December 20, 2021 at 3:02 p.m.
The Democratic Party: Where local democracy goes to die
The Democratic Party: Where local democracy goes to die
But it's not just the national Democratic Party. Local Democrats have their share of progressive wokesters who find transparency and local democracy offensive. They are always lurking in the weeds, trying to overcome their lack of popularity with clever manipulations of the political system.
There's a strong possibility that that is happening right now in Oneida County. As we report today, there's a slew of new candidates running for the Oneida County Board of Supervisors next spring, and most of them appear to be liberal Democrats or progressives.
We can't say for sure they are part of any organized effort, but it sure is suspicious - the number of candidates is historically high and so is the number of far-left progressives.
Now far be it for us to discourage people from getting involved in county government. We hope more do, particularly conservatives who should be concerned that a county board that spends millions of our tax dollars and that sets the size and scope of government at the local level is about to be taken over by a crowd that prays at the altar of the likes of AOC and Ilhan Omar.
They'd better act in a hurry, or taxpayers could be in for a bitter surprise.
Our point is, this is one more attempt to manipulate our system of nonpartisan elections for a partisan cause. Democrats know they are hopelessly outnumbered in Oneida County, and so they seek local power by dressing their candidates up in the garb of non-partisanship so voters won't know who they really are.
Instead, they should be proudly waving the banner of the progressive cause - and for their positions on shoreland zoning and abortion and taxes and the Second Amendment and the UW Extension, and more - so voters know just what they really believe.
We haven't seen any of that, though, and we doubt we will. We challenge them to do so, on all those issues.
To be sure, the division of elections into partisan and non-partisan contests needs to be reformed so this can't happen. The problem with nonpartisan elections for county boards is that generally you have to elect the supervisors to see what the supervisors believe, much like Nancy Pelosi's belief that you have to pass a bill to see what's in it.
There's nothing actually sacred about nonpartisan elections, and they have pretty much become little more than chaotic exercises in confusion.
Sure, advocates for non-partisan elections insist there's nothing partisan about delivering local services - what's Republican or Democrat about plowing the roads? - but the reality is far different.
It's very political when services stray beyond the scope of core government programs and grow governments into excessively regulating enterprises whose agencies spew liberal ideology - as the UW Extension does - and of course we all know highways are all about politics. Zoning, too.
There's wiggle room in just about all county ordinances that partisans can manipulate. The quintessential example was an attempt last year by Oneida County progressives, bureaucrats, and the DNR to write a more restrictive shoreland zoning ordinance related to vegetative buffer zones and the state's administrative code.
They weren't successful, but just imagine if that crowd captures control of the county board, and that's a definite possibility.
That county board supervisors in all counties do engage in ideological politics these days is pretty self-evident. On the other side of the coin, however, truly nonpartisan positions like the sheriff - though even enforcing laws is awash in politics these days - and county clerk are somehow in our system deemed to be partisan offices.
The state Supreme Court is officially nonpartisan, but over the past decade and even longer those races have featured some of the more partisan races in state history.
The truth is, in Wisconsin, the desire for nonpartisan elections first gained traction in Milwaukee when Republicans and Democrats conspired to create "nonpartisan" local contests as a way to thwart the growing popularity of socialist candidates, after Emil Seidel of the Social Democratic Party was elected mayor in 1910. In 1912, the state made most local offices nonpartisan so voters couldn't tell the socialist apart from the less popular Republicans and Democrats in the city.
They hid their politics behind the nonpartisan label, just as our local Democrats are trying to do in this spring's contests in Oneida County. They want vote totals they can't get otherwise, and so they intrude upon the nonpartisan system to manipulate their way to election, just as their unprincipled peers did so long ago in Milwaukee.
In Oneida County, then, the Democratic Party is truly the place where local democracy goes to die.
There's even more to this story that voters - particularly those outside Rhinelander - should be worried about. That is, this could be not only a partisan triumph for liberals but a coup for the city of Rhinelander.
That is to say, most of the new candidates running hail from Rhinelander or the Rhinelander orbit, and their election would make the county board not just Rhinelander-centric but liberally so. Already we have heard rumors that liberal supervisor Steve Schreier of Rhinelander is planning a run for county board chairman if his ideological soul mates actually win.
If what we have heard is true, we hope he decides against it, but if he does run, we would advise that he be resoundingly rejected, for it is tradition that no resident of Rhinelander run for county board chairperson or serve on the zoning committee.
The reasons are obvious enough: the tradition is needed to provide checks and balances and a fair share of power for the rural areas of the county. With its population, Rhinelander already controls an outsized number of board seats, giving the city an unfair advantage.
That advantage has been significant for decades.
For example, the Lakeland area already pays far more in property taxes than it gets services in return. Lakeland gets snow plowing and not much else, except for a zoning office to push even more regulations down our throats.
The town of Minocqua supports its own police department but turns around and pays for 25 percent of the sheriff's department. Add in Woodruff and it's even more. And for years, county economic development dollars have flowed disproportionately to Rhinelander at the expense of other areas of the county.
Our standard of living has suffered because of the Rhinelander advantage, and a liberal take-over of the board that would hand the chairmanship to Schreier would deal another blow to Oneida County's non-city quality of life.
Just imagine if a Rhinelander resident were to sit as chairman of the county board. That person would control the county's appointments, the heads of committees, including who sits on such powerful committees as labor relations, administration, and zoning. That person would have outsized influence in selecting and supervising department heads.
That person would have Rhinelander's interests as a priority,
It has also been a tradition that no one from Rhinelander sit on the zoning committee, precisely because the city is not subject to state shoreland laws and rules. We could see that changing in a heartbeat with Schreier as chairman.
Simply put, a chairman of the county who is a resident of Rhinelander would be able to put his or her thumb on the scales for Rhinelander even more than already happens. So, in those Rhinelander area districts, we need to elect not just someone who actually represents the people - liberals don't, at least in most districts - but for candidates who will respect those county traditions that preserve a voice and some balance of power for the rural areas of the county.
That's not the liberal candidates who have lined up to run, that's for sure.
Progressives care nothing about checks and balances or tradition, and the only balance of power they are interested in is having all the power as a balance in their political account. We must not let that happen.
Otherwise, it might just be time for a new county.
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