Assembly District 61 Spotlight
In the Milwaukee suburbs of Greenfield, Hales Corners, and Greendale (here is a more detailed map) the race for Wisconsin Assembly District 61 is another vital race in Democrat’s path to take the Assembly. Here you have two drastically different embodiments of what it means to be a “career politician” in this race between Bob Donovan and LuAnn Bird. This is not even the first time Bird and Donovan have run against each other. Back in 2022, they faced each other for the Assembly District 84 seat which Donovan won with just 51% of the vote. Obviously we are hoping the race goes differently this time.
On the Republican side you have the power hungry, career politician, carpetbagger, current State Representative, Bob Donovan. Donovan seems to move to wherever he can run for elected office, less than a week after losing the race for Milwaukee’s mayor, Donovan had abandoned the city for the suburbs to run for State Assembly. Besides Donovan's general weirdness as hot-headed and a ‘peeping tom’ as previously covered by Milwaukee Beagle, he also brings a host of bad and oppressive policies to the race as well. He has made public safety one of his key issues. But by safety, all that Donovan really means is more cops and more punishment. He proudly identifies as ‘pro-cop’ and says that they “deserve our respect and deserve our support.” Milwaukee Beagle has already taken an in-depth look at why more police are not the solution to improve public safety. All of Donovan’s proposed ideas for improving safety are either throwing gobs of money to police or inflicting harsher punishment. We have already made the case that more police do not work and there is also a plethora of evidence that harsher punishment does little to actually deter crime. But that has not stopped Donovan from proposing harsher penalties for robbing a financial institute, for fleeing an officer, for stealing a catalytic converter, for reckless driving, for reckless driving when railroad workers are present, are you sensing a pattern here? Donovan is very much a one-trick pony for what he will say is his central issue. And his one trick does not even work. He brings no nuance, no actual solutions, and clearly not even a good understanding of what he says is his central issue. And that is not all. He has also publicly supported reinstating a horrendous program that put cops into classrooms with students. In fact, when it comes to Milwaukee’s Office of Violence Prevention, Donovan wants to audit the entire office because he does not believe it is having any impact. If only he applied this same standard to the police. Instead he just wants to inflict more violence on folks with more police and more punishment.
Donovan’s plan for MPS is just as short-sighted and ineffective and his ideas around public safety. Not surprising at all, one of the key points in his plan calls for businesses and the private sector to be more involved, which really just means more charter and voucher schools. One of the key ‘cost-savings’ measures he proposes, is, weirdly enough, reducing busing because, and I quote “Desegregation was accomplished long ago and MPS spends tens of millions a year for busing.” Dumb policy aside, one has to really question what reality Donovan is living in considering Milwaukee is still often found to be one the most segregated cities in the country.
Donovan also dabbles in conspiracy theories and the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. While he will not outright say that it was stolen, he will insinuate as much. Of course, he does this so he can still walk back his statements once anyone asks for even the slightest bit of evidence or facts to back up his statements. He has come out against ballot drop boxes due to ‘security issues’ and when asked directly if Milwaukee had a fair election, refused to say yes and instead said he was “concerned.” This type of election denialism is dangerous for our democracy and has no place amongst our elected officials.
The list of bad policies for Donovan continues on and on, but the last one worth mentioning here is his record on abortion. Heartland Signal has reported that Donovan has advocated for enforcing Wisconsin's complete ban on abortion. And when he advocates for a complete ban, Donovan truly means a complete ban. In his 2022 campaign he accepted the endorsement of Wisconsin Right to Life, which explicitly does not support any exceptions to an abortion ban, including in the case of rape and incest. Again, it is clear that all Donovan wants is power and control, here over women’s bodies.
So who do we want to replace Donovan with? Running on the Democrats side is LuAnn Bird who is also not a newcomer to Wisconsin politics. Unlike Donovan though, Bird’s history as a “career politician” is filled with heartfelt advocacy to actually improve the lives of those she represents. Something of note is that two of the communities she advocates most for are communities that she does not directly belong to, an key example of what it means to be an ‘ally’ or ‘accomplice.’ One of these communities are folks living with disabilities. This was in fact her entrance into politics. After an accident left her husband paralyzed, he could not access their children’s school. Bird joined the school board and fought to make Oshkosh schools fully accessible. To this day she has continued advocating to make public spaces accessible and ADA compliant. The other community Bird has been a staunch supporter of is the LGBTQAI+ community. When the Whitnall school district was considering a policy prohibiting teachers from using a student’s pronouns or name other than those on their birth certificate, Bird strongly called on the board to reject the policy. She also made sure that all meetings between school board members to discuss the proposal were transparent and publicly available.
While Milwaukee Beagle certainly is not aligned with Bird on all the issues, we respect how committed she is to advocating and organizing for her community. Just looking at the videos she posts on her campaign’s Facebook, she exudes authenticity and a willingness to listen. That is more than we could ever say about her opponent. Donovan is on an unstoppable path of far right extremism. Bird seems like someone who we can bring further to our side. You can learn more about Bird’s campaign and volunteer here and donate here.
