NEWS BLOG (WSAU) Random Election Day thoughts – a few hours before the polls close.
Even with no idea how my candidates did, I still can’t help but feel Election Day is a wonderful celebration of our democratic system. I wouldn’t mind if today was a national holiday, were everyone could focus on final campaigning and get-out-the-vote efforts. The only drawback is that too many people would try to make it an un-patriotic four day weekend.

I reject the thinking that our country is ‘doomed’ if one candidate or another wins. Hypothetically, a Barack Obama second-term with a GOP controlled house means more of a stalemate than a foreboding. A Romney win with a democrat Senate also looks like incremental change rather than a total change in direction.

I still think the Thompson-Baldwin senate race offers bad choices on both sides. Negative ads aside, these both seem like back-bench candidates. Russ Feingold, love or hate his politics, was more of an ideas guy that anyone running for Kohl’s current seat. Ron Johnson will still be a higher-profile representative for our state than whoever joins him in our delegation today.

The Pat Snyder-Mandy Wright race is a fundamental change in how a state assembly seat is won or lost. It may be the most-expensive race for that office ever. The idea that you’d need a fundraising machine and political action groups behind you to seek a state assembly seat used to be unthinkable. It now may be the new norm.

A behind-the-scenes you may not know about: The Wright campaign was frantically seeking a cease-and-desist court order over the Snyder rape/abortion commercial that aired in the final days of the campaign. Wright argues that she never brought up the issue of Pat Snyder’s nephew during the campaign. (Pat’s nephew, adopted as a child by his brother and sister-in-law, is the result of a rape. His biological mother carried her baby to-term and then gave the child up for adoption.) Unfortunately for Ms. Wright, PACs that support her did indeed use Pat Snyder’s on-air comments about his nephew to twist his comments about rape, sexual assault, and abortion. And Pat’s response ad is carefully written to refer to ‘Mandy Wright’s supporters’. Needless to say, the ad in question continued to run.

Election coverage begins at 7pm tonight on WSAU AM-550 FM-99.9. Jerry Bader has an Election night webcast and we have results on-line here: http://wsau.com/election/

Chris Conley
11/6/12