Progressive Dane Gaining Power In City, County
Wisconsin State Journal
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Dean Mosiman
Wisconsin State Journal
http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=wsj:2005:02:20:404437:FRONT
Brenda Konkel, Austin King and their political buddies used to pour their souls out — mostly in vain — for the poor and voiceless.
Now their leftist political party, Progressive Dane, is
changing Madison, recently helping pass controversial,
landmark laws to raise the city’s minimum wage, force
developers to build lower-cost housing, and ban smoking
in bars and restaurants.
“For all intents and purposes, they are the (city’s)
governing party right now,” said Mayor Dave Cieslewicz,
who joined Progressive Dane when he ran for mayor three
years ago and is mulling whether to actively help shape
its agenda and tactics.
The party may be gaining momentum, endorsing four
candidates in Tuesday’s primary and advancing all to
the general election in April.
But Progressive Dane is making some prominent enemies,
too, especially in big business.
“They’re ignoring the people who pay the bills,” said
former Mayor Paul Soglin. “They’re creating an economic
doughnut hole in Madison.”
Local businesses are being challenged to match
Progressive Dane’s activism, said Jennifer Alexander,
president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce.
“I think Progressive Dane’s agenda lacks some real
serious elements — creating jobs, attracting business,
increasing the tax base,” she said. “Business people no
longer have the luxury of sitting back and not being
involved.”
Cieslewicz is keenly aware of tension between business
and the party. “If we’re going to be the long-term
governing party in Madison, you can’t ignore business,”
he said. “You can be progressive and pro-business.”
Party leaders are unapologetic about their progressive
values and maintain that they aren’t anti-business.
They say they are guided by a broad base of members
from all walks of life and they represent the views of
a large chunk of Madison and Dane County.
Still, after 12 years, Progressive Dane has reached a
crossroads — act like a feisty bane to the
establishment or be a mature insider.
The party is unquestionably at the core of power in the
city, a rare achievement for an alternative party, even
in hotbeds such as Berkeley, Calif. “Progressive Dane
is one of the most successful grass-roots, left-wing
movements in America,” said Matt Rothschild, editor of
The Progressive magazine.
The party, dubbed “PD,” includes Cieslewicz, City
Council President Konkel and eight of 20 council
members. It claims four of the Madison School Board’s
seven members, including President Bill Keys, and six
of 37 Dane County supervisors. The city’s array of
committees is peppered with members.
And if all of the party’s endorsed candidates are
successful in April, it would have true majorities for
the first time on both the City Council and School
Board.
Caring or nasty?
Salvation Army Maj. Paul Moore, although not involved
in local politics, said PD has made a difference for
the most needy.
“It’s very difficult for people of low economic means
to have a voice in any community,” Moore said. “It’s
nice to know that people are interested and caring
about these issues.”
But the party, critics insist, can be anti-business,
anti-law enforcement, ideologically unbending, and even
nasty with opponents, friends and its own members.
“It’s power-play politics,” said Mark Bugher, president
of University Research Park and chairman of the city’s
Economic Development Commission.
Ald. Ken Golden of the near West Side’s 10th District,
is a founding PD member, no longer close to the
leadership, who has an independent streak but mostly
votes progressive. A PD candidate is running against
him in the spring City Council elections.
“Why are they going after me of all things?” Golden
said. “It reminds me very much of the Bolsheviks
between 1905 and 1917. … I see this kind of purity.”
The challenge is about performance, Konkel said,
claiming that Golden doesn’t always work well with
colleagues or keep up with the council’s work.
The party, critics claim, also wastes time on
polarizing national or international affairs, such as
endorsing Ralph Nader for president in 2000, which
angered Democrats, or pushing a sister-city
relationship with the Palestinian city of Rafah on the
Gaza Strip, which upset the Jewish community.
PD members make no apologies about fighting for their
beliefs and say the big stir is mostly about their
increasing effectiveness.
“Here’s a group of rag-tag people who’ve come together
with a commitment to social change,” said Ald. Brian
Benford of the North Side’s 12th District, a PD member.
“I think that’s a very scary concept.”
Hungry to do more
Progressive Dane emerged from the local chapter of the
Wisconsin Labor-Farm party, which was patterned after
Germany’s progressive Green Party.
PD has thrived in liberal Madison partly because local
Democrats concentrate on state and national electoral
politics. Democrats don’t do grass-roots work on
leftist social justice causes or issues like low-cost
housing, tenant rights and good land use, members said.
The party appeals to “those who are really hungry to do
more,” said its elections committee chairman Michael
Jacob.
At the party’s anti-inaugural event last month,
rappers, activists and musicians — even a guitarist
with a weird hat and a kazoo chanting, “I hate war,” —
took the stage at hip Cafe Monmartre off Capitol
Square.
But the event was more than affixing devil horns to
George W. Bush.
Speakers were passionate about taking local action for
better social services, environmental protection, drug
policy reform, food banks and electing fresh candidates
to the City Council.
“We are no longer an Isthmus party,” party co-
chairwoman Konkel proclaimed to the packed house. “We
are a party of the entire city of Madison. We are the
people. We are the power.”
Born and based on the Isthmus, PD is now endorsing
candidates in the city’s outskirts and has members in
places like Stoughton and Sun Prairie, co-chairman Nick
Berigan said.
“There’s a perception out there that PD is a bunch of
wackos. We’re not,” said Ald. Mike Verveer, an
assistant district attorney who represents Downtown’s
4th District. “The average PD member is a state
employee, schoolteacher, laborer. They’re from all
walks of life.”
The party is far more active on local issues and
elections than local Democrats or Republicans. With
more than 400 dues-paying members, PD has a $30,000
annual budget, a part-time paid organizer, a detailed
data base, and a legion of volunteers willing to make
phone calls, distribute literature and knock on doors
for candidates, even in the dead cold of winter. It
also offers campaign training for candidates and
campaign managers, helps with finance reports and can
deliver invaluable phone lists and even yard sign
locations.
“They’re a well-oiled machine,” said Ald. Zach Brandon,
7th District, a Democrat who has tangled with PD on
spending and tax issues. “(But) they succeed more on
organization and technology than their principles or
voting record.”
The party cherishes candidates who have been active in
neighborhoods or social causes and encourages
minorities, women and young people.
It helped elect Shwaw Vang, who is Hmong, and Johnny
Winston Jr., who is African American, to the School
Board. It has now endorsed a batch of fresh candidates
making first bids for City Council, including Lisa
Subeck and Sarah Ellen King, who advanced Tuesday to
the general election, and Chris Kratochwill, Tim Gruber
and Lori Nitzel, who are already on the April ballot.
“What was really profound for me was it wasn’t about me
being connected,” said Benford, an African American
active in youth and single-parent issues who was
elected two years ago. “It was about my right as a
person to take this journey.”
Leftist vision
The party’s sweeping platform is a leftist vision
promoting causes such as treating drug abuse as public
health rather than law enforcement concerns.
A growing list of successes includes the minimum wage,
a zoning law that makes developers build lower-cost
housing, the smoking ban, “living wages” for employees
on city and county contracts, and a city affordable
housing trust fund that’s hit $2 million.
PD helped nix a controversial anti-loitering law,
improve the public’s access to campaign-finance
reports, make lobbyists register and forced landlords
to put exterior locks on most buildings. The party
helped pass the 2003 Madison schools referendum. And
last fall it successfully pushed to restore $1.2
million in cuts to the county’s Health and Human
Services budget, while failing to add another $2.4
million for inflation.
The extra spending for mental health and other programs
would have been “the cost of a pizza for an individual
homeowner,” Jacob said, lamenting, “It’s the difference
between someone getting help and getting it together
and going to jail.”
In 2001, at Keys’ urging, the School Board shook the
community and barred schoolwide recitations of the
Pledge of Allegiance, which unleashed such a furor that
the board reversed its decision.
But Keys never wavered and the party backed him. “They
were right at my side,” he said.
Party members Konkel and Ald. Robbie Webber, with
Golden, are currently negotiating with business leaders
on the controversial proposal to regulate so-called
“big box” retail stores and other commercial
developments bigger than 40,000 square feet on single
properties. The council recently gave the sides 60 days
to compromise.
Next, the party will help seek more human services
money, try to change city tax incremental financing
policy, make more landlords accept tenants who get
federal rent subsidies, and shape the county’s
comprehensive plan.
But PD’s agenda troubles, even scares, some.
Taking on business
It’s “excessive regulation,” said James Buchen, vice
president of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, part
of a coalition suing to erase the city’s minimum wage
law. “Madison has always had a reputation as being a
little business-hostile anyway. This is making the
situation worse.”
If Progressive Dane won a majority on the council, “we
would be very concerned,” Chamber of Commerce President
Alexander said.
PD members argue that they are not anti-business,
maintaining that minimum wage and other progressive
laws help people who need it most and haven’t hurt
economies elsewhere.
“I care passionately about Downtown revitalization and
economic development,” said Verveer, who opposed the
smoking ban and long supported business through facade
improvement grants to multimillion dollar housing and
office projects.
The party has raised concerns with police, too. Some PD
elected officials opposed the anti-loitering law, a
Halloween bottle ban on State Street, and accepting a
federal COPS grant.
“It almost seems like there’s an anti-law enforcement
view,” police union president Scott Favour said.
Not true, PD member Stephanie Rearick said.
The party, she said, has helped police improve 911
responses for drug overdoses, craft the bottle ban,
update liquor license rules and advocated to treat drug
abuse as a public health issue.
“We don’t think it’s anti-police,” Rearick said. “It’s
pro civil liberties, pro-public health.”
`The blood oath’
The party takes heat for being too ideological, and for
its candidate pledge, called “the blood oath” by
outsiders.
Cieslewicz, who joined PD three years ago to broaden
his political base, didn’t seek its endorsement because
at the time the pledge prohibited candidates from
supporting people from other parties in other races. “I
didn’t want to drink the Kool-Aid,” he said.
The pledge, relaxed after 2003, now requires endorsed
candidates to attend membership meetings, be active in
neighborhoods and introduce laws for the party.
“We just want to make sure members have a voice,”
Konkel said, noting that candidates get a lot of
resources from volunteers. “It’s a two-way street.”
Despite its reputation, PD isn’t authoritarian and
doesn’t march in lockstep, leaders insist.
PD’s membership finds issues and votes on party
decisions, Berigan said.
The party, in fact, had voted against immediately
pursuing a local minimum wage. But three members —
King, Joe Lindstrom and Tom Powell, who has been an
alderman and a county supervisor — independently and
quietly organized a referendum campaign, essentially
springing it on Cieslewicz and the party. The mayor and
PD eventually embraced the effort.
For local Democrats, PD is usually a partner, but
relations are now strained, mostly over PD’s 2000
endorsement of Nader over Al Gore and supporting
candidates running against liberal Democrats for county
offices last fall.
“If that’s the kind of loyalty they show, why should we
be supporting them with our time and resources,” county
Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Bigelow said.
County Board Sup. Brett Hulsey, Madison, the local
Sierra Club president, still fumes about the Nader
endorsement, saying it helped Bush win, and recently
left the party. “They don’t always reward their
friends, let’s put it that way,” he said.
The Democrats now have a rule requiring a supermajority
before cross-endorsing someone from another party.
Nancy Jensen, executive officer of the Apartment
Association of South Central Wisconsin, which for years
has tangled with PD on tenant-landlord issues, said she
works productively with members but that the party can
be “intolerant” of opposing views.
Fervor
The fervor among some in PD probably inspired three
members — Patrick DePula, Thomas Dewar and Powell —
to smear political opponents with offensive e-mails,
said one of the targets, Brandon.
The trio eventually apologized.
The smears, which led to criminal charges against
DePula, shouldn’t reflect on the party, leaders said,
noting two of the three are Democrats, too.
“The people who did this belong to all kinds of
groups,” Konkel said.
PD has eased its candidate pledge, didn’t endorse
anyone for president in 2004 and has demonstrated that
it can compromise, leaders said.
The party and apartment association forged a deal on
having more landlords accept poor tenants with federal
rent subsidies, Konkel said. The sides, in fact,
celebrated with beers at a Downtown bar after the
council’s vote.
And PD worked with Smart Growth Madison, a development
industry group, to shape and pass the inclusionary
zoning law, which requires construction of lower-cost
housing, she said. “It took a while to look at each
other’s issues … but we developed a respectful
working relationship.”
Those examples showed the best of a maturing party,
Cieslewicz said.
But King and the party needlessly burned bridges in
rejecting a mayor’s office compromise with small
business on the minimum wage because it had the votes,
the mayor said.
“It’s easy to sit on the outside and criticize, but
it’s harder to govern,” Konkel said. “It’s hard to
govern responsibly and stick to your principles. I
think it’s a challenge for us. But I think we’ve shown
we can do it.”
What’s next
* Assessing impacts of new development.
* Expanding affordable housing trust fund.
* Tightening lobbying law.
* Getting adequate county human services funding.
* Defending the minimum wage.
* Reviewing policy for public subsidies to developers.
* Promoting in-fill development.
* Developing an education platform.
* Making the Madison School Board more proactive.
* Working on comprehensive plan.
Voices of Progressive Dane
Elections committee chairman Michael Jacob, project
coordinator for Covering Kids and Families, which helps
low-income people get state BadgerCare health coverage.
Co-chairwoman Brenda Konkel, Madison City Council
president, a lawyer, and director of the nonprofit
Tenant Resource Center.
Co-chairman Nick Berigan, who works part-time in
technology at UW Hospital.
Stephanie Rearick, a musician, owner of Mother Fool’s
Coffeehouse on Williamson Street, and member of the
city’s Alcohol License Review Committee.
Johnny Winston Jr., Madison School Board member and
Madison firefighter.
Shwaw Vang, Madison School Board member and case
manager for the Mental Health Center of Dane County.
Joe Lindstrom, UW-Madison student, State Street
outreach worker, and Wisconsin National Guard member
now in Iraq.
Elected Progressive Dane officials
* U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison.*
* State Rep. Mark Miller, D-Madison.*
* Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz.*
* Madison City Council (eight of 20 members): City
Council President Konkel, Alds. Mike Verveer, Robbie
Webber**, Judy Olson, Austin King, Jean MacCubbin,
Brian Benford and Andy Heidt.
* Madison School Board (four of seven members): Board
President Bill Keys, members Winston, Vang and Bill
Clinghan.**
* Dane County Board (six of 37 members): Beth Gross,
Echnaton Vedder, Al Matano, John Hendrick*, Chuck
Erickson and Kyle Richmond.
*Dues-paying party member who ran without formal party
endorsement.
**Elected without party endorsement, but running for
re-election with it.
Progressive Dane successes
* Living wage for employees of city contractors.
* Minimum wage raised for Madison workers.
* Support for 2003 school funding referendum.
* Restored cuts to county human services budget.
* Election of minorities and women.
* Lower-cost housing law.
* Affordable housing fund.
* Reform of public subsidies to developers.
* Lobbying registration.
* Electronic disclosure of campaign finance reporting.
* Scrutiny of campaign finance.
* Easier registration to speak at City Council
meetings.
* Smoking ban.
Contact Dean Mosiman at dmosiman@madison.com or
252-6141.
