What next for the Democrats?

Today's Washington Post has an interesting article on why Democrats won in Colorado:

Colorado Democrats say their success carries a lesson for the national party. "We campaigned on pragmatism," state Democratic Chairman Christopher Gates said. "We set ourselves up as the problem solvers, while the Republicans were hung up on a bunch of fringe social issues like gay marriage and the Pledge of Allegiance.

"The notion that moral issues won the 2004 election was disproven in Colorado," Gates continued. "We offered solutions, not ideology, and won almost everything."

Colorado, in Schools Now's view, also has lessons for Wisconsin Democrats. Despite Kerry's close win in Wisconsin, Republicans increased their domination of the legislature. The danger is that Democrats will look to their base in Milwaukee or Madison for a solution rather than finding ways to convince voters that they can solve problems better than Republicans can.

With the concern over high taxes, Governor Doyle and the Democrats will lose if they are viewed as the party representing the interests of public employees rather than those of the public (especially the public as taxpayers). With the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights, Republicans are cleverly defining the contest as one between government and taxes.

Doyle and the Democrats have apparently decided that taking the WEAC position on school choice and charter schools incurs little political risk, since the parents who benefit have not thus far become an effective political force. But the political danger to Democrats may come from a different direction: that by toeing the WEAC line they position themselves as the friends of those who benefit from the status quo in government programs rather than as problem solvers. In doing so, the play the Republican game,

Post Election Notes: What Didn't Work

Schools Now takes note of two campaigns that apparently did not work in the recent election:

1. Ads from WEAC (the state teacher's union) accusing Republicans of favoring Milwaukee for supporting charter schools. Of the eight seats targeted by WEAC, Schools Now counts only one Democratic victory. This seemed like a strikingly stupid campaign for many reasons, but satisfaction about its failure is tempered by the increasing Republican monopoly in the legislature. Schools Now can only hope that the results might finally jolt the Democrats into thinking about developing a compelling vision for Wisconsin.

2. The ads paid for by at least one pro school choice group and run on black-oriented radio stations. The only likely effect is to increase antagonism among legislators who, by rights, should be the strongest supporters of school choice. Schools Now suggests that the folks sponsoring these ads should also take a long break to think about how to win friends and influence people.

School Boards and Secrecy

In his response to Ken Johnson's letter criticising his visit to the MTEA (the Milwaukee teacher's union) during negotiations, Peter Blewett devotes considerable space to arguing that everything said in an executive session should be secret. This could represent a major advance for the cause of school board secrecy.

Here is an example. Let's say a school superintendent wants to inform the board about major financial problems, but does not want the press or public to pick up on the story. So he asks for an executive session of the board, only to be informed that state law requires that discussion of district finances be held in public. Thus he is out of luck....or is he?

However the board can meet in executive session to discuss its bargaining strategy with the union, one of the exemptions from the state open meetings law, on the theory that disclosing the strategy to the other side could put the negotiators at a disadvantage. As part of the discussion of strategy, the superientendent may talk about the district's precarious financial situation as background to why the offer cannot be more generous.

If board members are now obligated not to disclose anything they learned about the district's financial situation, on the grounds that this information came out in an executive session, the superintendent is able to achieve his original, illegal, goal.

For a more detailed critique of this expansion of secrecy, see my letter here.

New Flash! Peter Blewett reads Schools Now!

Schools Now welcomes MPS board president Peter Blewett to its ranks of loyal readers. In July, we published an item that Blewett had been freelancing in negotiations with the MTEA. Yesterday, we received the response to our freedom of information request:

• A letter from board member Ken Johnson to Blewett charging him with an improper visit to the MTEA (which was mentioned in our earlier item) and accusing him of impugning the integrity of the MPS staff. This letter is heavily redacted--meaning lots of heavy black lines hiding the good stuff, so it is hard to tell what Blewett proposed to do with the information he got from the MTEA.
  
• A response from Blewett denying the accusations (the visit was purely to gather information; he has "high respect" for the staff), and waxing indignant that someone leaked this controversy to Schools Now. Exhibit 1 is a printout of the offending post from July.

Click here to view the Johnson and Blewett letters.