bradley Foundation. But WILL acknowledges Bradley funding, including in its news releases, and the Bradley Foundation's annual reports, posted to its website, cite funding for WILL. By contrast, One Wisconsin does not reveal the sources of its own funding.
My point is that while I wish it had been easier to find out who paid for the billboards, at least Eric Hovde isn’t a hypocrite. He’s not preaching transparency or criticizing others' sources of funding while being secretive himself.
There’s a second entity that has been trying to recruit candidates for the council, apparently in opposition to Progressive Dane. It’s called Community For Responsible Government, but there’s nothing on its website to indicate who or what entities are behind it either.
Both these groups are trying to provide some balance in local politics between the far left, represented by Progressive Dane, and the left-center, which used to be represented by the Dane County Democratic Party. The Democrats used to have a feisty, and often testy, competition with PD, but that seems to have almost disappeared in recent years. My guess is that it’s because the Democrats have moved so far to the left, especially in college towns like ours, that there is virtually no difference between the policy stances of Progressive Dane and those of the Dane County Democrats.
This has created a vacuum that Hovde and whoever is behind Community For Responsible Government is trying to fill. I’m glad these folks have stepped up, but there’s no need to be so secretive. A large part of the Madison electorate agrees with them. A lot of us would like to have the option of voting for candidates who are not as ideological as those offered by PD.
Look, I don’t hate Progressive Dane. In fact, I was the first Madison mayor who was a PD member. And I’ve often expressed my admiration for their sincerity, their organizing prowess and their consistent agenda. But their views are just quite a bit to the left of where mine are these days. And I think their aggressive attacks on the Madison Police Department are unsupported by the department’s record and run the risk of harming recruitment and morale in what has been recognized as one of the most progressive departments in the country.
So, with the Democrats having abandoned the field, I’m eager to see some left-center organization take its place in local politics. In fact, if I had the chance, I’d be a charter member. But it needs to be an enduring organization just like PD; something that exists for the long term, not just a loose coalition that pops up around election time. And it needs to have clearly stated principles and policy goals. Most importantly, it needs to be transparent about who is organizing it.
Far from being embarrassed to be a left-center moderate, I’m proud as hell about it. And I’ll bet that there’s more than a dozen people in this town who feel the same way. Where do we sign up?
[Editor's note: This post was corrected to note that WILL does not cite Bradley Foundation funding on its website.]
A version of this blog appeared on Dave’s website, Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
