McCallum's staff links Barrett to flap
Democrat's camp denies role in George controversy
By JEFF COLE and MEG JONES
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: July 28, 2002
Gov. Scott McCallum's re-election campaign charged Sunday that U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett was involved in the effort to remove fellow Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gary George from the ballot.
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Gary George Nomination
Investigation:"We are saddened to see the efforts to remove Senator George from the ballot," McCallum's campaign manager, Darrin Schmitz, said. "We are even more saddened to see those efforts linked to Tom Barrett."
Barrett's campaign shot back that the Milwaukee Democrat had nothing to do with the controversy swirling around whether George's campaign workers collected enough legitimate signatures to have George's name placed on the September primary ballot.
"We have said repeatedly that we knew nothing about this effort," Barrett spokeswoman Brigid O'Brien said.
"It is unfortunate that our opponents are trying to link Tom to this investigation. We have been forthright from the beginning. Tom has told Senator George himself that he had nothing to do with this investigation, and people who know Tom know that to be the case."
Earlier this month, a Madison college student filed a complaint contending that some of the signatures George had on his nominating petition were invalid. An investigation by the Journal Sentinel last week discovered that more than 200 signatures were falsified or otherwise invalid. At least one signer was a dead man, and other signatures featured non-existent or false addresses.
The student, Daniel McMurray, was helped by Joel Gratz, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala and a Barrett campaign volunteer.
Chvala did not return a reporter's phone calls Sunday.
Barrett was campaigning Sunday in Waukesha County and could not be reached, O'Brien said. McCallum was on his way to a campaign event in Kohler and also was unavailable, Schmitz said.
For their part, neither George nor his campaign staff would discuss the controversy, campaign manager Dave Begel said.
"The senator's position is the same as it has been," Begel said Sunday. "He has no comment."
Clouding the issue
Regardless of whether Barrett had anything to do with the petition signature imbroglio, it's not good for his name to be linked to the controversy, said Evan Zeppos, a public relations consultant and political observer who supports Attorney General Jim Doyle's bid for governor.
The campaign - the primary will be held Sept. 10 - is entering the period in which each of the four Democratic candidates is trying to break from the pack, Zeppos said. The problem for Barrett is that voters might not hear his message because they are concentrating on whether he had any role in the controversy.
The state Elections Board and three district attorneys are conducting separate investigations into George's petitions.
The Elections Board asked for the district attorneys to get involved in the case after a July 18 hearing in which the board allowed George to stay on the ballot for now.
George's campaign submitted 2,372 signatures; the Elections Board accepted 2,192 as valid.
However, an investigation by a team of Journal Sentinel reporters last week found 231 falsified signatures and non-existent or invalid addresses. That would leave George with 1,961 valid signatures, 39 short of the 2,000 needed to remain on the ballot.
If George ends up getting thrown off the ballot, there will be a backlash from African-Americans in Wisconsin, Rep. Annette Polly Williams (D-Milwaukee) said Sunday.
"I can promise there will probably be some anger in the African-American community," Williams said.
She added that fouling up petition signatures, particularly when so much is at stake in the governor's race, is not something that is likely to be done out of simple incompetence.
"It looks like to me that Senator George had someone in his campaign (who) was there to sabotage. But then again, the ultimate responsibility comes back to the person running the campaign. They have to check every name because you might have someone in your campaign who doesn't have their best interest at heart," said Williams, who supports George.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the severity of those errors - it was deliberate."
Milwaukee community activist Reuben Harpole, who has been active in local campaigns, said a candidate should be the person getting signatures for his petitions.
"It's good to have helpers, but for your main signatures that really count, get those yourself," said Harpole, a supporter of George.
Whether George is forced off the ballot is up to the Elections Board, which has tentatively scheduled a hearing Wednesday in Milwaukee on the George petitions, Executive Director Kevin Kennedy said Sunday.
"Everybody is looking forward to the findings of the election board," said John Kraus, a Doyle spokesman.
Doyle was campaigning at county fairs in western Wisconsin Sunday and could not be reached, Kraus said.
Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk had no comment on the controversy, campaign manager Tom Russell said.
"We really want to stay out of this," Russell said.
More signatures than needed
The other campaigns all said they collected well over the 2,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot. Candidates can turn in up to 4,000 signatures.
"We collected 22,000 signatures, from every county in Wisconsin," said O'Brien, of the Barrett campaign.
The campaign reviewed every petition, O'Brien said. If anything looked the least bit questionable on any page, the campaign did not hand in that page. The campaign handed in the maximum 4,000 signatures.
George supporters on Sunday rallied around their candidate, saying they doubted he did anything wrong. They added that if there was any wrongdoing, they believe that George didn't know about it.
"I am concerned about what is happening," said Karl Rajani, a Greenfield businessman who contributed $10,000 to George's campaign, "but I have no reason to believe Gary George was involved."
"I am a little disappointed right now, but I still think Gary is a good guy," said Ramesh Kapur, owner of the Glendale-based engineering firm Kapur & Associates, who contributed $4,000 to George's campaign.
Zeppos said the larger problem in the signature flap would be a boost in voter cynicism because Wisconsin residents will have even less trust in their elected officials.
"This is going to be a great time to an outsider," said Craig Peterson, executive vice president of the Milwaukee public relations firm of Zigman Joseph Stephenson.
The ultimate outsider in the governor's race - Libertarian Ed Thompson - said the scandal was helping his campaign. Potential voters are telling Thompson, the younger brother of former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, how fed up they are with scandals ranging from the Milwaukee County pensions to Enron and WorldCom.
Since the scandals have become public, more people are attending his rallies, perhaps because they seem disgusted with the incumbents, Thompson said.
"People are so sick of what's going on," Thompson said. "All I hear is that it doesn't matter which party. People say (Assembly Speaker Scott) Jensen and Chvala are the same. People are fed up."
And this one says that Green Bay area voters (that's me) will decide the Dem primaries....a few well-placed crossover votes might do it :-))
Democrats each play to different strengths
Many forces shape governor's race
By STEVEN WALTERS
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: July 28, 2002
Madison - The four Wisconsin Democrats running for governor insist they can win the Sept. 10 primary election to become the party's nominee.
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Milwaukee County: 26.6% of the Democratic vote statewide.But three of the four will be disappointed.
And Wisconsin's political scene is likely to be reshaped by forces beyond the candidates' control - independent campaign ads that began airing in the Milwaukee area last week, pending criminal investigations of legislative leaders and their aides, and voters' anger at incumbents.
There also are regional considerations: Two of the candidates are from Milwaukee County, the largest source of Democratic votes, and two are from Dane County, the home of Democratic nominees for governor - most of them unsuccessful - for decades.
Odds still favors Attorney General Jim Doyle winning the Democratic nomination, since the three statewide races he won give him a higher name identification than any other Democrat and a statewide base of supporters.
But, if he's the leader, Doyle is looking over his shoulder at U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, who has been winning Milwaukee votes since he went to the Legislature in 1984, and Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.
Falk's TV ads, which begin today on Milwaukee-area stations, could give her a favorable first impression with southeastern Wisconsin voters.
The fourth Democrat, state Sen. Gary George (D-Milwaukee), must survive a serious challenge to signatures on his nomination papers to stay on the primary ballot. "Clearly, I have to be on the ballot to win," George said last week.
Based on more than 20 interviews with party workers, all four candidates, campaign advisers and observers, here are the strategies each Democrat is relying on to get enough of what could be 600,000 Democratic votes statewide on Sept. 10.
Kathleen Falk
"I'm not a political insider," said the 51-year-old Dane County executive, who visibly winced when asked nuts-and-bolts questions such as whether she must win Dane County to win the Democratic nomination.
"I'm in politics because I don't like it," she added. "I don't start with, 'I'd like to be governor,' and then craft a strategy on how to get there. I want to change things, and being governor is one vehicle for changing things to get a different vision for our state. What I offer is this set of skills, solutions and vision."
But the I'm-not-a-politician card Falk repeatedly plays is a key part of her campaign strategy, professionals note.
Falk is "targeting" three groups of potential voters on Sept. 10, they say:
- Women, because if elected she would be the state's first female governor.
- Environmentalists, because she spent most of her pre-county executive career as an environmental protector with the attorney general's office.
- And all those who think it's time for someone outside the Capitol to be governor, which last happened in 1978 when Lee S. Dreyfus went from university president to governor.
Falk also could benefit from the kind of fierce, personal attacks that were seen in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary in 1992. If Doyle and Barrett begin attacking each other, it could sow enough anger among voters that they hand Falk 35% of the vote - just enough to win.
But each day that goes by without a Doyle-Barrett mud fight makes that scenario less likely. And, Falk and Tom Russell, her campaign manager, admit they can't depend on her two better-known opponents destroying each other.
Instead, Russell said their strategy depends on TV ads that tell voters who Falk is, the difference that she has made in Dane County and the difference she can make as governor.
"There are a huge number of undecided voters," Russell said. "Upwards of 40 percent to 50 percent of the electorate are undecided now. That means we've all got a lot of work to do."
Gary George
No stranger to controversy, George said last week that he plans on surviving the challenge to his nomination papers and remain in the primary. He insists his "things-must-change" message will catch on among Democrats statewide.
Voters are focused on family vacations now and won't start paying attention to the Democratic primary until late in August, George said.
"The face of the campaign you see right now is not how the campaign is going to look on September 10," he added. "We still have the serious part of the campaign to go."
When voters begin paying attention, George predicted they will support his reform plan for the Capitol: Ending fund raising when a state budget is pending, giving the Legislature only 90 days to pass a budget and limiting the budget to financial matters, which would abolish the practice of legislators anonymously sticking hundreds of special-interest provisions in spending packages.
George said he didn't solicit as much campaign cash as his three rivals for a reason: "I can't be a reform candidate if I'm going to sell myself the way the others are."
But George said his campaign will still have enough money to run TV ads, although it had only $34,908 on hand on July 1.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee government affairs professor Mordecai Lee, who served with George in the state Senate, said he respects George but doesn't expect him to win the party's nomination. George has already run for governor and U.S. Senate without finding widespread support, Lee noted.
But Lee, a Barrett supporter, said George has been counted out before, only to resurface.
"He's like a cat," Lee said of George. "He's got nine lives."
Jim Doyle
Wisconsin's attorney general and his advisers like these numbers:
Doyle, 56, was re-elected with 1.1 million votes four years ago, getting even more votes than four-term Republican Gov. Tommy G. Thompson and winning all but one county. And, the number of votes Doyle got from Milwaukee County voters has soared over his career from 141,102 in 1990 to 212,097 in 1998.
Betting that Thompson would not seek a fifth term, Doyle announced in spring 2000 that he would run for governor. That early announcement carried advantages, including being able to hire a formal campaign staff and solicit donations and endorsements before anyone else, and disadvantages that include being perceived as having campaigned forever.
Doyle campaign advisers won't discuss their strategy, but the candidate said his record is the best reason why he'll be the Democratic nominee for governor.
"My strength is that I'm a statewide candidate," he said. "I have run strong in every (media) market in the state. Other candidates are regional candidates that have to really do well in one place or another. This is a total statewide campaign that we're running."
Others say Doyle has built a solid, professional campaign that, if it doesn't stumble and its TV ads remind voters who Doyle is, is still likely to win the primary.
But they also say Doyle's support comes from the oldest Democrats, who remember that Doyle's mother was one of the first women elected to the Legislature in 1948 and that his father put the statewide party together after World War II and went on to serve as a popular federal judge.
With his strong statewide name recognition, one key Democrat noted, Doyle is the only one who could win the nomination even if he finished second in Dane County, behind Falk, and third in Milwaukee County, behind Barrett and Falk.
Tom Barrett
Yes, Barrett conceded, he must win Milwaukee County - where Democrats may cast one out of every four votes statewide - to be the party's nominee.
And, Barrett predicted, he will finish third in Dane County behind the county's two favorites, Doyle and Falk.
But he said he will win the party's nomination because of his neighbor-to-neighbor "grass-roots organization" and endorsements by almost half of the Democratic members of the Legislature. His was the first campaign to open six regional offices.
Experts say the first strategy of Barrett, 48, was to sell himself as "warm and personable" - the kind of governor who could tear down the Capitol's high walls of partisan distrust.
Now, Barrett campaign manager Joel Brennan said, the campaign has a twofold strategy to win support outside the Milwaukee area: Use TV ads now running in northern and western Wisconsin to introduce Barrett in areas where he is not well known, and then have local campaign volunteers identify and contact individual voters.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Ken Goldstein said he's impressed that Barrett tailored his first TV ads in northern and western Wisconsin to those regions. They feature U.S. Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wausau), dean of the state's congressional delegation, for example, and acknowledge that the issues are different in rural Wisconsin than in Madison and Milwaukee.
Goldstein's said the four Madison- and Milwaukee-area candidates could pretty much cancel each other out in their hometowns, which would leave it to Green Bay-area voters to decide who is the Democratic nominee for governor.
"All of these candidates are less well known in the Green Bay-area," he explained.