Mr. Gableman: It Is Not Over Until We Say It Is Over

During the campaign against Louis Butler, Michael Gableman cavalierly handled the question of his cronies running deceptive, misleading and lying campaign advertisements. He continued to display nothing but contempt for the democratic process during Wednesday's post mortems.

Answering questions from the AP, as reported in the Wisconsin Law Journal, Butler Defeated in Election, Gableman said, "The fact is the ad is behind us."

As an attorney, Mr. Gableman knows that is not a fact.

• Every party who argues a case before Mr. Gableman has to worry about the size of the donation the adverse party made to the one of the shadowy groups that ran the TV ads.
• Mr. Gableman has to wonder in all such cases if he should disclose the nature of the support or the names of the donors.
• For years Wisconsin will focus on these ads as they gave momentum to the efforts to:
  • end the election of Supreme Court justices
  • or change the financing of such elections by requiring disclosure form the issue ad committees (my choice)
  • or changing the election of justices so that the only money that can enter a race is regulated public money.

The fact that this campaign received far more attention than last years Ziegler-Clifford campaign but resulted in a lower voter turn out demonstrates the power of negative smear ads in suppressing the vote.

As Edward B. Foley, Director of Election Law, Moritz College of Law noted:

Voters can be prevented from potentially voting for the other candidate (1) by direct threats of intimidation, (2) by suppressing turnout through disinformation and scare tactics, and finally, (3) by efforts to keep the other candidate's message from being communicated. (emphasis added)...

While voter suppression in its most drastic form involves physical threat and intimidation, it can be more subtle as were the messages laced through the WMC and other issue ads which was design to portray Justice Louis Butler as less than the honorable person that he is.

Comments

[Pat]

It seems to me that most liberals are dancing around the REAL reason Gableman won and Butler lost: What was made plain in this election where in the past it often was not is the fact that Butler is liberal and Gableman is conservative. Period.

It is easy to assume that the vast majority of the electorate in this state is liberal since those are the voices we hear ad nauseam. The run-of-the-mill conservatives generally hold their cards close to their chest, making their opinions somewhat invisible at least until the actual voting takes place.

[Fraley]

You don't like the outcome of a contest and want to avoid losing again...change the rules!

Nice motto.

So which is it, Paul?

Wisconsin voters are:

1) Racist
2) Stupid
3) Not worthy of the honor of selecting judges

Those are the only three options the whine brigade has before them. Until you settle on one option, I guess we can just assume you think it's all three?

[Colin]

It seems that it should have been easy for the Butler campaign to dismiss the ads. Even the WMC website (http://www.wmc.org/MediaOutlet/display.cfm?ID=1793) explains that one of their "loopholes" was the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution...if they want to trivialize the Bill of Rights as a loophole, they've lost all credibility IMO. Yet, voters listened to the loud talking and elected an otherwise poor candidate. Perhaps this is one of those things that is easier said than done, but Butler really should have put these to rest long ago.

The voters were stupid, but the Butler campaign sat back and allowed them to be.

[Jess Wundrun]

One aspect of the Butler campaign that's not being discussed here is that Butler himself was seriously underfunded. We know from our elected legislators that these days about 75% of their time is spent raising money to be able to run. Butler didn't campaign as much as he should have because he had a day job.

[Brett]

Colin -

I think you're on to something, but there are two problems:

First, how do you keep the voter's attention past the word "loophole" in your sentence? Once you start talking about The United States Constitution's Sixth Amendment and the Wisconsin Constitution's Article I Sect...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The fact that even Gableman himself was unwilling to engage Justice Butler in a debate about the merits of any of Justice Butler's opinions aside from "so and so told me that this was a clear misapplication of the law" (this is no lie, watch Gableman's critique of Thomas v. Mallet in the last debate, it's hilarious!) shows how unlikely (though I suppose possible) it is to educate the public on the intricacies of the law.

Second, if Justice Butler went into defense mode to try to explain how wrong the television ads were, he would have lost track of his own message during his own campaign. Remember, this election was woefully covered by all news media outlets, both print and nonprint. In those precious few sound bites you get, do you want it to be a defensive statement or an offensive one? I suppose this is a strategy one, but if you play into the other side's hand, you might as well fold your own.

Brett

As long as people like Pat don't think any deeper than "pat" answers like "liberal - bad" and "conservative - good" WMC, which owns the franchise on "conservative" in this state, will continue to win elections.

I will be surprised if Gableman ever rules against the business in any business versus private citizen case that comes before the court. People like Pat will only learn how "liberal" they really are when they are wrongfully terminated by their employers, develop health problems from a nearby factory's pollution, have their property values depressed when a power line is built across their land.

Gableman will never recuse himself from any cases involving corporations because, after everything WMC did for him, he really ought to recuse himself from EVERY case involving Wisconsin big businesses, ESPECIALLY WMC members.

and the whining continues.

Get over it. Everyone saw what the choice was and voted that way.

They didn't want him back when he was beaten by Sykes, and they dumped him as soon as they had the chance.

Your sniveling, pompous crap is exactly why I quit being a democrat

[Charlie]

Brett: I don't think Butler should have directly answered Gableman's ads by going into defense mode, as you put it, but I think he should have run ads explaining exactly what the Supreme Court does and why he's qualified to be a justice. The Gableman ads strongly implied that it's some kind of criminal court and that being tough on crime will make you a good Supreme Court justice. Butler should have hammered home the point that criminal cases make up a tiny percentage of the cases the court hears.

[Jan]

I don't think Gableman is conservative in any sense; instead of upholding conservative principles, I expect him to rule on the basis of what his funders want. It is also not "conservative" to trash the Wisconsin Supreme Court or our system of justice (e.g. the role of the defense attorney) and then expect the citizenry to respect him or his decisions as a member of the highest court in our state. He may ascend to his high position only to find that his campaign has tarnished the whole institution.

It's also not "conservative" to use falsehoods in campaign ads. Wisconsin has had many conservative justices whose old-fashioned values would have never permitted them to conduct the kind of campaign Gableman did and then claim to be "proud" of it.

Butler's ads were of the "this is why Louie is a good guy" variety. He needed to run ads that questioned whether his opponent was bought and paid for by out-of-state interests. That would have resonated with Wisconsinites just as much as Gableman's "law and order" commercials did and introduced doubt about Gableman as a Supreme Court judge (what do
his funders want from him anyway?).

[Michael J. Cheaney]

Boy is this a target rich environment.

1. We have Paul saying that unless 100 percent of the Electorate votes 100 percent of the Time then that Automatically means that voter suppression took place. (would someone be so kind as to show me where 100 percent of the people have voted in ANY election in the 232 year history of the United States?)

2. Paul said:

Every party who argues a case before Mr. Gableman has to worry about the size of the donation the adverse party made to the one of the shadowy groups that ran the TV ads.

-it seems to me that Judge Butler was accused of this very thing last fall. The only difference were his contributions were from attorneys who had case before SCOWI at that time.

3. And as a result of all this we have the Liberals telling us that we are not as "enlightened" as them and that the Governor should be able to appoint Justices. I'm so proud to live in a state where the motto is "You too stupid to elect politicians, so the Governor will do it for you."

[raul]

We must end judicial elections because liberals lose. We must install a vast regime of liberal hegemony.

[Rastafari Joe]

As someone who was not born in Wisconsin, but resides here, and closely followed the Supreme Court race I feel that Wisconsin voters are indeed:

1) Stupid (dumb as dirt, but no worse than other states)

2) Racist (extremely! folks tell me the Deep South is better than this state! Gableman didn't
want WI called Alabama North, then I call it Mississippi North)

3) Incapable of selecting Supreme Court members (obviously, b/c a moronic parrot is now a justice for a decade!)