Civil Discourse - An Occasional Attempt To Restore Civility To Our Civic Discourse

By Roger Utnehmer

Two legislative proposals under consideration in Madison would inject politics into what should be a non-partisan Wisconsin Supreme Court. One proposal would have the chief justice, now determined by seniority, elected by a majority of members. The other would require justices to retire at age seventy-five.

Both appear to target Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.

The seven member court is divided. Four justices are described as conservative and three as liberal. Abrahamson, regarded as liberal, would probably not be elected chief justice if the selection were put to a vote of the court. Selecting the chief justice based on seniority keeps politics out of the process.

The proposal to require retirement at seventy-five also targets Abrahamson who is eighty-one. Voters knew her age when they overwhelmingly re-elected her in 2009.

If representatives are sincere when they deny the personal focus of this legislation is the removal of Chief Justice Abrahamson, then the proposals should be amended by grandfathering existing members of the court and making them effective with future elections.

A wake up call for incumbents

By Bill Kraus


Reform is something to talk about not do in the halls of government, which are for the most part bastions of the status quo.

There are a couple of possible exceptions however.

Not surprisingly these reforms (a) protect and/or (b) enhance the permanence and power of the incumbents whose hands are on the levers of power.

The first is called “disclosure.” When the Supreme Court opened what seemed at the time to be the floodgates to spending by outsiders on political campaigns, but has turned out to be more of a garden hose, the court said that the freedom to spend did not include the right to hide. The court said they would look favorably upon any legislation that disclosed who was doing the spending.

This, surprisingly, did not evoke a wave of disclosure proposals. The incumbents who were given this power and encouragement were told by the newly unregulated potential spenders that they didn't like disclosure and their contributors really didn't like it and would go away rather than tell the wider world who they were.

Hope from afar

By Bill Kraus

In Wisconsin we still have Senator Fitzgerald who is in denial, Speaker Vos who is in opposition, Governor Walker who is in absentia.

In Ohio we have the Republican legislature and Governor Kasich enacting and signing a redistricting statute which creates a bipartisan process to draw districts which are more competitive.

It ain't Iowa. But it ain't bad.

Motivations are not revealed, but a not far afield guess would be that the governor has his sights set on something beyond Ohio and wants to get rid of baggage that a wider audience might consider gerrymandering friendly.

Scott Walker could take comfort and action from this, and use his proximity to Iowa to do likewise.

Simultaneously we learn that the state of Alabama is in court defending district packing to reduce the number of districts where black votes are significant by putting a lot of them in as few districts as possible.

If the Supremes do the right thing for this minority, is it possible that the strategy of district packing for any questionable purpose could be put into disrepute?

It might be.

An anti-packing decision and a move by our openly ambitious governor to de-gerrymander himself could bring rays of light to what seemed to be a pretty dark 2015.

Where there's light there's hope.

Happy Holidays to all.

Bill Kraus lives in Madison, is the former press secretary for Governor Lee Dreyfus, and is the Chair of the State Governing Board of Common Cause of Wisconsin.


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