Everyone knows what Progressive Dane is all about. Their tactics smell.
Today The Critical Badger shines a light on the stench. He writes the following.
Russell Wallace dropped off over 40 new memberships ($10/piece) to the Dane County Democratic Party last night, just before the deadline to ensure he will have a healthy majority in the race against Wayne Bigelow. A typical PDesque way to ensure victory.
Wallace and Bigelow are running for Chairperson of the Dane County Democratic Party.
Wayne Bigelow understands that driving the car off a cliff does not encourage others to be passengers. He cares about the county party and deserves to be elected again.
Russell Wallace is smart and energized, but the wrong choice for Democrats who wish for more than a litmus test on political purity.
Technorati Tags: ProgressiveDane, RussellWallace, Madison, DaneCounty
WayneBigelow
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 
here here.
For someone who is, as far as I can tell, not a member of the Dane County Democratic Party, this reads about like one would expect. Most people outside of active Democrats have been told that this race is about ideology. That is wrong. Both Wayne and Russell have fabulously progressive politics. I’ve gotten tired of some supporters of Russell claiming that he’s the “true progressive” in this race (and for what it’s worth, I’m tired of hearing that term used anyway). I’ve gotten tired of Bigelow supporters saying that Russell is trying to lead a PD-takeover of the party to make it some leftist engine. Neither of those is true.
This is not about ideology, it’s about philosophy. This is a very technocratic race about who’s approach to running the party is right or better. But of course, like mainstream journalists, Wisconsin’s blogosphere has gotten this dead wrong because they’ve failed to actually do, you know, journalism.
How many of you who’ve written about this have called up others on the county party’s executive committee to hear what the race is about and who they’re supporting? How many of you contacted members of the party – especially the active ones? How many of you have actually been involved in this party enough to know what this is all about? From what I can tell, none of the Wisconsin bloggers who’ve written on this is actually a party member with skin in the game in an immediate sense. And no one has done any real journalism before spouting off something like “Wallace and PD Try to Take Over County Party to Push Leftist Authoritarianism” or “Wayne Bigelow is another Republican-lite ‘Democrat’ That Isn’t Really a Democrat”. This is just simply not true.
And that’s really unfortunate. I like Wayne and Russell both. And we’re so lucky in Dane County to have many people who are capable of and would like to be the county party chair. Just look at some counties around the state where membership is dropping and there’s really a dearth of leadership (and in other places, just the opposite – Winnebago County is going to be a Democratic stronghold in 5 years with the way Jef Hall is making things happen up there). This is most unfortunate because this chair’s race could have been the backdrop for an incredibly valuable discussion about what the Democratic Party should look like as a political party proper and how it should function.
Wisconsin blogosphere, you dropped the ball here.
You nailed this one!
And I am a Party member who is so very sick of Progressive Dane. I am not alone. There may be fewer party members after tonight if Wallace wins.
And in case we forgot I hope it is OK to post here what the Isthmus had to say about Progressive Dane.
Night of the living Danes
Democrats need to beat back the attack from local left party
David Blaska on Thursday 01/18/2007
The Progressive Dane putsch of the local Democrats’ endorsement meeting on Jan. 10 lends itself to any number of metaphors.
None is more vivid than George A. Romero’s cult horror classic, Night of the Living Dead. Remember the stiff-legged zombies, newly emerged from the tomb, crashing putrefying arms through the boarded up doors and windows to grab at the terrified family within?
Sadly, Madison’s daily Progressive Dane newspaper showed no such imagination ‘ nor even the slightest tickle of curiosity. Instead, it played the useful idiot by portraying the interlopers as being indistinguishable from the ‘local Democratic activists’ in attendance.
That, as the paper reported, 200 people were jammed into a meeting room intended for half that many should have jump-started a couple of brain synapses. An inquiring mind ‘ even a working mind ‘ might have wondered what was really going on.
Instead, the unnaturally credulous Samara Kalk Derby scribbled in The Capital Times that the group ‘voted against several recommendations by the party’s executive board’ in favor of ‘candidates already endorsed by the political party Progressive Dane.’
What a co-inky-dink!
It fell to Melanie Conklin in the next day’s Wisconsin State Journal to expose what the ungrateful undead had conspired to achieve: ‘As Dane County Democratic Party chairman Wayne Bigelow sees it, Ald. Austin King packed the Dane County Democratic Party membership meeting with Progressive Dane members and engineered a coup.’
The PD cadres paid their $25 to become members and bend the party to their will.
What did they get for their money, Don Pardo? Like the late Ed Gein, they got new faces to wear for the April elections.
Progressive Dane’s problem is that, outside of downtown Konkelville, it is in bad odor. This is a party that:
Demands totalitarian adherence to its one-size-fits-all approach.
Declares war on small business by pushing a city-only minimum wage and mandatory paid sick leave. Now it wants to license owners with rental properties.
Calls for extending full voting rights to ‘all adult residents of Madison,’ presumably including felons and illegal aliens.
Outdoes Rube Goldberg in devising a hilariously arcane affordable-housing ordinance ‘ now widely conceded to be an utter failure ‘ that tried to promote home ownership by penalizing the accumulation of equity.
Wants to tax your parking stall.
Searches for still more things to tax (in the words of their platform, ‘additional revenue options’).
Wants to expropriate tax dollars to pay for its campaigns.
For all its special pleading, PD has nothing to offer the middle-class homeowners who just want their streets plowed, water drinkable, neighborhoods safe and taxes low ‘ good-government things on which Milwaukee’s Sewer Socialists once prided themselves.
Boss Bigelow needs to drive this intolerant, divisive and meddlesome outfit out of his party, just as Fighting Bob La Follette did with the ultra-left scalawags dragging on his coattails back in the day. In May 1924, Old Bob warned his supporters of an effort to infiltrate an upcoming Farmer-Labor-Progressive Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
‘The declarations of the Workers Party of America show clearly that they are seeking to use the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota and other Progressive organizations that have lent their names to this convention as a means of advancing their own ends…. I most emphatically protest against their being admitted….’
Eight decades later, people of good will and common sense are arrayed against Progressive Dane. The Chamber of Commerce has finally lifted a sail. Business and some service unions coalesced under the Common Sense banner. Mayor Dave Cieslewicz says he refuses to ‘drink the Kool-Aid’ and has quit the party.
And the party is losing favor among serious candidates from the moderate center who are not instinctively hostile to business.
Last fall, the national Democratic Party claimed majority status by shedding its elitist image and reaching for the middle ‘ where necessary, by embracing pro-life, pro-gun and law-and-order candidates. In Wisconsin, a low-tax, pro-growth governor has won a second term amid Democratic gains in both houses of the Legislature.
The Democrats have two things the Progs need in order to win support: respectability and relevance. Lacking either, Progressive Dane decided to figuratively invade Kuwait and take its bulging bank vaults.
So here’s a good-government, full-disclosure question for your aldermanic candidate in this April’s supposedly nonpartisan elections: Are you now or have you ever been a member of Progressive Dane?
That wasn’t what the Isthmus proper had to say about the PD/Dane Dems fight, it was what conservative hack Dave Blaska had to say about it. Like most of his work, it relied upon half-truths, innuendo, and a little bit of willful ignorance (maybe not willful – he is a conservative after all). And the opinions about intra-party democracy and going-ons from a conservative concern troll should be of no mind to us. Remember, the grain of salt with which to take Blaska’s thoughts is that they want to beat us. No matter the veracity or insight – that’s their end goal, so keep it in mind when making your judgments and thought-processes to get there.
That is exactly why on April 1st we must vote against progressive dane in the county board elections. I’d like to make mention of one candidate in particular Mark Schmitt (independent with no political affiliations) who is running against the inncumbent John Hendrick (PD member)who has run unopposed for the past 14 years. It’s time for his and other PD members reign of terror to come to an end. Mark Schmitt will take letters and calls from community members seriously. He owes no allegiance to any political party or lobbyist group so he can truly take the best interest of the community into account unlike PD who only has their own agendas in mind. Mark’s family has been living in Madison for over 155 years so he truly cares about our city and county.
VOTE MARK SCHMITT FOR DISTRICT 6 FOR COUNTY BOARD SUPERVISOR on April 1st
I think I need to state that my concern over PD is one more of process than policy. I want PD to work within the Democratic Party, not try to stack meetings and mount coups. A lot of PD problems have to do with bad PR that they are responsible for.
While there are some policy areas that I strongly differ with PD over, I have long felt that the transportation needs for Madison and Dane County is an area that PD is actually correct on.
I wish that the candidates opposing some members of the county board were more in touch with the needs for regional transportation answers. The lack of such answers (ideas) makes them short of the needs required to be elected.
In addition I think that Mark might have walked the district more and talked with voters. I live here in the district and never met the man at my door….nor has my partner here….nor have any of my neighbors. Just a thought.