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at the local level — state house and senate and Congressional district races — our two major parties long ago agreed that carving up the electorate by party affiliation was preferable to democracy . . . by and large, there is a bipartisan understanding that some areas lean Democrat, some Republican — and it's better to pack like-minded voters into noncompetitive districts and save one's considerable resources for battles in a dwindling number of competitive ones.
More than collective bargaining rights, human rights, corporate rights or any other right, two-party hegemony and a broken redistricting process is the reason Wisconsin's state Capitol is a battleground.
What motivation would the 10 Republican and Democratic legislative leaders have for actually debating and amending Gov. Scott Walker's radical proposal to curtail public sector collective bargaining rights when, collectively, they won their most recent elections with a whopping 82 percent of the vote, including four that ran unopposed?
Those aren't elections, those are cakewalks. And if you represent a district rigged in your favor, toeing the most extreme borders of the party line and paying blatant fealty to your party's financial contributors are smart moves . . .
You'd think this would be a great time for third parties — such as they are — to make their pitch to voters.
Party Over People in Wisconsin
At the Wisconsin State Journal, Chris Rickert argues that it is a good time for the people of Wisconsin to consider third party alternatives to the Republicans and Democrats. Excerpt:
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Agreed. The labor movement's dependency upon the Democratic party only guarantees it additional hostility from automatically unsympathetic Republicans. It's past time that labor made itself an autonomous third force in politics.
Agree with Mr. Wilson here, the sheer utter dependence the labor movement has attached itself to the Democratic party has only done it harm, and not good. Even leaders of the SEIU and ALF-CIO are beginning to see this.
Hugh Giordano, a local union leader in PA, ran with the Green party, got around 18% in an heavily democratic state legislative district (PA's 194th), and continues to be active in the Green Party, and calls for unions role in dissolving the "two party" system. I hope we can get more Hugh's....
The Rickert article goes on to mention the efforts of Ben Manski, a Green party and labor activist in Wisconsin, who ran a strong campaign for state legislature last year, but ultimately lost to a Democrat. At Independent Political Report, and elsewhere, Ross Levin has been following both Manski and Hugh Giordano rather closely, I think Ross even worked on the Giordano campaign. Might be worth a bit of time to do a quick search on Manski and Giordano at IPR to see what they've been up to since the Wisconsin labor dispute began.
Yeah, I thank Ross for his work (and reporting thereof) of the Giordano and Manski campaigns. These were two Greens who ran very competitive campaigns, and got impressive returns. (18% for Giordano and 30% for Manski). Hopefully this isn't just a one time thing. We'll see how far Cherri gets with her run as a poverty activist Sheriff.
And yes, Ross worked on Giordano's campaign, and might be working on Cheri Honkala's campaign. I'm not in regular contact with him though so I can't be sure.
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