Tommy Washbush
Money pours out of the Realtors Association of South Central Wisconsin logo into a ballot box.
I don’t get it.
Dylan Brogan reported in Isthmus last week that a local Realtors group is spending about $170,000 on nine Madison city council races. They're spending around $19,000 per candidate on independent expenditures, meaning the candidates didn't know — actually, legally couldn't know — beforehand that the money was being spent on their behalf. For campaigns that typically cost around $10,000 or less, this is a bunch of money.
Now the Realtors may have hurt feelings. You do something nice like that for a person and then they turn around and reject you. The nine candidates were aghast to be the beneficiaries of tainted developer money. They all signed a letter saying just how aghast they were. I won’t list the Realtors’ Nine here, lest they be further tarred by association with those dastardly providers of housing.
But, in fact, the candidates have every reason to be unhappy because the money may well end up hurting more than helping them. The Nine made some noises about the sheer volume of bucks, but it’s not the money that’s the problem, it’s the source. Had the same amount come from, say, the teachers union they all would have said how proud they were to be in solidarity with the cause, etc., etc., etc.
In a place like Madison it's one thing to get support from unions and quite another to be the favorite of those evil builders of housing that the city says it so desperately needs. Which brings me to my main point: What were the Realtors thinking? They didn't see this coming? They didn't see this backing up on them?
And even more perplexing is why they felt the need to do this at all. From what I can tell, this council is actually doing a remarkably good job of approving developments. They've passed at least two ordinances that I'm aware of that weaken neighborhood associations' ability to push back against development projects. One makes multi-unit developments of a certain size presumed to be allowed under the zoning ordinances while another permits more dense development in Bus Rapid Transit corridors.
And this council has approved many big projects, some over strenuous neighborhood objections. In fact, just last Tuesday night the council approved a project that will replace the Filene House, a nondescript office building on Sherman Avenue, with over 300 apartments. Opponents had drummed up a bogus historic preservation argument to try to stop the project, but the council rejected the landmarks nomination and moved swiftly ahead with the other approvals.
Good for them. It was the right thing to do and something that, I can attest, would not have happened 20 or even 12 years ago when I was the mayor. Back then, if the Sherman Avenue project had been approved at all, it would only have come after many months, if not a year or more, of debate, and all kinds of expensive work-arounds would have been demanded.
In those days the council quaked in fear of neighborhood associations and preservationists. Not anymore. So why the need for this heavy-handed messing around in the election?
Times have changed for the better. I don't get why the Realtors aren't happy, lauding the council for its progress and supporting them through communication to their members and other more subtle tactics. If they had even done less splashy independent expenditures they probably would have been able to fly under the radar.
That $170,000 would have been far better spent on the one race for an open seat on the Madison school board. I’ve talked with owners of major Madison real estate firms who are far less worried about what’s going on with the city, than they are about what’s happening with public schools. After all, young families looking to buy a house look first at the quality of the local public school system. In that race Badri Lankella faces Blair Mosner Feltham.
Lankella is an engineer with two kids in the public schools and he talks about the need to be competitive with other school districts and worries about the loss of students to private schools and suburban districts. He also would like to promote a competitive spirit among students to better prepare them for a competitive world.
Mosner Feltham would fit in well with the current board majority. She said at a recent forum that “public schools are the product of white supremacy.”
That choice is pretty clear to me and I’ll vote for Lankella, but he’s likely to lose because his opponent is backed by MTI and other unions. The Realtors could have made that race competitive, but instead, and for no apparent reason, they decided to mess around in council elections.
In the end Realtor support might not make much difference in the outcomes of the nine alder races. But now those candidates the Realtors supported will spend the next two years taking pains to demonstrate their independence from them. The Realtors may well have just bought some votes — against them.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. Both his reporting and his opinion writing have been recognized by the Milwaukee Press Club. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
