Tim Michels. Image courtesy: Wisconsin Broadcasters Assoc
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Tim Michels is not a good debater. Neither is Tony Evers. That’s why their debate earlier this month was a lackluster tie.
But Tim Michels is also not an instinctive politician. If he was, he could have delivered the defining moment of the campaign – which would have propelled him to victory. Midway through the debate Dan Hagen of WJFW-TV in Rhinelander asked a question about wild rice. Yes, wild rice. If you went downtown and asked 10 people what the top issues in the campaign were, wild rice would have been mentioned by no one.
It is true that the Ojibwe tribe sustained itself for generations by harvesting wild rice. The harvests have been smaller, allegedly because of climate change. The tribe’s treaty rights are a federal, not a state, issue.
If Tim Michels had good political instincts, his response would have been something like this: “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful. My opponent has agreed to only one debate… this one. And we don’t have time to waste on fringe, trivial issues. When I held a news conference in Milwaukee last week, hoodlums were trying to steal a car across the street. Crime is out of control. The governor wants to cut the prison population in half. Murderers and rapists will be parolled into your neighborhood. Gas prices are out of control. People are using their credit cards to fuel up… and some of them are paying 25-percent interest. Inflation is getting worse, not better. And our governor is running around the state with a cardboard check handing out Biden bucks that makes inflation worse. And we’re in this mess because Tony Evers made the COVID pandemic into a crisis, by claiming emergency powers that he didn’t have, until he was slapped down by the state Supreme Court. Crime, inflation, the economy – those are the issues we need to debate tonight.”
At home, in front of tens-of-thousands of radios and TV sets, voters would have been nodding their heads in agreement.
That answer would have propelled Tim Michels to victory.
Chris Conley
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