Milwaukee According to Socialist Mayoral Candidate

[Kevin Robert Dean <qualiall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wendel Harris is a  Mayoral Candidate for Milwaukee and a proud member of
the Socialist Party, USA...He was recently a cover story in the local paper
Shepard-Express Metro...
Thanks to James South for bringing this to my attention...

http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/21/7/cover_story.html

Milwaukee According to Wendell Harris

The city's underdog candidate for mayor sees a tale of two cities.

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the foremost critics of the intellectual
and social decay of the roaring 1920s, might have been amused, even smugly
satisfied, with the financial failure of the New Year's Eve Crystal Ball-the
$250-a-plate charity event conceived by Milwaukee-area business leaders.
Wendell J. Harris Sr., the Socialist candidate for mayor of Milwaukee, and
himself a businessman, was disgusted. The event was supposed to highlight
the new Milwaukee, a city in the throes of an urban-planning Renaissance
that has given birth to a new convention center, a major new extension of
the art museum and a plan for public art in neighborhoods. Harris, like most
Milwaukeeans, balked at paying $250 for a party. As a result, Crystal Ball's
host carried a $30,000 debt into the millennium.

"I felt left out," Harris says. "I imagine how other people must have felt.
It was not for all the people of Milwaukee. It underscored that we have
become a society of elite, of separatists."

Such a society is the one Harris believes his opponents in the Feb. 15
primary, Mayor John Norquist and George Watts, owner of the crystal shop and
tea room that bears his name, represent.

Norquist's television ads say Milwaukee is moving in the right direction in
today's growing economy, but Harris argues that the Crystal Ball stands as a
symbolic message that our civic and business leaders are out of touch with
the people of the city.

"We have a large number of people on the bottom while we're in the middle of
what some people call the largest economic boom in history," he says. "The
working poor in Milwaukee is much larger as a group than most people care to
admit. We have a large homeless problem, we have health-care services that
people can't access, and most people can't afford the $100,000 condos and
new homes being built under this administration."

Harris' run for mayor is a campaign "to make Milwaukee one community, one
city and one government that serves us all." It is this ethos that is at the
core of the Democratic Socialist Party of Milwaukee. Harris is party
chairman, and his underfunded campaign is still fighting for the visibility
he needs to effectively raise those issues.

Most of those interested in the spring election believe Norquist will win a
fourth four-year term as mayor. He is clearly the most visible candidate,
and his campaign is running its expected blitz of television advertising.
The ads address the general well-being that the mayor sees in the city,
expansion of educational choices for children in the city, and efforts to
reduce crime.

Watts, a Republican who beat Tommy Thompson in Milwaukee when the governor
first ran for office in 1986, moved to the city last year and switched
parties to challenge Norquist. It seemed as if Watts would at least be able
to muster a credible campaign, but it has been slow to materialize. He
started taking swipes at Norquist on Downtown development and the tearing
down of the Park East Freeway spur, and recently turned his attention to
last year's rising homicide and armed robbery rates.

One pundit says that if Watts "continues to marginalize himself" as the
primary approaches, the Harris for Mayor campaign may have at least an
outside shot of getting through the primary.

"Watts has come off as a disgruntled curmudgeon without any real agenda for
Milwaukee, and people are tired of his incessant whining," says political
consultant Todd Robert Murphy. "People might have been getting tired of it
before he announced he was running for mayor."

"We thought we would be in a full-blown campaign like we had against
Artison," says Norquist political advisor Bill Christofferson, who has
headed Norquist's campaigns since 1987. "Watts has not run the kind of
campaign we expected."

In a primary, the main bloc of voters- "the againers," as Christofferson
refers to them-are city workers and police officers who are considered
hostile to the mayor; and include the elderly and other regular voters who
might not be guaranteed Norquist supporters.

"When you are mayor for 12 years, everybody can find a reason to vote
against you," Christofferson says. Finding that generally happy Milwaukeean
and getting that person to the polls is made tougher by the lack of a strong
challenge from Watts.

Harris' personal expectations are high, given the underdog status of his
candidacy. He thinks he will beat Watts, and often prefaces statements with
the phrase, "When I'm mayor ..."

Yet his campaign was starved for attention before he joined Norquist and
Watts for a debate broadcast on WTMJ radio late last month. Local painter
and poet Bob Watt's dalliance with a mayoral candidacy at the time received
more attention than Harris' campaign. He does not have the name recognition
of George Watts, and will not be able to spend the kind of money that Watts
claims he will spend ($600,000), much of it out of his personal finances.
Norquist says he will spend about $900,000 and already has $1 million in his
treasury.

Harris, 51, has a long history of union and social activism in Milwaukee,
and he keeps a relatively high profile in the progressive community. He
serves on the board of directors at the Campaign for a Sustainable
Milwaukee, where he chairs the Living Wage campaign. He is a member of the
board of the Black Coalition of Trade Unionists, a vice-chair of the board
of trustees of the First Unitarian Church of Milwaukee, and is chairman of
the board of the James Cooks Foundation, a fund that supports
drug-and-alcohol-abuse treatment efforts in the community.

A native of Arkansas, Harris moved north in 1966 at the age of 17 to join
his brother in Milwaukee. He went to work at A.O. Smith as a crane operator
the following year and stayed with the company until his retirement in 1997.
He was active in his union's employee assistance program, and eventually
held elected positions on the Smith Steelworkers Local 19806.

After he retired from A.O. Smith, he and his wife, Rozalia, founded Better
Days Enterprises LLC, a company that provides transportation to the disabled
and the elderly. Harris has five children and two stepchildren, including a
15-year-old boy and 18-year-old girl who still live at home.

Harris joined the Socialist Party in the early 1990s, after years of
simmering political disaffection during the Reagan-Bush presidencies. The
turning point came during the 1992 campaign, when Bill Clinton refused to
grant a stay of clemency to a mentally retarded man on death row in
Arkansas.

"It became clear to me that the New Democrats, in that campaign, were
pushing the same agenda as the Republicans, basically," Harris says.
NAFTA and GATT, policies supported by New Democrats, also drove Harris to
the Socialists. He refers to them as "free trade as opposed to fair trade"
agreements that come at the expense of the working people once at the core
of the Democratic power base.

Those are issues that might seem far afield in a mayoral race, but Harris
says it's time a Milwaukee mayor started looking at the larger issues
affecting city residents, noting that Norquist supports NAFTA.
"These decisions are made in Washington, D.C. but they affect us here,"
Harris says. "What a mayor would have to do is to advocate for Milwaukee. I
don't see this mayor doing what's necessary, to go outside of Milwaukee to
say that these decisions are bad for the city."

Harris decries the bashing of public education under Norquist, and was a
plaintiff in the failed suit that the ACLU, the Milwaukee teachers' union
and public-school parents filed to stop taxpayer funds from going to
religious schools under the voucher system that is a key part of Norquist's
education platform.

"Norquist supports the dismantling of public education-it's happening right
here in Milwaukee. I'm opposed to any portion of that choice money being
taken out of the public schools," he says.

While Norquist and Harris disagree sharply on many issues (including the
mayor's approach to crime and the privatization of city services),the two
have yet to clash during the campaign. In the only debate so far, the mayor
and Watts got most of the airtime. And Norquist is exhibiting a relaxed,
benign pose that was often absent in his previous campaigns.

The result is twofold. Harris sees the cordial, friendly and gracious
Norquist. Watts bears the brunt of Norquist's sense of humor.

Murphy, who calls the Watts-Norquist matchup "the Y2K snooze campaign,"
thinks voters will like the lighter side of Norquist. The mayor "will become
more endearing as he becomes more relaxed. He has a dry sense of humor. He
can now be a little more liberal in using it."

In Murphy's view, Norquist won the debate, with Harris finishing second.
Watts, who surprised listeners by exiting a half-hour before the end of the
broadcast, was Murphy's clear loser.

Christofferson says the different tactics of the Harris and Watts campaigns
have demanded different responses. He, too, gives Harris strong marks.
"From day one, Watts has been Mr. Negative," Christofferson says, restating
Norquist's main criticisms of Watts.

For his part, Harris has stayed out of the Norquist-Watts fray, mainly
because he believes the issues Watts has raised are irrelevant. Harris says
he "appreciates what the mayor is trying to do downtown," though he would
like to see more of a focus on development in neighborhoods. "Downtown is
like their own personal playground," Harris says.

He agrees with Norquist that the Park East Freeway should be torn down to
open the north end of downtown. He has refused to join the Watts-Norquist
argument over crime statistics, and he disagrees with Watts' proposal to
fire Police Chief Arthur Jones. Harris would let Jones serve out his
contract, which expires in 2003. "The police department is going to do its
job and Jones is going to do his job," he says.

While Harris won't take issue with the chief, he challenges Norquist's
entire approach on crime. Though it is now Watts' number-one campaign issue,
Harris doesn't see Watts offering any solutions, much less ideas that are
different from the mayor's.

In addition to putting more police on the streets than at any time in city
history, Norquist has advocated for the end of parole under Truth and
Sentencing, and has led efforts to keep offenders in prison longer.
The mayor has opposed community-based alternatives to prison. Harris
believes the failure in Milwaukee to treat drug addiction primarily as a
disease has had a devastating impact on neighborhoods that are already
filled with despair.

"The whole drug war has effects that we have not begun to talk about,"
Harris says. "We started sending women out of state. Do we know if their
children suffer and have emotional problems because of it? What happens to
them when we send their mothers away?"

The young men dealing drugs on the street have not seen the benefits of
getting an education and a job, and having a family, Harris says. Until they
are shown an alternative lifestyle through drug treatment, educational
services, and work programs, they will continue to deal and use drugs. "The
drug trade has put clothes on their backs and money in their pockets," he
says.

"Drugs and alcohol are all around. But if people can get treatment, it opens
up a whole new world of alternatives. It gives people another chance."
He adds that police should focus their efforts on suppliers to get rid of
drugs and not the drug-addicted street dealers. He is not a proponent of
legalization of drugs, as some have construed his position.

The drug problem, as Harris is wont to say on many issues, is a symptom of a
much larger problem: the lack of jobs that provide families with a future.
The statistics would seem to support his belief that poverty is far more
widespread than Norquist or Watts are willing to admit. Almost half of
working families in Milwaukee County are headed by single parents, according
to the nonprofit child welfare advocacy group Start Smart. In booming
economic times, the county has seen a 39% increase in the number of
single-parent families who are working poor. Harris cites a 22% overall
poverty rate for the city.

"If we look at job development, we need to watch how we are spending money,"
Harris says, repeating a campaign message heard in aldermanic races on the
North and South Sides. "If we have everything done in Downtown at the
expense of the North Side or the South Side, it's not going to benefit
everyone."

Harris proposes increasing the living-wage requirements to at least $7.70
per hour for city workers, an amount he says is not enough to raise a
family, but it would at least show that the city is taking more of a
leadership role in wage growth. Referring to the city's current living-wage
requirement for government contractors, Harris asks, "If John Norquist is
able to hire people for $7 per hour to hand out campaign literature, what
does that tell you about the available jobs in the city?"

An issue that Socialists hold dear is one that many city workers hold in
common: opposition to privatization and downsizing of city services.
In 1998, the privatizing of the sewerage district and departmental
downsizing has left the city with 300 fewer jobs on the payroll. The
Norquist campaign says Milwaukee citizens have not felt the impact of
reduced services, but Harris sees Milwaukee heading back to the early part
of the century, when the public good "was co-opted by private enterprise."
In the first half of the century, Socialist Mayor Dan Hoan built the city's
tradition of providing a high level of municipal services, and Socialist
Mayor Frank Zeidler continued that tradition from 1948 to 1960.
Harris and Zeidler say they fear that the Water Works may be privatized next
if Norquist is re-elected.

Harris will not say how much money he has raised, and campaign finance
reports were not due until this week.

"The likelihood of an upset by Wendell in the primary is slim," Murphy
predicts.

There are seven contested primaries in county and city districts with black
constituencies, and Harris, who is African-American, could benefit from a
stronger-than-usual African-American primary vote. Norquist, who won only
10% of the black vote four years ago against Artison, is also actively
courting voters in those districts.

On the day of the WTMJ debate, Harris' campaign offices at 20th St. and
Vienna in the Arlington Park area on the near North Side were hardly a hub
of activity. Harris was the only person in the office, and the phone rang
once. It was a volunteer, offering help in the campaign. As Harris sat with
a visitor, his brother Cardell came in, and then another man. Their
discussion centered on finishing the day's work for Harris' transit company,
rather than the campaign.

One week later, the office is a hub of activity, and Harris' weekend is
booked. He has two radio interviews scheduled, a Socialist Party meeting on
Saturday afternoon, and time in between to campaign outside a busy grocery
store. Sunday he is scheduled to appear at the Gospel 2000 event at the
Hilton Hotel.

Zeidler, at age 87, is still active in the Socialist Party, and Harris has
his support, giving Harris the only available endorsement of a Milwaukee
ex-mayor. Zeidler was the last Socialist to run a major U.S. city.
"The principle of the socialist movement is still quite relevant," Zeidler
says. "You see all the around the world that the second governing parties
are socialist. The basic principle is cooperative activity. The idea behind
the socialist movement is that the engine of society is total community
good."

Kevin | Buffalo, NY
ICQ# 8616001
AIM screen name: KDean75206
David McReynolds for President!
http://www.votesocialist.org
Socialist Party of Western New York
http://sp-usa.org/ny/buffalo
EMail: wnysp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has,
therefore, robbed the whole world -- both the world of men and nature -- of
its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man's work and man's
existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.--Dr.
Karl Marx