Chris Abele: LIBERAL

Steve Schultze, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writes that Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele is hard to peg as a liberal or conservative.

It was clear from the get-go that Chris Abele was not going to be your typical politician.

The 44-year-old had never held office or even worked a traditional job before winning the Milwaukee County executive race in April, and he's kept a relatively low profile since then.

Abele has sometimes sounded like a conservative, especially when vowing not to raise taxes, damning county pensions as a major financial drag and speaking of wringing every last drop of efficiency from county services.

But he's often also viewed by some as a liberal, in his links with the Democratic Party, support from unions and backing of causes such as extending health insurance coverage to gay and straight unmarried partners of county workers.

By temperament, Abele also strays from the standard image of the ego-driven politician. Indeed, he often appears reticent in the limelight, as when he delivered his 2012 budget speech Thursday before a full house in the County Board chamber in a hurried monotone, reading intently and barely glancing up from his script.

What he actually put in the budget sent a more powerful message. Not only did Abele keep his no-new-taxes pledge, he put the burden of filling a gaping $55 million shortfall squarely on the backs of county workers and Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.'s budget, which would be trimmed by millions of dollars.

Abele also cut arts funding, including wiping out a $378,000 program of support to local arts groups, including Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Ballet, Milwaukee Repertory Theater and Skylight Opera Theatre. He also trimmed 15% from county subsidies to the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts and the federated library system.

So is Abele a Leftist or a conservative?

He's a self-declared Leftist.

He's not at all "hard to peg."

Just because the unions aren't thrilled with some of the things Abele has done doesn't make him a conservative.

Listen to Abele brag about his Lefty credentials:



Transcript

CHRIS ABELE: I'm from Boston. I moved here about 20 years ago, and I stayed here because I love this place like nowhere else I've ever lived. And I won't live anywhere else.

As many of you know, I run a foundation right now. I support, have supported for a long time a lot of LEFTY causes proudly, a lot of Democrats. Prior to that, I built and ran a business, had some success in that, continue to maintain it, but most of my time and the most rewarding thing I do is to work hard and try, try to help move the world in the right direction as I see it. I imagine, largely, how you see it.

Politically, I was thinking before experience with other-minded people for a long time a big part of what I did was human rights work. And I had the odd and somewhat surreal experience of working with the Bush State Department, which was just that - odd and surreal.

I know that things you've heard and descriptions about how partisan things can get in government, even when I thought I'd seen the highest extremes, I had the experience of the State Department requesting a group that I was working with, a meeting. And they wanted to do a grant with us, and they asked on a phone call, 'Hey we like your group, but we researched your board of directors and you have a lot of Democrats on your board.' And I seriously thought he was joking at the time, and I said, 'Well, that's still legal, right?'

...But just in terms of the extremes to which things go, if we can never forget, never forget it's so important to fight for the things that make Democrats great: fundamental fairness, fundamental civil liberties, and that's why I've spent a lot of my working life in the last 20 years doing that and with pride.

My progressive experience I think is best summed by ACLU, Citizen's Action, Planned Parenthood, NOW, Feminist Majority, NARAL, Women for the League of Conservation Voters, a whole bunch of education groups, and, you know, a long list, none of which of course I was doing because I thought I was going to be running for office, all of which I was doing because they're things I care about and will do no matter what happens in this race.

I decided to run because, while I've been on the other side and supported candidates and Dems with varying degrees of success locally, statewide, and federally for many years, I truly, truly care, again, about the place that's my home. And I've watched, as we all have, as this county has been an increasing train wreck. I mean, I think it might have been the Titanic about, you know, maybe six years ago. It's become the Titanic plus the Hindenburg, but worse. Since then, and given what the governor's likely to do in terms of shared revenue and reimbursement funds, it'll get worse still.

I think the fact that the biggest thing the county does, health and human services, is something we rarely hear about is because for seven years the last leader of the county was largely indifferent to health and human services, and that is truly tragic. Yes, parks matter, absolutely, and so do the arts, and so do the courts, and so does busing and so does transit. BUT human services, I mean, the human part of what we do, to allow that to suffer the way we have is beneath all of us.

I'm running because I care. I'm running because I had a lot of opportunities to lead and I've had a lot of success doing it. I'm running because I've worked with politicians at local, state, and federal level on both parties. And I'm running because I know I can make a difference. And I will beat Jeff Stone.

Abele is very easy to peg.

"My progressive experience I think is best summed by ACLU, Citizen's Action, Planned Parenthood, NOW, Feminist Majority, NARAL, Women for the League of Conservation Voters, a whole bunch of education groups, and, you know, a long list, none of which of course I was doing because I thought I was going to be running for office, all of which I was doing because they're things I care about and will do no matter what happens in this race."

This is Abele in his own words.

He defines himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Lefty, a liberal to the core.

It's nuts for the Journal Sentinel to run a piece on Abele being somewhat of an enigma.