Two Winnebago County Board of Supervisors incumbents were defeated on Tuesday. Paul Sundquist lost his District 17 seat to Jef Hall, while District 14's Harold Steineke was defeated by Donna Lohry. Neither Sundquist nor Steineke were involved in any scandal, nor were voters upset with them over any particular issue. Hall and Lohry simply worked harder to win the seats.
Contrast the Hall and Lohry victories in small, walkable districts with what has been happening at other levels of government in Oshkosh. In both the Oshkosh Common Council and School Board, election victories the last two years were largely the result of the power of incumbency, amount of money spent in the election, and special interest group endorsement. In a truly representative democratic system, incumbency, money, and special interest endorsement should be the least important factors in deciding who gets elected. Yet as the size of the governmental unit gets smaller and the number of voters in a district gets larger, it becomes more difficult for a Hall or a Lohry to win a seat just by outworking their opponent.
Oshkosh Mayor Bill Castle, he with great name recognition, financing, and special interest buddies, has never lost an at-large election in the city of Oshkosh. Yet when he tried to win a county board seat, he lost to Bill Wingren who simply worked harder to meet voters of District 18.
It is true that too many county board seats go uncontested. But to solve that problem by eliminating the seats would be like curing a dandruff problem via decapitation. Perhaps the Hall and Lohry examples will show potential candidates throughout the county that the incumbents can be beat fairly easily if you simply take the time to meet the voters of your district and rally some volunteers to your side.
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15 comments:
Tony you said if very very well. The reason most -but not all of the people who won County Board races won on Tuesday because of their hard work at campaigning.
Included in this is incumbent Ken Robl and those who won write-in campaigns up north.
I know how hard it is to win for I won a very close election in 2000 after campaigning hard against someone with high name id. With help from a lot of folks.
Tony you are right- hard work at the local level pays off.
I understand Jef Hall "visited" a lot of homes while walking home from evenings out.
Yea, he probably said, vote for me or I'm going to sleep on your couch tonight.
No he and Donna Lohry did what one is suppose to do is knocking on doors and meeting people.
It is a little different in the County races. You don't have to knock on as many doors. Kent and I did knock on doors, and drop off info cards we made ourselves, and knock on doors, and set up meet and greet sessions, and knock on doors. It is a little hard to knock on enough doors and actually get enough people to answer to get 5000 votes without name recognition and big advertising dollars. You guys are comparing apples to oranges between city council/school board and county board.
Mrs. Monte, no one is trying to compare them other than to say that in a representative democratic system, the person spending the most or having the special interest groups on their side, etc., shouldn't matter. You and your husband knocked on doors, just as it should have been. You guys had other problems though with perceptions of bad attitudes, defensive postures, etc. Tony's message says working hard to win seats paid off for these 2 people and he's saying this is a reason why the county board should remain the size it is.
Mike don't even waste your time trying to reason with these morons. They're adults chronologically but mentally and maturity wise they belong in preschool. They are uncompassionate boobs who lack enough understanding of alcholism and are too unrefined or intelligent to be able to appreciate it when someone has recognized a problem and gotten help. Mr. Hall has gotten help for his problem. Now if they could only get help for theirs.
The Oshkosh City Council should move toward district representatives. It would not be difficult to have 2-3 At Large seats, 3-4 District seats, and an at-large Mayor. Districts could be as simple as North and South of the River.
Babs,
I think you're right. The city of Eau Claire has a population of just under 63,000 and their Common Council consists of 5 members elected in aldermanic districts, 5 members elected at-large, and the Council president (the equivalent of our Mayor) elected at-large.
After blogging now for a year I have come to the conclusion that mean-spirited comments that add nothing to the discussion or the sense of community should be deleted.
Not in a panic, or a rage. Nor should the site be shut down or people sued, but whenever the blog-owner checks up and has a minute. In the same mundane spirit in which people take out the trash.
That would mean all three "anonymous" comments in this string. I include the third anonymous because, while s/he is seeming to protest the bullying of the first two anons. s/he engages full force bullying of his/her own. (morons, etc.)A pot calling the kettles black. I could go on with a million related thoughts, but why.
But I will say that while it would be human nature for two friends who aren't crazy about Jef Hall to snicker about the couch thing privately, totally out of the hearing of others, it's a whole 'nother level of nasty to write it in a public place like this. And for others to pick it up and run with it. It's not like Bush joke sites. These people aren't insulated celebrities that will likely never see this stuff. These are people's neighbors and co-workers in the same town talking about people they see - probably across the aisle at church. So people go to the store and wonder which bland face said that crappy stuff? It ain't cool.
I've done stuff like that myself, but I was wrong. I thought I was being witty but I wasn't, and I'm done with that now. Here's why -
It doesn't advance anything, it doesn't prove anyone wrong, change policy, clarify an issue, empower people, cure social ills, or make life easier or more fun.
So that's where I am with that. For all zero of you who are interested. So - back to your regularly scheduled programming then.
Ya, and our pal Brandon just got elected to one of those at-large seats. How cool is that?
We definitely need district representation and a fulltime elected mayor with executive powers. This "professional management" concept is not working the way it should. But if we're going to keep this system then the city council had better start taking better control of the city manager and he better start taking strong control of the department heads.
What we need to do is vote on issues and not popularity. I don't care who knocks on my door to talk to me or how hard they work. If he has the background of a Hall, the intelligence of a Norton, or the arrogance of a Maehl, I am not voting for them. Give me someone like a Bill Wingren any day. Substance over fluff.
Bless their hearts, but some of our board are old and out of touch and need to be put out to pasture. The problem is no one wants these jobs. A smaller board would make the positions more attractive. One would have a sense that they actually can get something done. Also we would have more accountability with a smaller board. With a group of 38 one can hide, or even sleep like we saw last month.
Come on! How can anyone not see that the current board is stocked full of incompetent people. While I'm sure most of them are very nice people (all it seems to take to get elected in a neighborhood), many of them are very lacking. This results in POOR decisions and a board that is led around by the nose. Has anyone who is in favor of a big board ever watched a board meeting, or met some of these people? Thank goodness the state has had the wisdom to limit their taxing ability and has given the citizens the ability to bring forward a vote on the size of the board.
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