This Just In ...
Kevin Fischer is a veteran broadcaster, the recipient of over 150 major journalism awards from the Milwaukee Press Club, the Wisconsin Associated Press, the Northwest Broadcast News Association, the Wisconsin Bar Association, and others. He has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for over three decades. A longtime aide to state Senate Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature, Kevin can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, "InterCHANGE," on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10, and heard filling in on Newstalk 1130 WISN. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, and their lovely baby daughter, Kyla Audrey, in Franklin.
Sheriff Clarke, where are you?
Time is ticking away, and as I write this prior to leaving for some R & R, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett remains without a serious challenger.That is astounding, considering the vulnerable Barrett is ripe for the picking.
The conventional wisdom is that Barrett has a huge war chest, and that frightens potential challengers who prefer to run for the city of Milwaukee’s top job in 2012.
In reality, a strong candidate could give Barrett a run for his money. The right candidate could knock him off. That person, I believe, is Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke.
The most critical issue the city confronts is violent crime. On that front, Barrett has failed miserably.
Whenever a violent crime blitzkrieg breaks out, Barrett has managed to be out of town, being quoted at some seminar by the New York Times.
Worse yet, Barrett has no significant plan or vision to aggressively combat crime. His solution is to bring out the bookmobile, hand out Summerfest pamphlets to gang members, and blame guns.
When outgoing Police Chief Nan Hegerty, herself a major disappointment, said Milwaukee suffers from a societal crisis, Barrett disagreed claiming there was no crisis. That begs the question of how many crimes and dead bodies it would take before Barrett’s eyebrows would move.
Sheriff Clarke has fought crime his entire life. Whenever the subject has come up during my fill-in stints on WISN Radio, Clarke has called in to blast Barrett. When I’ve pressed Clarke on running for Mayor, he has been evasive.
Barrett has dropped the ball in other areas.
Last week, he ripped the Milwaukee School Board for proposing a monstrous tax increase. Barrett, of course, was right, although a blind squirrel would have gotten that one correct. What Barrett doesn’t tell you is that he was responsible, in part, for MPS’s ludicrous plan.
The School Board proposed a 16.4% increase, but the increase actually would have jumped several percentage points because of a tax collection error in 2006.
As the Journal/Sentinel has reported, “An error a year ago at City Hall that left $9 million off the MPS tax levy gave people, in effect, a one-time break on bills issued then. But bumping up the levy this year to the base it was supposed to be at last year will make this year's total school tax collections increase by about 13%”
The error took place, where? At City Hall? And who’s in charge?
Remember the many problems that surfaced under Barrett’s Election Commissioner, ranging from unprocessed registration cards to undelivered ballots to unrecorded votes?
How about 20,000 registration cards that were not processed, a problem Barrett first learned of the day before the November 2006 election. That led to a late-night scramble to organize them and get them to the polls. On Election Day, 238 absentee ballots were not delivered to the polls before they closed. They were counted late, only after the city sought and received special permission from the state. An unknown number of people who asked for absentee ballots never got them. The Journal Sentinel reported that, “About 1,200 votes came from invalid addresses and city records showed a gap of about 7,000 votes between the number of people recorded as voting and the number of ballots cast.”
And yet Barrett opposes photo ID.
David Clarke can unseat Barrett. The mayor’s popularity has waned among south side blue-collar Democrats. Conservatives who put Barrett in office feel betrayed, believing the liberal Barrett has done nothing for them. Meanwhile, liberals have told me they think Barrett has been too conservative. How, I’ll never know. But if liberals and conservatives are both angry, that doesn’t bode well. Barrett’s support in the black community, I am told, is fragile.
Despite Barrett’s money and a Barrett machine, the signs all point to a tough re-election fight if Clarke, who knows a thing or two about winning elections, would enter the race.
My understanding is that Clarke has been in serious discussions with his top campaign people. If he’s thinking about it, he better get his toes out of the water and dive in……real soon.
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