Minutes from Sunday 2/1/09 Abrahamson meeting
Gail Bliss
Abrahamson Campaign (2/1/09)
We finished up with a calendar, but I want to start with it here.
6:00 PM, Tuesday, February 10 at 1 Odana Court - Ron Biendseil of
the Middleton Obama Team sent a notice about an organizational meeting
for the Abrahamson GOTV effort. This meeting will be for planning
and organizing. Please RSVP to Ron rbi...@charter.net 836-1920 or
712-6831.
Tuesday February 24 The campaign wants to have a "Huge Reception"
with Chief Justice and Madison area volunteers. Specific time and
location will be announced later.
Tuesday April 7 Election Day
Eight of us gathered and had a good discussion about judicial
campaigns in general and this race specifically. There are a lot of
rules that hamstring a judicial candidate:
They can't talk about how they would rule on cases that may come
before the courts
They can't ask for campaign funds – others have to do the asking
They can't get entangled with the political parties which means that
a judge doesn't have access to the sort of voter data that the Obama
campaign or the Democratic Party would routinely use.
For the campaign web site, including a bipartisan list of supporters
go to http://www.abrahamson2009.com
Turnout for spring elections tends to be very low, below 20% of
eligible voters. We discussed ways of increasing turnout.
Trying to motivate new voters to get out and vote.
Get Out The Vote efforts in late March and early April
Encouraging absentee ballot voting, as easier than getting people to
the polls, (This would need to be done much sooner in the cycle
because it takes time for absentee requests to be filed, mailed and
returned.)
We discussed the statement out of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce
that they would not be endorsing or financing either candidate in this
campaign. WMC got some push back from some of it's members, about
their behavior in the last two judicial campaigns. Epic Systems of
Verona has been most vocal in their objections. WMC can LEGALLY
LAUNDER CONTRIBUTIONS by sending money out of state and allowing the
out of state interest groups to buy issue ads or make contributions.
See http://www.uppitywis.org/all-i-know-what-i-read-papers-9 (you may
need to scroll down or search for WMC)
Three people who were at the meeting were also on a conference call
with the campaign organizers about a speaker's bureau, and talking
points for the campaign. The campaign wanted the message to be that
Chief Justice Abrahamson "is a tough but fair minded judge. Her
decisions are guided by the same basic values that Wisconsin families
rely on every day: Common sense. Independence. Integrity. Hard work.
Her rulings are based on the facts and merits of the case - not
politics or ideology. That's why she has the support of thousands of
police, district attorneys and sheriffs from all across the state."
She is nationally recognized as one of the nation's top 100 judges.
Many of the people on the conference call wanted to talk about Randy
Koschnick, the challenger. There was a reference to a Capital Times
story about the problems in the Jefferson County Courts. Supreme
Court Justices need to work with their colleagues and write a lot of
opinions. The concerns raised in this article include a non-collegial
style http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/317876 Koschnick has
kept the criminal cases for himself. There was discussion of whether
this was to increase his track record in criminal cases, or because he
was most comfortable in that arena. There was frustration that we
don't have a lot of answers about the challenger.
Russell Wallace introduced a new website www.BlueWisconsin.org. He
will be sending out information on how it works. We agreed that
Yes-we-can-Madison would encourage members to give to the Abrahamson
Campaign thru Blue Wisconsin. This benefits us by giving us a fund
raising track record that may increase our credibility in future
campaigns. It benefits Blue Wisconsin, which is just getting started,
in providing a user of the service. It benefits the Abrahamson
campaign in that they get exactly the same amount of money they would
be getting from any other on line donation – Blue Wisconsin is not
charging anything for their services, just paying the credit card
processing fees that the campaign would need to pay directly if the
contributions were made to the campaign website.