David Michael Miller
Two Madison Democratic lawmakers and the Cap Times have called on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Flynn to drop out of the race. He says he won’t and he shouldn’t.
I have been critical of Flynn myself, though I stopped well short of calling for him to drop out. I hit him a few weeks ago for what seemed to me to be an ill-advised and dismissive response to those who were pushing him to drop out over his involvement in the Milwaukee Archdiocese pedophile priest scandals. “They can go jump in the lake,” Flynn said at the time.
That came off as an arrogant thing to say, though Flynn’s spokesperson Bryan Kennedy explains that Flynn just uses that kind of expression routinely in a “half-joking sort of way.” Kennedy says that his boss “tells me to go jump in a lake all the time.”
Last week Flynn offered a spirited response to the Cap Times’ call for him to withdraw in which he did not suggest that anyone cool off in one of our 15,000 lakes. None of us should have a problem with a lawyer doing what lawyers are paid to do: zealously defend their clients. In fact, that kind of training and temperament may be just what we need to beat Scott Walker in November.
Kennedy makes just that point. “Democrats are tired of losing,” Kennedy told me. “What they want is a Navy veteran who is tough and won’t let Walker walk all over him.” You have to appreciate both the sentiment and the iteration there.
My fundamental question about Flynn’s involvement with the Archdiocese is whether he participated in moving priests around so as to hush up the scandal, resulting in their ability to abuse again. Kennedy says flatly that he did not.
Nonetheless, it seems to me to be its own form of arrogance for legislators and a newspaper to suggest that voters can’t make the determination of fitness for office themselves. If Flynn’s involvement in these cases is a subject for concern why not let each voter decide for themselves whether they will overlook it in favor of the candidate’s other qualities?
Here’s one theory for the demand that Flynn leave: Behind the scenes, fixers are trying to line up the nomination for Tony Evers. It doesn’t look like an accident to me that two other middle-aged white guys — Rep. Dana Wachs and Milwaukee businessman Andy Gronik — have already dropped out. Push out another candidate with that profile and it leaves Evers, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and lawyer Josh Pade. Pade is virtually unknown and Soglin has all but admitted he is not running anything resembling a real campaign.
And that’s what I really object to. The same bright lights that discouraged a primary in 2014, and left Mary Burke without the benefits that would have provided for her candidacy, have now decided that it has to be Evers this time.
Look, maybe it should be Evers. He’s widely respected and early on he was running a good campaign. But he has simply failed to seal the deal. He’s been stuck at around 25 percent in the polls and there’s reason to believe that most of that is simply because of name recognition from running statewide three times. If he can’t win the nomination on his own, does he have what it takes to win in November? Do Democrats want the mild-mannered Evers or the aggressive Flynn or somebody else entirely? Kelda Roys has momentum, Mahlon Mitchell has strong union support, and Mike McCabe and Sen. Kathleen Vinehout are running as old-time progressive populists. And shouldn’t each primary voter get the choice without party hacks telling them what they want?
And while it isn’t an issue for me (I think that boring might actually be good) most Democrats I talk to are as excited about Evers as Americans are about the Tour de France. That’s a long bike ride someplace in Europe, right? France maybe?
I don’t like the feel of these demands for Flynn to drop out. They carry the whiff of a behind-the-scenes fix by professional pols who have misplayed before. For that reason alone, run Matt run!
