Over a hundred people attended a debate at Hyland Hall between Reps. Andy Jorgensen and Evan Wynn in the 43rd Assembly race. The Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters and UW-Whitewater Student Government co-sponsored the forum.

Two candidates, two lecterns, brief candidate biographies, opening and closing statements, with over a dozen questions for both candidates in between. Rep. Wynn chose a heather coat with open collar; Rep. Jorgensen wore a dark blue suit with a medium blue tie. Jorgensen is the more relaxed, conversational speaker, and offered his opening and closing remarks without looking at notes; Wynn read well but from written remarks. Both answered questions in a conversational manner.

The audience was attentive and respectful: there were no outbursts, no heckling.

I hope there’s a video that goes online; if it’s available I’ll add it to this post.

A few observations:

Education. Although Wynn rightly contends that one can do more with less, he came up short on the opening question about education cuts in the latest biennial budget. Wynn wanted to contend that he supported a tuition cap; Jorgensen rightly replied that Wynn supported only a cap in the rate of increase for tuition costs, but not a cap on the costs themselves.

Either Wynn didn’t see the distinction (unlikely) or he didn’t think he’d get caught out in an error. Wynn also made the mistake of suggesting that cuts to education were cuts in administration; again, Jorgensen corrected him by saying that only about 20% of the recent cuts to education came from administrative costs. It’s hard to believe that Wynn really believes he can convince someone that cuts of over a billion were purely administrative. People listen and think: it’s just a talking point.

A better answer would have been to show how much Wisconsin spends, right now under the current budget, on education. How much per pupil, and how much in particular areas and fields? One might then show how this compares to nearby states, and to our level of spending a generation ago.

Wynn didn’t make that case, and if an incumbent representative who claims a particular interest in education won’t even try, he doesn’t deserve any help (from libertarians or others).

Money in Politics. Both candidates bemoan money in politics (WEAC spends too much, corporations give too much), but money makes political speech meaningful and effective. If members of a union want their dues to go to political contributions, why shouldn’t they? If stockholders of a corporation want the organization they collectively own to give money to a candidate, that’s not wrong – it’s a peaceful expression of political views.

Gov. Romney once said that corporations are people. He was half-right: corporations (and unions) are composed of people, and those people should be able to pool their resources to fund political speech.

Collective bargaining. Wynn opposes for public workers; Jorgensen supports for anyone. Oddly, Wynn seems to think that public-sector collective bargaining doesn’t work because some public officials are beholden to unions and not taxpayers. His argument is that their supposed union obligation denies taxpayers a say in the outcome of public-sector collective bargaining.

Wisconsin holds regularly-scheduled elections, and Rep. Wynn is an incumbent running for re-election in one of them now. If taxpayers didn’t have a say, then we’d have the same representative that we have always had.

Wynn places a needless, but severe limitation, on workers’ freedom association while ignoring the power of voters to respond to budgets they dislike by simply removing profligate legislators. (Wynn might look in the mirror in this regard: the majority didn’t cut government so much as shift it from one direction to another. Real change comes with eliminating the overall size of government by meaningful amounts, not shifting funding to one’s preferred political interests.)

Voter ID. Rep. Jorgen supported an earlier version of voter ID restrictions from 2007, Rep. Wynn supports the current law (now declared unconstitutional and on appeal), but I would support neither.

In any event, Rep. Wynn’s theory behind supporting the latest, severe restrictions is that it doesn’t matter how hard or how long it is for a lifelong citizen to get an ID to prove he’s a citizen, since without IDs for all someone may still vote in that citizen’s place, making the wait meaningless.

These are different harms: in the one case, hundreds of thousands of existing citizens are forced to pay and struggle to maintain the right to vote they’ve always had, but in the other Wynn offers only a few people who may have committed fraud. (He’s can’t always prove, even, that some of these cases were not accidents, wholly apart from the lack of a photo ID, by the way.)

If you’re a voting-age citizen without a photo ID – like 300,000 people in Wisconsin — Rep. Wynn doesn’t care to what trouble you have to go, in response to his new, restrictive legislation for a supposed problem he can only describe by anecdote.

Not So Different After All. Rep. Wynn ran two years ago as a different kind of politician, one who had an undoubtedly honorable record of military service. Now that he’s an incumbent, he’s suddenly much fussier and less willing to accept protest and debate than when he was a candidate.

Twice during the evening, Wynn repeated the absurd contention that Rep. Jorgensen was somehow out of control, shameful, etc. There’s your ‘bipartisan’ representative, Evan Wynn: he’ll double down on a smear to stay in office.

Wynn’s actually upset because, during a one o’clock in the morining debate between legislators at the Capitol, Rep. Jorgensen and others were protesting the majority’s closing down of debate in contravention to legislative procedure.

That’s it – a bunch of legislators debating and speaking, at the Capitol, and Evan Wynn wants to make it seem like Andy Jorgensen’s a soccer hooligan. What an embarrassment to Wynn and his campaign. Andy Jorgensen has held hundreds of listening sessions across the area, and although I do not support all Jorgensen’s positions (I’m not a Democrat), it’s a laughable to say Jorgensen has ever been out of control.

It’s a measure of how out of touch – or desperate – Wynn is to offer this as a believable accusation. Even those who disagree with his policies know that Jorgensen is well-liked and respected.

Wynn came in with the promise of a new politics, and now after just two years’ time as an incumbent, he’ll say even the most ridiculous thing to stay in office. Republican candidates elsewhere haven’t campaigned this way; he’s set a lower standard, all the while insisting that his conduct represents ‘professionalism.’

No, Rep. Wynn, that’s just ambition.

Wisconsin has thousands of laws, for all manner of restrictions, prohibitions, requirements, limitations, bans, etc. Considering this foundation, there are two ways to look at adding new laws.

Some people will say that more laws are needed to shape and mold conduct in the right direction, to guide society to a better way of thinking and acting. Others will contend that additional laws should be a matter of last resort, and enacted only after meeting a burden of necessity.

Libertarians fall in the second group.

New Voter ID Requirements. These recent years have seen worrying about the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections. There are fears that our elections allow fraudulent voting, of a kind that’s noticeable and significant. For this reason, some would like us to enact new voter ID laws.

In all Wisconsin, where is the compelling evidence of significant harm from supposed voter fraud that would justify new voting requirements?

There isn’t any. Wisconsin doesn’t have a voter fraud problem that justifies changes in our law. There’s talk about fraud, but there’s no evidence that it is an actionable problem.

There is compelling academic evidence that new voter ID laws would place hurdles before hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites:

But [Circuit Court Judge] Flanagan noted that birth certificates are required to get the IDs and voters who don’t have them must pay for them. He said more than 300,000 voters do not have an acceptable form of ID.

“The cost and the difficulty of obtaining documents necessary to apply for a (Division of Motor Vehicles) photo ID is a substantial burden which falls most heavily upon low-income individuals,” his decision said.

A demographer who testified for the state, Peter Morrison, argued virtually all eligible voters had a photo ID, but University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer estimated more than 301,000 do not have a driver’s license or state ID card. That’s 9.3% of registered voters.

Some Republicans, some conservatives, and some members of Tea Party groups worry about how supposed voter fraud might influence our elections. They would do better to consider our own electoral history, during a time (as now) when voter ID laws were not in force.

Gov. Thompson, Sen. Johnson, Atty. General Van Hollen, and Gov. Walker (twice in a year and a half) won statewide office without voter ID laws in force. The absence of additional restrictions on voting didn’t keep them from victory. The fear that fraud threatens GOP success in Wisconsin is unfounded, and almost embarrassingly overwrought.

Republicans can and do win here (often by solid margins); they’re not being disadvantaged. If anything, they’ve been on a winning streak.

The Left’s version of these concerns is the suspicion that voting machines in places like Ohio have been rigged. There’s a cottage industry built on the proposition that voting machines in Ohio in 2004 were somehow rigged in George W. Bush’s favor.

They weren’t. George W. Bush won Ohio because more people in that state voted for him.

Rep. Wynn, in his campaign flyer taxpayer-funded newsletter from last year highlights his commitment to new voter ID laws.

It’s actually a commitment to make it harder for citizens to vote.

When Rep. Wynn attends a candidate forum later tonight, or when he travels throughout the 43rd District, perhaps he’ll look out and consider how many of the people he sees would have a harder time voting because of the additional restrictions he supports.

The Candidates’ Questionnaire Responses. Over at the Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters’ website, there are answers from both candidates to a questionnaire from the League.

Candidate Forum. Tonight at 7:30 PM, the two candidates for the 43rd Assembly District will be at Timmerman Auditorium in Hyland Hall, on the UW-Whitewater campus.

Tomorrow: Debate recap.

No American ever became popular defending Chinese manufacturing. But purchases of less-expensive foreign goods free comsumers and communities to invest and spend on higher-end American products. That’s why I’m opposed to Rep. Jorgensen’s proposal to limit Wisconsin communities’ purchases of infrastructure goods produced in China (or anywhere else).

Protectionism is the wrong direction for the 43rd, or anywhere else.

I’m sensitive that people are legitimately worried about their jobs, and that those who have lost jobs are scarcely optimistic about free trade. It’s still a good policy.

Forcing communities to buy American, at higher prices, limits their ability to purchase other American goods or services.

(China is unpopular, and there are two reasons that she should be. Her government oppresses political dissenters, and so is a threat to her own people’s safe, free expression. That same government also bullies its immediate neighbors, and threatens their freedom of navigation in the South China Sea with wildly excessive territorial claims.)

But that’s not a policy of Chinese businesspeople, and we’ve no reason to respond to the Chinese government’s actions with policies that limit purchases by American cities, businesses, or consumers.

Rep. Wynn wrote in reply to Jorgensen’s proposal that, after all, it may be a violation of existing trade treaties.

Perhaps, but that’s not half of why the proposal’s a mistaken one. It’s a mistaken one – a bad idea that will make prices and costs higher – as a fundamental misunderstanding of the benefits of free trade. Really, it’s a misunderstanding of the benefits of free exchange with anyone, whether here or abroad.

One sees that almost everyone – Pres. Obama, Gov. Romney, U.S. Senate & House candidates, Wisconsin legislative candidates, one and all, etc. – wants to show a strong hand against Chinese manufacturing.

What’s American, By the Way? When someone buys an iPhone, she buys something ‘Designed in Cupertino, but Assembled in China.’ Is that American or Chinese? Apple’s an American company that rose to the top of the tech world by developing mutually productive relationships with foreign manufacturers.

No one forced those arrangements on them – Apple and FoxConn, for example, freely chose to transact business.

What’s Infrastructure? Roads, bridges, etc., one hears. Sure enough, that’s true. But is that infrastructure any more important to America than the computers, phones, or cars that are often assembled abroad? They’re critical to our success and prosperity, too: we’re richer and more productive and happier for them.

Infrastructure sounds important, but so are all those other goods Americans enjoy.

A Little Candor About Trade and Outsourcing. What most candidates at the federal, state, or local level won’t say, but libertarians will:

Trade policy’s reached all the way to the WI 43rd Assembly race. No matter how pressing the topic for voters, an approach that limits purchases from abroad is short-sighted and expensive for Americans.

Wisconsin discussed, debated, protested for or against, and saw legislative & gubernatorial recall elections over Gov. Walker’s collective bargaining changes. It was, in fact, a national and international story. These changes were easily the biggest political issue for Wisconsin in a generation – with protests and recall elections unprecedented in our history.

How odd, then, that of the two candidates running for the WI 43rd Assembly District, only one even mentions clearly and expressly on his campaign website restrictions placed on workers’ collective bargaining.

Andy Jorgensen – but not Evan Wynn — refers plainly to these changes on the ‘Issues/Where I Stand’ section of his campaign website?    Perhaps Rep. Wynn doesn’t remember what he was doing on April 6, 2011.  Allow me to refresh his memory:

I hold an AP license to this photo, as it speaks a thousand words, while about collective bargaining on his website (as of this post, so very close to the election) Rep. Wynn still provides not even one direct, clear word.

(See, Jorgensen’s issues page and Wynn’s issues page and budget highlights. I’ve saved screenshots of the candidates’ respective campaign websites, as of this post, which any American may do of any campaign site as fair use. It’s a right worth exercising and defending.)

Although I support significant and permanent reductions in the size of government, I did not support reductions in (to my mind) all workers’ legitimate rights of association. Some libertarians supported Gov. Walker’s enacted, collective bargaining restrictions, others opposed them. (A solid summary of libertarian view of workers’ union rights, recognizing the competing needs and interests involved, is available from Jacob Levy in a post entitled, ‘Thoughts on unions.’)

To Gov. Walker’s credit, when he ran in the 2012 recall, he ran on all his programs, including express mention of his reductions to workers’ bargaining rights. He held this position throughout the recall elections, and espoused it both in Wisconsin and across America. For his open and express defense of Act 10, he gained loyal Republican supporters in Wisconsin and places far beyond. He might have said the same before the 2010 election, but he was certainly upfront in June 2012.

Although I disagree with his restrictions, I respect that he ran on them plainly in 2012, and I think most Wisconsinites do, too.

In the end, one doesn’t win with people, but on issues, forthrightly stated.

Tomorrow: China and the WI Assembly Race.