Bice: Chris Abele targets County Board with $250,000 ad campaign to win support for budget
Daniel BiceEveryone knows Chris Abele isn’t your standard Milwaukee County politician.
And he’s proving it once again.
Instead of simply lobbying for his new county budget, Abele is launching a $250,000 campaign aimed at County Board members and their constituents.
First, Abele is dipping into his campaign account to air a TV commercial on cable and network stations that compares, in stark terms, his position on the county budget with that of Board Chairman Theodore Lipscomb Sr.
Lipscomb, Abele’s chief nemesis these days, does not come off well.
The county exec is also using his campaign fund, largely self-funded by the millionaire Democrat, to pay for targeted digital ads aimed to run in the districts of eight supervisors. The message for each is said to be different.
Finally, Abele's campaign is paying for a call center, which tells constituents about possible county budget cuts and offers to transfer them to their County Board member.
“What other executive/mayor has lobbied for their budget that way?” asked one supervisor.
Not many. Not any.
Andy Suchorski, political director for Abele’s campaign, explained the multipronged campaign.
“Chris is open to everyone’s good ideas on improving the county, and he hopes the chairman and County Board will join him in this effort,” Suchorski said.
“What he finds unacceptable is punting hard decisions down the road by running up debt, raiding reserve funds or slashing the vital services that many Milwaukee County residents rely on,” he continued. “The County Board should do the right thing, reject Theo’s cuts and adopt Chris Abele’s budget."
Lipscomb said Abele can go this route only because of his deep pockets.
“Perhaps that’s the Boston Way, but it’s unprecedented here for a politician to use their extreme family wealth insulting taxpayers and trying to overturn the expressed will of the people,” Lipscomb said in a text message, alluding to Abele’s hometown.
He continued: “Ironically, Abele’s wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars — on ads seeking to double the wheel tax on people who can’t afford it and don’t want it — only proves that he doesn’t know the value of a dollar.”
Officials with the County Board emphasized Lipscomb and the supervisors have yet to put together a budget alternative to Abele’s. County Board members submit their budget amendments next week.
Abele’s plan calls for bumping up zoo admission by $1.25 per person, doubling the wheel tax to $60 and a slight increase in the amount of funds from the tax levy. In response, Lipscomb sent an email to all department heads this month asking them to recommend proposed cuts of at least $16 million, assuming the wheel tax doesn't pass.
Actually, this isn’t the first time Abele has used his campaign fund to target a member of the board.
In June, Abele's campaign set up a website called www.sendtheoamessage.com that accuses Lipscomb of blocking efforts to fund a local juvenile detention center, picking a fight over the zoo and suing to slash pay for some of Abele's top appointees.
It also paid for numerous anti-Lipscomb digital ads that appeared on Facebook, Instagram and various websites, including the ones for the Journal Sentinel and WTMJ-TV (Channel 4).
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This new campaign will be spending as much as five times as much money.
The digital ads will target voters in districts represented by Supervisors Sequanna Taylor, Sheldon Wasserman, Marina Dimitrijevic, Michael Mayo Sr., Supreme Moore Omokunde, Peggy West, Willie Johnson Jr. and Jason Haas.
Abele’s team said these are not attack ads. Instead, Abele is trying to build a coalition in support of his budget.
"The Milwaukee County Board is considering budget cuts that would close county parks and pools, raise bus fares, and delay road repairs,” says one of Abele's Facebook ads. “Call Supervisor Supreme Moore Omokunde and tell him to vote ‘NO’ on these devastating budget cuts.”
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.