April 1 Election Is Important

By Joan Sanstadt, News Editor
Thursday, March 27, 2008 10:28 AM CDT

In 2008, April 1 is far more than April Fool’s Day n it is Spring Election Day. It is held on the first Tuesday in April.

This is when, across the state, judicial officers, county executives, county supervisors, school board members and officers of towns, villages and cities are chosen.

The only statewide race on April 1 is for a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This year, the candidates are incumbent Justice Louis Butler, and challenger Michael Gableman.

Technically, contests in the Spring Election are considered nonpartisan. The latest edition of the Blue Book even lists the April contest as the “Nonpartisan April Spring Election.”

Candidates

Justice Louis Butler was named by Gov. Jim Doyle in 2002 to fill the seat left open when former Justice Diane Sykes was appointed to the federal bench. Butler had lost to Sykes in 2000.

Butler, 56, is the state’s first and only African-American to serve as a Supreme Court justice. He has a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence University and his law degree is from UW-Madison.

Challenger Michael Gableman, 41, is the Burnett County Circuit Judge. He was appointed to the bench in 2002 by then Gov. Scott McCallum. He was elected to that position again in 2003.

Gableman’s bachelor’s degree is from Ripon College and his law degree is from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn.

Justices serve 10-year terms.

On March 28, citizens can watch a televised forum with Supreme Court candidates Butler and Gableman at 7 p.m. on Wisconsin Public Television or listen to the forum on Wisconsin Public Radio. Frederica Freyberg of Wisconsin Public Television and Eric Franke of WISC-TV in Madison will anchor the program.

Rebroadcasts are available in some areas.

Controversy

This year’s Supreme Court race has had more than its share of controversy. In fact, candidates for the state’s highest court have endured increasingly nasty contests during the past dozen or more years. Not surprisingly, members of the Supreme Court have called for public financing of supreme court races, hoping to cut down on the influence of both money and politics.

It is worth noting that 24 states and the District of Columbia already use what is called “merit selection” in choosing justices for their high courts.

(Under merit selection, an independent group of lawyers and non-lawyers chooses candidates, reviews their qualifications and evaluates them. It then submits a short list of finalists to the governor or whomever is charged with making the appointment.)

This year, the race has been so bitter it was highlighted in a March 24 article in the Wall street Journal under the headline “Wisconsin Bar Brawl.”

Referendum

Voters statewide, on April 1, will be asked to make an important decision on state budget reform.

Voters will have the final say on a resolution which would prohibit a governor from using his partial veto to create new sentences by combining parts of two or more sentences.

The use of cobbling together random words to create altogether new sentences was dubbed the Frankenstein Veto by State Senator Sheila Harsdorf (R-River Falls).

Harsdorf said Governor Jim Doyle’s use of his veto power in the 2005-07 budget bill, “made a mockery of how Wisconsin laws are made. The governor reduced a 752-word section in the budget bill to 20 words. This resulted in spending $427 million from the state’s transportation fund that no legislator voted for.

“In the 2007-09 budget bill, the governor once again combined words to create new sentences that resulted in a nearly doubling of the allowable property tax increase without any legislative vote,” Harsdorf added.

Harsdorf has garnered bipartisan support in the State Senate and a near unanimous vote in the State Assembly to place the veto powers question on the April ballot.

“The partial veto was never intended to allow a governor to enact laws not passed by the legislature,” Harsdorf said.

Here is the wording of the proposed Constitutional Amendment:

“QUESTION 1: Partial veto. Shall section 10(1)(c) of article V of the constitution be amended to prohibit the governor, in exercising his or her partial veto authority, from creating a new sentence by combining parts of two or more sentences of the enrolled bill?”

A “yes” vote would limit the power; a “no” vote would keep the status quo.

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