As good as Tuesday's election was for the county as a whole, I honestly don't see any hope for the city of Milwaukee. This was the "perfect" election for a conservative candidate. It was caused not by the end of a term, but by 181,000 citizens (countywide; I don't know the split between the city and the suburbs) who took matters into their own hands. One candidate (Walker) adopted the platform of wholesale change that this outpouring of dissatisfaction with the status quo suggested, and ran a masterful campaign that included the active pursuit of the one group of voters that was perceived to not have really participated in the recall Ament effort. The other candidate (Ryan) ran a horrid campaign with the message that all the discredited status quo needed was a massage and some more money to spend. As neither candidate was from the city of Milwaukee, there was no "hometown" bias. Walker lost the city by 3,383 votes, or 51.9%-48.1%.
Bear in mind that this vote total was in a virtually-fraud-free election. The Milwaukee Machine has demonstrated that they can come up with 3,000 votes out of whole cloth, so in reality, a conservative (or even a RINO) would start off with about a 6,400-vote hole in a "perfect" campaign, where he had the issues and a discredited status quo to run against. I honestly don't see how, unless the discredited politician himself runs, this can be overcome.
Unless Norquist decides to reverse course and run in 2004, I don't see the conditions for the "perfect" campaign coming together again. I hope I'm wrong, because I don't want to see Milwaukee continue down the spiral to decay.
Time to begin a Citizens for the Status Quo campaign. Time to validate Norquist and rebuild his ego (if it really has deflated).
.... and hope a real candidate steps forward.