Our State Fair is... Politics Central!

Big Political Cheese was created because there’s a lot of politickin’ going on beyond Madison, Milwaukee and the AM radio dial.  And this week’s Northern Wisconsin State Fair proves it.

Fair-goers are not only exposed to unhealthy (but oh-so-wonderful) doses of fried cheese, fried dough, transient carnies, super-sharp steak knives and the 80’s sounds of Rick Springfield... they also get amble elbow-rubbing with politicians from all over the board.

There’s Dan Mielke and his Amazing Auto-dialer, who swears he’s still a candidate for Congress even though he’s been seen more at the Democratic booth than the Republican one where he’s persona non-grata.  Lumberjack Sean Duffy has allegedly been stalking the scene as well. There has been lots of Terry Moulton but its hard to discern if he's been selling himself for State Senate or an overstock of Topper Stoppers.

Ed Thompson, whose campaign thus far has been Sasquatch-like (talked about in skeptical tones with little actual proof of its existence) was sighted walking the grounds at least twice.  Too bad there was only a small sliver of attendees who live in his district, which ends at the south side of Eau Claire.  Dan Kapanke, like Ed Thompson, gets half a bonus point for wandering beyond his district boundaries in the hope of catching a few voters who wandered beyond Ron Kind’s territory. Even Ron Johnson has taken a break from apologizing to B.P. long enough to walk around handing out expensive 3-D trading cards of himself.  (Note to Team Johnson: at least make an attempt to look like you’re familiar with rural Wisconsin and not a bunch of Groupies for Millionaires... dress shirts and slacks from college volunteers?  Really?  Maybe rub some cow shit on your wingtips when you first walk in.) 

The Democratic team has decidedly little Julie Lassa material... except Julie Lassa herself during a Saturday walk-around with State Senator Pat Kreitlow, who seems to live at the fair every year since it’s in his district.  They both looked a little nervous as they walked past a show being put on by a hypnotist, as if they’d get caught in the trance, and be forced to utter what’s really on their minds (“Dave Obey screwed us over.  Russ Decker is Mike Sheridan with better discretion.  We sure hope there’s an October Surprise in Sean Duffy's closet that’s going to win this race for us at the last minute.  Etc.”). Only the fine young volunteers of the Feingold cult campaign looked invincible. We shall see.

There was also a rush to get people to sign petitions for C.W. King, the extremely-last-minute candidate for the Jeff Wood Assembly seat.  Given that King is a well known CF City Council rep and former longtime director for the county human resources department he almost immediately makes it a fair fight against the five nobody’s running in the GOP primary.

It is fair to say however that the hardest working politician at the fair doesn’t technically belong to a party.  He introduced himself as Jerry Nielson from the Fair Tax group.  The Fair Tax, for the uninitiated, is a grand scheme to transfer even more tax responsibility away from millionaires and have the rest of us pay something like a 35% sales tax. The people selling this racket are better evangelicals than politicians.  Like many proselytizers, however, they make up in spirit what they lack in critical thinking.  How else can they call if "fair" with a straight face?

Lots of candidates, lots of volunteers with clipboards, all interrupting fairgoers to get their signatures on nominating papers.  (Big Political Cheese, being political junkies, does not agree with people who want to ban that kind of contact at public events.  It’s your government, people.  If you can’t handle a candidate or volunteer taking up 30 seconds to ask you for a signature or a vote, you deserve no vote and whatever lame government you get.)  With a heavy rotation of TV ads coming this fall --and no way to talk back to them-- it was everyone’s best chance to actually ask questions of the people crazy enough to run for office.

Personally, I had more fun meeting the fair’s rodent mascot and eating the fried cheese.