Is Kathleen Falk sane?
Hours before the results were known; Falk said she was proud of the campaign she had run but also said her weakness, should she lose, was her lack of name recognition statewide.
"Tom just ran and is well-known," Falk said of Barrett, who ran and lost for governor to Walker by roughly 125,000 votes in November 2010. "I had to get myself well-known and that's harder to do in a shorter amount of time."
No, Kathy. You lost because you got into bed with the public employee unions and most Wisconsinites are sick of that battle. You spent 14 years as Dane County Executive and STILL lost it to Barrett by 31 POINTS. Are you saying you got your ass kicked in Dane County because voters didn't know who you were? Did they all forget who you were in the last year? Were there not enough public employees in Dane County for you to be competitive? Or is it possible that even most liberals are tired of you?
I've seen some bad excuses before, but this sets a new record for post-defeat bullshit.
6 comments:
She was in bed with the HEADS of the public employee unions, not with most of the employees themselves. The leadership jumped on her pledge to veto any budget without restoring collective bargaining, which most people realized was a non starter. That killed it for her right there. I see Barrett taking a less confrontational approach,restoring some rights in an incremental fashion, but things won't ever go entirely back to the pre ACT 10 days. Where I'm at (the University) as part of Act 10 they are creating their own personel system, subject to approval by the Regents and Legislature. If the university is allowed to implement a fair system without a lot of meddling from the politicians, I'm OK with that.
She had run 2 previous times for statewide office, so name recognition was not the issue. No question signing the pledge was a big mistake. Also, it is just harder to win coming from Dane county. Contrary to how she has been portrayed I thought that as county exec she was pretty pragmatic in terms of budgeting and probably would have been a good Gov.
Perhaps she would make a decent Sec. of Administration?
Even better, she claims it's about "name recognition" when she loses her HOME COUNTY by nearly 30 points.
I'd say it was name recognition alright. We recognized that Kathleen Falk was an empty opportunist with a ridiculous strategy (vetoing the budget? WTF?) who would get drilled in a general election. And that's why a lot of union thugs like me made darn sure we didn't vote for her.
Good lord, what is with all the Falk bashing? Heaven forbid someone actually stands on the side of labor. Oh right, "labor" is the new "liberal"--it's best to only whisper those words, kind of like "cancer". Now even my fellow liberals are starting to bum me out. Barrett won--please move on.
I'm neither liberal nor conservative, so perhaps I'm the wrong guy to answer.
I have no problem with labor unions. I work in a union-dominated profession. I do, however, think union leaders are often politically clueless and tone deaf. This is one of those instances.
As Jake alluded to above, the problem wasn't that Falk was running a campaign and earned the support of labor. The problem is that people like Mary Bell and Marty Beil were shopping for a puppet, and Kathy Falk stepped up. Their early approach - that of the schoolyard bully puffing out her chest in an attempt to scare others off - ultimately blew up the second Tom Barrett figured out that if you stood up to the bully she'd deflate.
As I've said before, leaders of public employee unions need to get over themselves and their narcissistic view of Wisconsin politics. They are a key part of the Democratic base, but as Tom Barrett showed, they're hardly a monolithic force. They overestimate their value the same way the Tea Party overestimates itself as a representative of all Republicans.
I suspect Falk's drubbing shows that many Democrats don't want a governor being led around by AFSCME any more than many Republicans want a governor being led around by the Tea Party.
Finally, let's all accept that Kathy Falk just isn't as good of a candidate in reality as she should be in theory. She managed to somehow lose to J.B. Van Hollen in '06 in a cycle in which Wisconsin basically elected the chick at the Lancôme counter to be the state treasurer. Now, six years later, she gets killed again. She's failed three times in statewide campaigns. Put her to bed.
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