How did Milwaukee end up under Republican leadership?
In a recent article we described Mayor Cavalier Johnson as “quasi-Republican,” an allegation that raised objections from some readers. At Milwaukee Beagle, we like to back our claims with evidence and reasoned argument, so, here it is.
Like most major cities in the US, Milwaukee is very Democratic. We don’t have partisan local races because the Democrat would simply always win. As a result, everyone who runs for office here is a Democrat on paper. Remember former Sheriff David Clarke? The guy who worked for a MAGA super PAC and was always on Fox News wearing a cowboy hat, decrying Black Lives Matter, apologizing for the Unite the Right rally, and worse? He was a Democrat the whole time. Labels are tricky.
Our current sheriff, Denita Ball isn’t as blatant or outrageous as Clarke was, but like Clarke, she still kills people in the jail and routinely overspends her budget. She and friends on the county board fought against releasing body cam footage, and against a true and thorough audit of the jail. If that’s not Republicanism, what is?
Mayor Johnson enables Republican control of Milwaukee
Like Ball and Clarke, Mayor Cavalier Johnson calls himself a Democrat while pursuing policies and practices that put that claim into question. More importantly, he often colludes with the Republican Party, helping them abuse and exploit Milwaukee. In many ways, that collusion has given Republicans de facto control of our city government.
The most overt example of this is the shared revenue deal, which discards home rule and explicitly imposes the will of its Republican authors on this city. Cavalier Johnson was a champion of the deal, holding press conferences with Robin Vos, and arguing against letting the people of Milwaukee vote on its regressive sales tax in a referendum. He traveled the state promoting the deal, and all but threatened devastating budget cuts if the Common Council rejected it.
After helping impose that Republican plan, he used the budget to shovel money at cops, rather than funding basic human needs like the very successful right to council program for renters facing unlawful evictions. Johnson then followed up his budget by shovelling more money at cops from conservative suburbs to recruit them to police us for him. He and his pliant Common Council, are asking the Republican legislature to recreate debtor’s prisons for Milwaukeeans who can’t afford municipal court fines. He has been fighting hard to force Milwaukee Public Schools to return school resource officers, a Republican effort to undo one of the few substantive local changes that came from 2020 protest struggles. An effort that now appears, unfortunately, likely to succeed.
Cavalier Johnson also begged and lied to host Donald Trump’s biggest rally here, and then apologized for the entirely predictable racially-targeted violence that accompanied it. As Trump took office last month and began issuing his wild stream of executive orders, Mayor Johnson refused to commit to defending the city. Listen to him wiggle obnoxiously out of answering questions about mass deportation of Milwaukee’s immigrants.
In addition to these overtly Republican projects, the core of Cavalier Johnson’s day-to-day politics is simply aligned with Republican values: pro-business, pro-police, pro-oligarchy. You can’t pursue those interests without acting to harm many of the people living here. Milwaukee has the second highest poverty rate for large cities in the nation, a statistic that has a devastating impact on real people’s lives, and that grows out of our political leadership prioritizing the wealth accumulation of businesses and other elites.
Why is this happening?
One likely reason might be that Cavalier Johnson wants to run for statewide office. He probably thinks the many prejudices of Wisconsin’s rural white voters require a more conservative platform and reputation than Mandela Barnes had when he ran for US Senate. State Republicans spent decades manufacturing an infamous urban-rural divide to pit Wisconsinites against each other. Rather than overcoming it, Johnson seems to be taking the easier path to win a statewide race: betraying the city that elected him mayor.
If our guess is right, then, that means Milwaukeeans are suffering under Republican edicts for the sake of Johnson’s personal political aspirations. To make things worse, it seems Tony Evers is running again anyway. Even if he doesn’t, Johnson is not on the top of the list of likely successors. That means, we’re probably suffering for Johnson’s fizzled dreams. Great!
This is pretty dismal, and admittedly speculative, but no one is offering a better explanation. Johnson’s defenders make excuses for him, saying he was dealt a bad hand and has been using the tools he has to deal with constant crises. While it is true that the gerrymandered republican legislature has it out for Milwaukee, Johnson’s approach has been to appease and collude with them, not to fight back and defend our city. More importantly, the projects he does take on reveal his priorities.
Many of Johnson’s supporters celebrate his housing policy, especially Growing MKE. This is an effort to rezone the city and encourage developers to invest in building more housing. Unfortunately, nationally coordinated price-fixing schemes mean that developers stand to make the most profits off luxury condos that people mostly can’t afford to live in. While there are some pretty words in the Growing MKE plan about equity and against displacement, it actually offers scant protection against abuse and exploitation. Meanwhile, the other side of Mayor Johnson’s housing policy has been his approach to the Housing Authority. There he helped protect the career and pension of a systematically negligent director, who egregiously harmed low income residents.
Taken together, we can see the mayor’s full approach to housing: boost rich developers, pretend benefits will trickle down to regular people, and neglect or privatize the social programs that provide a minimal safety net. Sorry, but… isn’t that just standard issue Republicanism?
Labels are tricky
Cavalier Johnson is not quite Sheriff Clarke, but it’s clear that he is still stretching what it means to “be a Democrat”. Unfortunately, he is not alone. While Johnson has always relied more on institutional connections than popular support, many of our criticisms also apply to some of Milwaukee’s more well-credentialed leaders, like County Executive David Crowley (also eying statewide office), and Milwaukee County party chair Christine Siniki. Additionally, all these local institutionalists are following the lead of Wisconsin’s weak, compromise-hungry, and conflict-averse Governor Tony Evers. Evers is, in turn, following certain national trends that have muddled the meaning of the word “Democrat.”
All the way back in the nineties, Bill Clinton’s ideologically confused “third way” compromise with Newt Gingrich embraced Republican policies like gutting welfare, destroying labor power, and ramping up mass incarceration. Ever since, these have become stubbornly persistent (but unpopular) cornerstones of Democratic Party platforms. In 2016, Chuck Schumer openly advocated a Republican approach of abandoning blue collar workers for more educated, higher status voters (aka wealthy donors). These trends culminated in 2024 when Kamala Harris partnered with the most heinous Republicans to create a Harris-Cheney coalition of bipartisan institutional elitism against a Republican Party that had moved on to a new set of values: MAGA jingoism. If we let Clinton, Schumer, and Harris set their slippery definition of “Democrat” then, fine, Cavalier Johnson is one.
That entire time, though, other, more popular, but institutionally blockaded Democrats have been holding true to actual party values: standing up for the working class and marginalized groups, embracing social programs, and protecting us and future generations against corporate power and rich elites. Those are the values that Barack Obama ran and won on (but quickly betrayed in office). If we recognize that Bernie Sanders, The Squad, and 2008 era Obama are the real Democrats, then Cavalier Johnson is clearly a Democrat in name only.
Many theorize that this identity crisis and party confusion is a result of the US going through a political realignment. Maybe the start of a seventh “party system” in US politics? Could be. What is clear is there are at least three factions in the fight: MAGA, the Harris-Cheney coalition, and the Democratic base.
At Milwaukee Beagle we are proud partisans of the Democratic base. We see the Harris-Cheney coalition, Cavalier Johnson, and others, as more like traditional Republicans, and MAGA Republicans as a far right fascist party. We have been advocating for Democrats to return to core values with our “Democrats don’t” series and many other articles. History teaches that it is left-wing populism that defeats fascism, not compromise and collusion in pursuit of personal gain.
