the men behind the podium.

Meet the candidates for Mayor of Madison, 2011

As a student and a member of a demographic that is typically ignorant to local politics, I am well aware that not many of us want to take the time to follow this election, to learn about candidates for positions whose purpose we are only vaguely aware of, or to listen to dry rhetoric about policies we do not understand or care about. My conversations with and observations of the candidates throughout this campaign have looked at each of them from a more personal perspective, rather than reiterate their positions on policy.  I have been getting to know the candidates over drinks and jokes, pulling them out from behind the podium and into an atmosphere that we can better relate to.


I have been working officially with Nick Hart for Mayor as Senior Writer to the campaign since the campaign began in December. I interviewed Nick Hart and campaign manager Stefan Davis last fall, following their announcement of the candidacy

Just as Nick Hart's personality and interests, and his unique position as a comic, were what attracted me to him as a candidate, I believe that the personalities and personal interests of all of the candidates are a forgotten element that those in my forgotten demographic might find more entertaining than the dry rhetoric and policy that has had us nodding off these past eight weeks..

City engineer John Blotz, who has since dropped out of the race, joined the Hart camp for drinks one Sunday morning, and perennial candidate Dennis de Nure granted me a bit of his afternoon to talk about his history and his dreams at the Argus. Former Mayor Paul Soglin's campaign manager has been very kind in every email she has sent, assuring me that they have only to “go over the schedule”, and eventually we will have a chance to talk.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's campaign manager has been kind, as well, whenever I call her, although rather forgetful whenever she promises to call me back. I understand her difficulties in scheduling, however; after all, as she said, “Being the Mayor comes first, of course.”

With just days left before the primary, I have yet to be granted the promised interviews with Soglin or Cieslewicz, but I did attend every debate and follow every poll in this election, and I had the privilege of being personally invited to guest lectures by Soglin and Cieslewicz at the University of Wisconsin.

Nick Hart

Nick Hart

“It's an idea; it's not the best idea, but... ideas grow... We're just putting it out there,” Nick Hart told me of his proposal to legalize and produce hemp and cannabis within the city of Madison in our first interview.  He and campaign manager and fellow comedian, Stefan Davis, sat in the Argus Underground with me in October before the night's show with the Isthmians of Comedy.

Nick announced his intentions to run for Mayor of Madison on August 11^th during a regular appearance at the Big Deuce Open Mic at the Comedy Club on State. He is a local stand-up comic who is running “to keep the others' campaigns honest”, to “challenge the status quo” of municipal politics, and to get more people involved in the election. He continues to point out that only about 12 percent of eligible voters cast their votes for municipal politics, and he acknowledges that he is in a unique position to entice a whole new demographic of voters-- Madison's "bar crowd"-- to get involved with this election.

Nick called his campaign a “civic experiment”, one that allows all of us involved and all of those looking in to get a glimpse into the business of politics in this city. I have watched the campaign struggle to be heard through the rhetoric of the so-called frontrunners, disappointed each morning to read yet another news article about the race that features Soglin and Cieslewicz, bored to tears at debates when not a single candidate engages Nick's platform ideas. I have watched the interest of our target demographic wax and wane throughout the campaign, enthusiastic when they are able to drink with and shake the hand of the candidate, but uninterested when asked to join us on the ground.

Nick hopes to capture about 5 percent of the vote in next week's primary election. He wants to make an impact, “create waves in the stagnant pond” of Madison's politics, and show those who expect just business as usual that Madison's students and barflies are, indeed, paying attention, and that they need to pay attention to us, as well.

John Blotz

I find it important to take note of former candidate John Blotz, although he officially dropped out of the race on January 28. He stated his reasons for ending his campaign to be a lack of resources for being “competitive in the primary” since Soglin had entered the race to challenge Mayor Dave. After sharing Sunday morning Bloody Marys with John just days before, I was personally saddened to watch him remove his voice from the race. His calls for “honesty, integrity, and transparency in our city government” had finally gotten him into the headlines in the Daily Cardinal and gotten mention in the Isthmus and The Daily Page, and he was beginning to emerge as the only candidate with the ability to challenge Mayor Dave's politics.

John Blotz

That Sunday morning, John joined the Hart camp for Bloodys at our favorite dive to unwind from an awkward and dull taping for WYOU's “Meet the Candidates” feature. Before coming to the taping, he had dealt with a series of misfortunes involving plumbing, pets, and his young children at home, while his wife was away at work.

Like John, his wife is an employee of the City of Madison, a position subject to the whims of politics and public funding. John had recently learned that his position as Construction Management Supervisor had not been included in the upcoming budget. After the end of this quarter, he will be out of a job. Though there is no evidence of causation, he made the correlation quite clear between this development and the opinions he has been voicing in recent months against the Mayor's cronyism and favoritism in hiring practices.

“My wife is worried,” John told us.

Government positions are usually secure jobs, “if you can keep your mouth shut”, he said, and they were both aware that the challenges he was making to Mayor Dave in the campaign might leave a sour impression on the administration and put his wife's job at risk as well.

Dennis de Nure

Dennis de Nure

“I am not a serious candidate,” Dennis de Nure stated at the first Mayoral debate, and everyone in the room probably breathed a sigh of relief that he had spoken the line we had all been thinking. He has been running for various offices in the city since 1987, never intending to win. De Nure runs in order to gain a platform for presenting himself as an entrepreneur, rather than a public servant.

This time around, he is presenting the Museum Mile, a series of museums in Madison's downtown that would celebrate Madison's and Wisconsin's history and culture, that he has put the past five years into planning and promoting. He can steer a conversation to this topic like the best of politicians, and he will keep an audience intrigued and entertained, if a bit confused or annoyed.

When I asked Dennis what drives him in his passion for the project, I was surprised by his answer. He had told me earlier that he had studied Social Work, that he was a “natural loner”, that his favorite hobby was reading; and I could see that he was capable of the kind of focus and passion that such a project needed behind it. I expected him to tell me about his love of the city, about his investment in its culture, about a need to remember our history.

Instead, he replied, “Poverty, mostly.”

He was ready to sell his idea and get out of poverty. Dennis has been living at Coventry Group Home, and he relies on coveted library time for computer and internet use. With his limited resources, he is taking all of the opportunities he can get to share his idea with someone who might want to run with it.

Dennis was quick to remind me that Paul Soglin had promised to be one of those people. During the first debate, Soglin expressed an interest in parts of the Museum Mile concept in his closing statement, and promised if elected to hire Dennis to help implement the idea.

Paul Soglin

Paul Soglin and Dave Cieslewicz were invited to speak to a UW urban planning class during the week before the primaries, the theme of the week being “City Visions”.

Hart Camp Treasurer Matt Baier, Nick Hart, Paul Soglin

Soglin approached the talk as a professor would, in a black sweater and slacks and a white collar. He stood comfortably behind the podium with a piece of chalk in his right hand as he spoke. He looked more like a professor this morning than like a politician, and he spoke to the class this way as well. He engaged the students, asking questions and occasionally making jokes-- although at some points when he made the class chuckle, I was unsure whether he was aware of his wit, due the complete lack of expression in his face.

On the board, Soglin wrote a list of the day's themes: land use, transportation, taxation policy. He said these three elements are “intertwined in the control of an urban environment”, and he tied them into each of his topics.

Acknowledging its importance to the lessons of the class and to any city looking toward further development, Soglin asked the question, “Is it inevitable that the urban environment creates slums [and] ghettos? ...Is it inevitable that the solution to that is gentrification?”

His answer was, of course, “no”; but I was not convinced that his vision for a developing Madison is any different from Mayor Dave's value-added, gentrified downtown. He repeated his oft-mentioned statistic that poverty in Madison's public schools is on the rise; 48 percent of students come from households whose income is below the poverty line. He also reiterated the points he made in the debates, that there is nothing that could have “a more profound effect on the quality of life in your city as improving the quality of your schools”.

Soglin did not mention what the Mayor's office might do to improve the quality of Madison's schools and, subsequently, retain higher-income taxpayers and improve the quality of life in his city. But he did say, “There has to be the will and the commitment to fight for the community by its citizens. There is nothing government can do to supplant that.”

Dave Cieslewicz

Mayor Dave and Me

Dave approached the lecture a little more formally at first, though the atmosphere did lighten as students warmed up to him during the Q&A period. He looked more like a politician than a professor in his suit and tie, likely because he was right in the middle of a work day and not because he simply prefers this getup.

He also focused on land use and transportation and talked about the importance of community involvement in city development. He led us through a PowerPoint slideshow of the houses of generations of his family in Milwaukee to demonstrate the changes in urban development and culture over the decades.

He looked at the shift from densely-populated urban neighborhoods to sprawling suburban subdivisions, favoring the urban and criticizing state-led transit development and city zoning codes for encouraging sprawl. The pictures he showed us of the homes of his great-grandparents and grandparents were of two-story homes with porches in dense neighborhoods with sidewalks and residential streets that could “function well for all forms of transportation”-- bicycles, pedestrians, cars, buses. Nostalgically, he described to us the environment where neighbors could interact with each other and oversee the safety of the neighborhood from their front porches, and everyone could buy their groceries at a corner market down the street. He contrasted this to the house he grew up in across a state highway from a mini-mall, and the suburban house in which his parents still reside.

I was able to steal a few minutes with Dave after the lecture, and I asked him for his take on the recent debate about the proposed development of a four-story apartment building on Mifflin Street. He was surprised and impressed when I told him about the “Save Mifflin” Facebook event created by students in opposition to the development.

“It's good to see them get involved,” he told me.

He hasn't seen this kind of reaction from students before regarding city planning, and he seemed genuinely intrigued and sympathetic to their grievances. Mifflin Street is just the sort of city neighborhood he had described with admiration in his lecture; though, as he pointed out, “Its buildings are not all that well-maintained,” and the neighborhood could use plenty of renovations.

I regret not having the opportunity to talk with Dave more, because he is a truly nice guy to talk to. He is a great conversationalist, friendly and respectful and interested in the conversation. After I explained to him the students' reaction to Mifflin Street, he asked me, “What do you think about it?”, and I believe he really cared.

I am not so naïve as to think that his conversational skills are not a result of years of practice as a politician and a businessman. Nonetheless, I am impressed with his demeanor and his respect for everyone he talks to. He may not be very available to his constituents, but he is certainly approachable when one has the chance.

During Soglin's lecture, one student raised his hand and asked, “Where do you start when there's not [the will of] a community to begin with?”

Soglin replied with a simple and optimistic, “There always is.”

However, this very issue is at the heart of the problem with municipal politics. It is this lack of commitment to our community that keeps an overwhelming majority of Madison's voters from paying attention to local elections. It is this lack of care that has Nick Hart disillusioned with the dreams he had for this Mayoral race. It is this lack of involvement by the diverse community that has kept Madison's local politics stagnant despite the progressive claims of the city.