Five for Exec

    Five names will be on the February 15th primary ballot for  Executive of Milwaukee County.  All of them participated in a candidate forum at Marquette University Law School  Friday, January 21.  Questions were posed by four journalists, and an audience of about a hundred other people were present.   Here are my impressions of the candidates:

Lee Holloway arrived early, and spent about 15 minutes shaking hands with everyone in the room.  He lost the primary for Mayor in 1988, but has won every   county supervisor  election he entered since, including an unsuccessful attempt to recall  him.  He is the epitome of a black, urban politician.
Holloway answered most questions by referring to his 18 years on the County Board and his one month as Acting County Executive.  Although he was  very knowledgeable about all the issues, he does not speak well;  he drops final  "g's"  from words ending in "ing" and frequently makes grammatical errors, such as "what you and them have in common."   Holloway blamed his  well-known problems with his apartment buildings on the bad economy,  which  resulted in his tenants' inability to pay rent.  He said he is curing all his building code violations.

Chris Abele, a thin young man with glasses,  long hair, a moustache and goatee looks like a  "computer nerd."   Although very well-informed about county affairs, he lacks the commanding presence one would expect in an executive.  He noted that he doesn't need the job, and will not accept PAC money, if any is offered.  Abele emphasized his independence from political parties, and stressed the need for co-operation between government entities and politicians of different parties. 

Jim Sullivan, tall, muscular  and crew-cut, looks about 19 years old, but is really in his early thirties.  Unlike Abele, he is a partisan Democrat, and lobbed a number of  verbal grenades at  Scott Walker for "8 years of decay and neglect." Although he is supported by former Exec Tom Ament, he declared that the County was already "moribund" when Walker took over.
Sullivan  favors a small county sales tax dedicated to transit cost.   As if to emphasize his youthful appearance, he spoke often about his late father's service in the Coast Guard.  He declined to answer a hypothetical question about whether he would be in this race if he had been re-elected to the State Senate. 

Jeff Stone, a Republican state representative from Greenfield, is also tall, but looks about 40 years old.  Stone stressed his background in business, as well as in the Greenfield city council and state legislature.  Stone promised not to raise taxes. At all. Period.  He spoke well, but is not an exciting speaker.

Ieusha  Griffin, a young black paralegal who won fame last year for trying to run for the Assembly on the slogan "Not the White Man's Bitch",  explained that she did not mean the slogan racially, but only as metaphor for the power structure. ( She is not using the slogan in this campaign.)   Although  she spoke well and showed good command of  financial  matters, she could not cite any experience that would prepare her to  administer the $1.5 billion county budget.

I predict that Holloway will survive the February 15 primary,  mainly on the strength of  the black vote.   If Abele really spends a  million dollars of his own money on the primary, he will probably get through it, too.   Sullivan and Stone both have an electoral base  (Wauwatosa and Greenfield, respectively) and  a party base  (Democratic and Republican, respectively), but I doubt that either one can match Abele in crucial TV advertising.  Griffin cannot  possibly survive the primary, but if she gets more than about 10% of the vote,  she just might be able to sink Holloway into third place.

But even if Holloway comes in first in the primary, I contend that he has too much "baggage"   (which the Journal Sentinel will keep on Page One) to  win over any of the possible rivals  on April 5.