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I met Mr. Westlake recently, as our children attend the same Elementary school. I approached to mention that Mark Belling, of WISN 1130am, was discussing the Feingold senate race and maybe he would want to listen. Which, to his credit, he already had tuned in.

However in the few moments we spoke, he said:

1) that he doesn’t much like Mr. Belling or his opinions (to be fair, Belling hasn’t been very positive towards Westlake). Mark has some excellent insight into state politics and is a very effective communicator with ideas that should be adopted by ANY candidate running against Russ. To discount Mark’s ideas because of his obvious support for Tommy is foolish, IMO.

2) Westlake “Guarantees that money will not win this race” which seriously discredits him in my opinion. I don’t know how much he’s raised, but he’s going against the media, $7-10 MILLION from Russ’s own campaign, and all the lefty unions and out of state money. An SUV with his name on it and some posts on F.R. will not carry him statewide.

and 3) That Tommy Thompson was not that popular in Wisconsin. (This was the part of Belling’s point that day, that Tommy not ruling out running for Senate.) Thompson was an extremely popular statewide candidate, and the contrast between his governorship years and the current governor only make him seem MORE popular. On stat I heard was that Tommy’s SMALLEST margin of victory was nearly the same as Feingold’s LARGEST margin.

I have no doubt that Westlake would be an infinite improvement in Senator over Feingold, or even Kohl, or half of our congressional delegation. I just don’t want another half-stepping candidate like Michaels. Given our short exchange, and those 3 comments, I’d have to say he’s not really serious about his campaign. That’s just my opinion, but he has lost my primary vote.

I’ll be praying Mark Neumann decides to drop the Governor challenge to Walker and take the Senate gimmie, with Thompson being my second choice. However, if somehow Westlake survives to the General election, and its just him against Feingold, he will have my vote, I will NOT be voting Democrat or 3rd party.