A sharp reader wrote, and asked me about the upcoming Walworth County election, as judge Michael Gibbs is retiring from office. There are four candidates in the race: Mark Bromley, David Danz, Scott Letteney, and David Reddy. The Judgepedia has a page that lists candidates for judgeships across the state.
See, Wisconsin Judicial Elections 2010.
Wisconsin has a spring primary election on February 16th, and a spring general election on April 6th.
Whoever wins this race will have to work in Elkhorn, our county seat, and a place that brings to mind Ben Kenobi’s description of Mos Eisley: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Some of these candidates already work in Elkhorn, and yet they are willing to stay even longer. At its most charitable, that’s confirmation that the Stockholm Syndrome is more than just a theory. County government is a place of mediocrity and mendacity matching that of my own town of Whitewater. No easy feat, but there must have been enough self-important, selfish bureaucrats left over after Whitewater’s leadership payroll was set, and I suppose they wound up in Elkhorn.
Mark Bromely is an attorney in private practice, and a member of the Walworth County Board. He’s from Whitewater, and is the only candidate living in this part of the county. He’s a private practitioner, and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School.
I first noticed his campaign signs in December, I think, before any of the other candidates. Ironically, despite the early campaign presence (he had a car in the Whitewater Christmas Parade, too), I could not find one of his signs in our downtown when looking for one last night.
I thought there were quite a few at one time, but I couldn’t find one in town yesterday. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong spots. In any event, residents are likely to recall them: blue and red, and a larger, blue version with Bromley’s picture. They’re sharply done, and are the only signs in the race give voters a picture of the candidate.
Scott Letteney is a municipal judge in the county for Geneva Township, and works as a deputy city attorney in the city of Racine. I haven’t seen any signs for him, that I can recall. I am sure he has some; I just don’t recall. It’s also possible that he has placed many of them in parts of the county that I avoid. Letteney is a graduate of Marquette Law School.
Candidate David Danz is a private practitioner in Elkhorn, and a graduate of the University of San Diego Law School. You have surely spotted his signs, if you’ve walked about Whitewater, and don’t require a seeing eye dog.
They’re unmistakable. It’s not really a matter of asking for one’s vote, as much as insisting upon it. If signs could talk, this one would be shouting.
The same sharp reader who asked me to comment on the judicial candidates also correctly observed how this town will hector every private merchant who’d like to put up a sandwich board, but candidates for the public payroll can put up huge signs without challenge. I favor a rule that allows merchants the same opportunities as candidates. If there are to be large signs, they should at least be for productive private citizens trying to make a living on their own, as much as candidates looking for a salary and benefits from the taxes of others.
The fourth candidate is David Reddy, a Walworth County Court Commissioner, who has worked in private practice and another county’s district attorney’s office. Reddy was graduated from the Thomas Cooley Law School. Reddy has a conventional campaign sign, a photograph of which appears below:
Totally apart from Reddy, look carefully at the location of the sign. It’s a familiar location to anyone in Whitewater — the law firm of which Whitewater’s city attorney, Wally McDonell, is a named partner. That’s his name, McDonell, listed as the final in the sequence of names on the firm’s sign.
McDonell’s been city attorney for a long time, and I believe that he’s actually paid as a city employee now, as a municipal cost-saving matter.
It would, and should, be obvious to anyone that this sign creates the appearance of a conflict of interest. The named partner of this firm, the city attorney, should not be displaying a sign with his preference in this race, on the firm’s lawn. It doesn’t matter that McDonell would insist that he doesn’t think it’s a conflict — reasonable people can easily see as much.
There’s so much talk about what the city manager and others ‘appreciate,’ and what’s ‘appropriate,’ etc. These gentlemen fuss over propriety only for trivial matters when it suits them.
I surely don’t expect these insiders to change, or do what’s right; they shouldn’t — and can’t — expect that I’ll not mention as much.