As reported by Don Behm of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele has hired Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff to serve in a similar role in his office.
Wisconsin Democratic Party spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff will be leaving party headquarters in Madison next month to take a similar job with Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele.
Abele’s current spokesman, Nate Holton, is being promoted to deputy chief of staff to better use his policy research experience, Abele said Wednesday.
Holton, an attorney, joined Abele’s staff in March. He previously worked for the Milwaukee Community Justice Council.
Abele said Baldauff will help his administration increase use of digital and social media as part of her communications duties. She starts work in Milwaukee on Sept. 14.
There’s been a lot of speculation that Abele is eyeing up a gubernatorial run in 2018, given that he previously hired former DPW Chair Mike Tate to do some consulting work for him. This latest hire will do nothing to quell that speculation, and given the fact that Abele has ties to DPW Chair Martha Laning (he was a strong supporter of hers when she ran for the State Senate), I fully expect that if Abele does want to run for governor, he’ll be the “chosen one” of the Democratic Party, despite his strongly conservative fiscal policy and what many believe is a very strong anti-union streak.
I’m taking this another way. Abele and “hotshot consultant/ corporatist” group are trying to run their own shadow DPW. This may be a backdoor way of leaving Laning and the new leadership behind (or I can dream that they were asked to leave, but I doubt that).
Rich Kid Abele apparently has to find out the hard way that being a Wisconsin Dem involves more than just backing transit and marriage equality. At the rate he’s going, he’ll be lucky to still be County Exec this time next year….and I sincerely hope he isnt.
Want to bet he’s going to run for governor? That’s the way I see this stacking up. And Larson’s being groomed for Co Exec somewhere along the way.
Ohhh, and I thought I was cynical, but I agree and had not envisioned your scenario. Certainly appreciating your thinking on this.
I however was thinking along more practical lines which I suppose are part of the picture you describe as a possibility. The sheer bulk of party data that could have been, “preserved,” by Tate and Baldauff upon their official exit from the DPW and which easily becomes a fairly up-to-date, treasure trove to be used as a, “resume,” for one’s job qualifications in seeking re-employment in one’s field of endeavor.
I don’t like to always be anti establishment BUT, what does the establishment see in Abele that they did not see in the previous candidates for Governor? Other than his ability to self-fund staffers I really believe he has a ways to go in terms of drawing support from working class voters.
The number 1 quality I see that dems need to improve, is being able to walk into a room and being able to talk to the custodian mono on mono. People can see if a candidate is being sincere or if the candidate thinks are beyond them on the social scale.
This is my question AJ. How is Chris Abele any different than Mary Burke, except for having more negatives, such as coming off as smarmy and less intelligent, and also because he’s got a bad history of grabbing power by any means necessary, gathering many enemies along the way.
Then again, Mike Tate thought Mary Burke was the best-qualified candidate to take on Scott Walker because she filled a lot of “check-boxes”, so maybe that explains a lot. And it also explains why guys and gals like Tate need to be kicked to the curb in the “strategy/politics” side of the DPW ASAP (which maybe is what’s really happening).
Unless the DPW hires some competent staff, it will continue to be a void in electoral politics.
The IT side of DPW is beyond primitive and reckless. Personnel use their own computers. When you leave, you can take all info with you. There is no backup system in place. This is absolutely crazy. What modern-day organization is run in this manner?
Tate and Baldauff are hacks. DPW is a joke. The new Comms Director they replaced Baldauff with is some 12 year old who thinks that to ‘indent a paragraph’ is street slang for dabbing. No wonder guys like Scott Walker and now Donald Trump are now in charge. Are all DPW staff members MR these daze???