A one-two punch to Lautenschlager

Two major newspapers each took a jab at Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager over the weekend.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsed County Executive Kathleen Falk over Lautenschlager by reminding people that the drunk driving conviction is not the only reason to vote for Falk rather than Lautenschlager on Tuesday. Falk is also a very qualified candidate.

Peg Lautenschlager, the incumbent attorney general, is still trying to crawl out from under what she calls "the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life." That mistake - driving while intoxicated on Feb. 24, 2004 - has led to a strong challenge from within her own Democratic Party. We back the challenger, Kathleen Falk ,
Dane County executive and onetime assistant attorney general.

Democratic leaders called on Falk to run because of worries that fallout from the drunken driving incident had fatally weakened Lautenschlager. But Falk also is a superb candidate for the post.

She boasts an impressive public-service career. For a dozen years, she championed the public's interest with regard to public water and other natural resources before boards dominated by powerful special interests, in court and in other venues, as the state's public intervenor. Gov. Tommy Thompson eliminated the post in 1995. Credit Falk with, among other accomplishments, improving the public access to public waterways.

And as Dane County executive since 1997, she has proved to be both tight-fisted and innovative. She voluntarily adopted spending caps, before Madison lawmakers caught the fever to impose such caps. Yet through careful budgeting, she managed to drastically step up expenditures for public safety - adding 105 positions to the Sheriff's Department and boosting the district attorney's funds by almost two-thirds.

The second punch came from Scott Milfred at the Wisconsin State Journal. He wrote an editorial saying Lautenschlager's drunk driving arrest is fair game in the election and it's absurd that Lautenschlager's supporters are trying to turn it into a positive for her.

Lautenschlager apologists have tried to argue that merely bringing up Lautenschlager's drunken driving conviction and all that goes with it is akin to dirty campaigning. They're trying to turn Lautenschlager's biggest negative into a positive. If an opponent so much as mentions drunken driving, the spin goes, that opponent is being unfair and cruel.

I don't think so.

To repeat: This is the state's top law enforcer who broke the law. That's obviously an appropriate issue in the race.

If Democrats in Tuesday's primary want to forgive Lautenschlager for her conviction, her poor handling of its aftermath and subsequent mistakes, so be it.

But don't blame Falk or Bucher for making legitimate points about a mess that Lautenschlager alone created.

The best point that Milfred brings up is that it really wasn't the drunk driving that hurt as much as the way she handled the whole mess. People would have forgiven her for just the drunk driving. Milfred sums up what will do her in on Tuesday with:

It's much more about the details surrounding the conviction, her failure to come clean, and what it all says about her character.

that will most She refused the blood test and tried the whole "I was taking a prescription" route that many try to hide behind. And then it went even further downhill from there.

Her unfortunate slide down the hill will come to an end this Tuesday.