Here & Now; 627

You Welcome to Here And Now. I'm Art Hackett, filling in tonight for Federica Freiberg. Rest in peace, Lee Sherman-Dreyfus, the former governor, passed away and is walk a show home on Wednesday night. We'll look back on his life with two of his closest compatriots. Last month, members of the State Supreme Court made a unanimous decision that justices wrote a letter in support of public financing of future state races for the high court. Chief Justice Shirley Abramson is here and later will introduce you to a

packer fan who moved his family 9,249 Monos just for the opportunity to sit at Lambo Field. But first, he barnstormed the state in a converted school bus to the rowdy tones of a rag tag band that bus drove him straight to the highest office in the state. Lee Sherman-Dreyfus was elected governor in 1978. Just months before Election Day, few people had ever heard of him to say that Dreyfus had the gift of gab would be an understatement. And it was his skill as a communicator that got him elected and paved the way for nearly everything he did. Here's a look at Dreyfus the politician and the person from a story we produced back in 1989. Dave Iverson is the narrator. Lee Sherman-Dreyfus, a former professor university chancellor and governor, a man who's never doubted his ability to succeed. Now, he's hit the lecture circuit and Lee Dreyfus

live is once again an enormous success. Today, he collects $5,000 of pep talk for doing what he's always done best. Simply talking. The world in my opinion is poised for a quantum leap. I'm talking about the whole world. I'm talking about peace. I'm talking about energy. I'm talking about health. I'm talking about food. And I'm also talking about wealth. Lee Dreyfus took his own quantum leap back in 1978, a little known university chancellor in a red vest who had the unmitigated gall to believe he ought to be the next governor. I assume that was going to be it. You assume you're going to win? So to Joyce. Now, we were probably the only two and the odds makers, I think the Milwaukee Journal, what they say, 3% because for years, Joyce called me old 3%. To turn 3 measly percentage points into victory is the epitome of positive thinking. No self doubts, no to be or not to be hamlet complex for this man. That says Joyce Dreyfus pretty

well sums up what has made her husband such a success. I think he's probably one of the most successful people that I've ever known in any level because he's a totally, totally happy person. He is very, he thinks it's a privilege to be a lie. He thinks it's a privilege to work. He thinks it's a privilege to give. It's a spirit that infuses the Dreyfus message. Be absolutely positive about absolutely everything. Here's Lee Dreyfus on the deficit. I'll predict now that 30 years from now, they will review the 1985 $200 billion budget deficit as a positive thing. Try that on. And Lee Dreyfus on AIDS. Thirty years from now, I'm convinced they're going to look back on AIDS and realize that AIDS was the motivation to create the greatest, massive, coordinated, medical research assault in the history of the world. And as a result of that, all of medicine is going to be changed by the time you're my age.

After other sea obstacles, Lee Dreyfus sees opportunities. Success, he believes, comes to those who give the world a good firm optimistic twist. One of the talents I was given, it seems to me, is to look at a series of incidents and facts and to see its interpretation, in many cases, almost 180 degrees out of phase with what other people see. And I tend to see in a very positive way as I look at the long course of history. Good afternoon, Lee Sherman, Dreyfus, incorporated. History has not yet delivered a verdict on Lee Dreyfus governor, but there can be little doubt about the success of Lee Dreyfus incorporated. Today, he jets about the country to market his message to a nationwide clientele, a clientele that happily provides Dreyfus with an income of $300,000 a year. Positive thinking clearly pays. I found a way to make teaching really pay. Oh, I got every so often, and I'll say the choice, this is incredible. It's just unbelievable that you can go out and do this, have this

much enjoyment, an opportunity to lay out some philosophy or thoughts, your interpretation of history, and get paid so darn well for doing it. But I tell you, not only is there a future, my own belief in the company coming at this as a historian is that the next 30 years, particularly, is a watershed period, and it's going to be gangbusters, flat out, incredible, absolutely fantastic. And he thinks it's the greatest place in the world to be, and that we're lucky that we're here, and that's the message he gives, and that's what people want to hear. Good Lord, the ability to love and build in mankind's capacity outruns his capacity to hate and destroy. That's our mission for the next century, as we move into this third century. It's a simple mission. You hear it almost every Sunday morning. Let your light so shine. Thanks for letting me close up these times. Thank you. Thank you.

We're joined now by two of Lee Dreyfus' closest friends, the man who wrote shotgun for Dreyfus on that campaign bus and served as his press secretary at the Capitol. Bill Kraus. We're also joined by the man who moved into the executive office when Dreyfus moved out from a governor, Anthony, or a welcome to both of you. People need to know that you're both in our studio fresh from a regular luncheon at the Avenue bar. And I'm curious, what thoughts about Lee Dreyfus? Did you share at the table today? There were all sorts of Lee Dreyfus stories. All of them funny. Many of them heart-rending, rending, but it was a very upbeat kind of thing. It was a celebration of life rather than a mournful atmosphere. Bill Kraus. We had a particularly large group this year, but a Sue Kessner who organized anything, organized the remnants of the Dreyfus administration and of the campaign organization. So, well, we did a typical Dreyfus thing.

We do things backwards. We had the wake before the funeral. And we had the Avenue bar. Was there any talk about his legacy, what he meant to the State of Wisconsin? Not at my end of the table. Bill was at the other end. When the press started calling a couple of days ago, a lot of people asked about the legacy. This group wasn't nearly as profound, perhaps. And I commented that the legacy was how he got elected. Prove that you didn't need money. Prove that you didn't need backbiting. Prove that you could get along with people on the other side of the aisle. And if we would emulate that legacy, we would be a heck of a lot better place. And the diversity of that group at that table today is sort of proof of that pudding. There were Charlie Smith who was there. There were Democrats, mostly Democrats, reporters who were always antagonistic. And there were all his friends and they were all his admirers. We did talk a little bit about the opportunity.

All the reporters I talked to yesterday and I talked to, I think, the 100 of them were important when he was elected governor. So I could explain to them how he's the one who said we should have a veterinary school on this campus because of the research. And Jamie Thompson came out of that. He's the one who signed the first gay rights bill in the country because there are questions the government has no business asking. So we did get a little bit into that. But fundamentally, it was war stories and admirable moments who we had with this wonderful man. Bill Cross, we talked about the totally improbable nature of the campaign. I'm curious when the moment was during the campaign, when you had the be careful what you wish for a moment, we might actually have to run the government of Wisconsin. That was after the election. Not before. Not before. Well, you know, having won the tough campaign, frankly, was against Bob

Caston because it was against the Republican establishment in a low vote situation. And in some respects, it was a repeat of what Barack pulled off in Iowa yesterday. We got a lot of people in the vote who had never voted before and certainly never voted for Republican or in a Republican primary. I was going to hold this a little later, but I'll do it now since you used set it up. If he had lived another 24 hours or so, he might have picked up his paper and seen this front page. Hope, obviously, without his obituary on the side here, but two candidates who ran somewhat unorthodox campaigns, pulling off an upset, especially in the case of Mike Huckabee. Do you see a little bit of Lee Sherman-Dreyfus in either Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee? We see some of each of them. Huckabee with his easy appeal to the average person. And Obama with breaking all the old rules.

How does an academic get elected? How does an African-American get elected? I think that Lee would have enjoyed the result of each of those candidates had. I agree with that. Huckabee was the poor boy candidate and Obama was someone who had to bring in people who were strange to politics. And it's a constituency that I refer to as the Hunter Thompson constituency. They're always there, but only a few people can get them out. And Lee could, and obviously go bomb again. And that's a winning combination. You succeeded, Lee Dreyfus's governor. I remember being somewhat surprised when he announced he wasn't running again. Were you already planning to run at the time he announced? I was running. Lee was such a popular governor. Nobody on a Democratic side wanted to run. And friends of mine thought I had one more kick at the electoral cat. And they encouraged

me to run. They said you can get the Democratic nomination for the asking. And so I was out there running. And it was an April day. I was up in Green Bay drawing minimal attention. And I went into a TV studio and they were going to do an interview with me. And the fellow said, well, what do you think of a governor Dreyfus's announcement today? I said, what was that? He said, well, he's dropped out of the race. I was absolutely dumbfounded. I take it. He would have been a tough guy to beat. Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it. Witness the fact that nobody else wanted to challenge for the dubious honor to run against him. And I did have one more kick at the cat left in me, I thought. And I thought it would be. And it had been up to that point, a very lively campaign and not the least unpleasant at all. Could it happen again? Is it possible for somebody to come out of nowhere and not spend any money and get elected today? I think so. I think Dreyfus is the precedent. You don't have

to go through all those steps. You don't have to have a ton of money. And people need look no farther than Dreyfus to understand that that can be done. You've got to have the gumption to do it. And not a lot of people have that, but it can be done. And you got to ignore the advice of the hired guns and the mercenaries who are getting rich on running campaigns and we're saying attack ads work. I think attack ads repel as much as they attract. The television is the driving force. I don't think that's true. I think most recently being at Zigsler campaign proved that you go out there and you talk to people. You're going to get votes. That's it. And reminder that there will be a five-hour period of public visitation for Dreyfus on Sunday. It starts at noon and we'll close at five o'clock. The visitation will take place at the Lee Sherman Dreyfus State Office Building

in Waukeshaw and Bill Krauss and the Neural. Thanks very much for joining us to talk about Dreyfus. In a moment, we'll talk with State Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abramson about the idea of publicly financed Supreme Court races. But first, we asked some of you about your memories of Lee Dreyfus. Here's what you said. As I recall, he was one of the most fun governors we had, and the red vest sticks out in my mind. I know we wore the red vest that I ran in November, and he had the white hair, right? I actually would read his articles in the local newspaper, the Harold Independent that I get, and I actually had sent him a letter because I was very concerned about who the Republican Party was going to record her presidential candidate, and he wrote me a personal note back. And because I'm pro-SNM cell research, but I have a tendency to be more Republican, and I just thought it was really neat that he wrote me out a letter back.

A handwritten note, the red vest. As the Iowa caucus reminded us this week, it takes money, a whole lot of it, to run a mainstream campaign in modern American elections. Closer to home, candidates in last the fall's race for Wisconsin Supreme Court spent a combined total of nearly $6 million during their campaigns. That was four times the amount I ever spent before in that race. Last month, the current members of the Wisconsin's Supreme Court said enough. They all signed a letter of support for public financing of future state Supreme Court races. Shirley Abrahamson is Wisconsin's chief justice, and she joins us now. Before we talk about financing of elections, you were on the bench during Lee Dreyfus's tenure as governor. What are your thoughts about the governor?

Yes, there was an opportunity to get to know him while he was governor, and then I also got to know him and his beloved wife Joyce Dreyfus, after they left Madison. I thought they were both wonderful people. They cared about Wisconsin and cared about the people and worked very hard to do their best to improve the lot of all of our lives. He's a great loss to the state and to many people personally. In moving on to the letter, the justice has signed, tell me briefly what that letter supports? Well, I brought it with me so I wouldn't say something the letter didn't say, and it says that public financing of Supreme Court campaigns is a timely and vital subject that it's important for the maintenance of a fair, neutral, impartial, and nonpartisan judiciary. The court doesn't speak about

campaign financing for other public officers. It speaks about Supreme Court justices because of the nature of the judicial function. Judges decide cases on the basis of the facts and law, not personal ideology, not on the basis of public opinion, not on the basis of what the legislative or executive branches might want, but on the law. And that's the way it should be. And campaign financing becomes important to make sure that we maintain an impartial judiciary. The bill that this refers to is called impartial justice in shorthand. And that's been kicking around as best as we can tell since 2003. Has this subject ever come up before the idea of endorsing public financing? Well, our letter, that is that all seven justice assigned,

does not endorse or speak to any particular bill. But the concept, have they talked about it before? Well, the concept of public financing is what the court was talking about and a concept of meaningful public financing. And this is the first time the entire court has said, come on, legislature, come on, governor, let's get down and really talk about this because of the judicial function. Now, I personally have supported public financing since I went on the bench. And I appeared in a personal way before a legislative committee on the committee's request supporting the concept of public financing. That isn't to say how the court might rule on any particular bill. This instance of the unanimous decision, which is what I think got everybody's opinion at this time, got everybody's attention, why now, what was it that triggered that unanimity on the court?

Well, probably a hundred years and more of campaign in Wisconsin on the elective judiciary, increasing money spent in the campaign. And the fact that the legislature and the governor said they were going to consider it. So all of these things, you know, dozens of years, dozens of campaigns. And the fact that the governor had called the specialist session that the subject was campaign financing made this an opportune moment for the court to address impartiality. Was there any nudging, so to speak, to get some justices on board, or did everybody say, yep, the times come. Everybody's signed the letter. Everybody read the letter. Everybody had words to add to the letter. And I thought it was a very effective piece because it emphasized

that campaign financing raises the issue to many people about impartiality. The subject of public financing is controversial with some people because they invariably involves, if you take the money, you don't take money from somebody else and there are sometimes mechanisms to hold down independence spending. And some people view that as an infringement upon free speech. Campaign financing has been the subject of a number of United States Supreme Court decisions and they raise a number of constitutional issues federal and maybe state too. And that's why the court doesn't take a position and didn't take a position on any particular bill or any particular provisions and was careful to write in the letter that does not foretell how the court would rule on any provision. Court may favor public financing of Supreme Court races.

On the other hand, it would very easily say in an impartial neutral way any particular provision is not valid. Would this yield a different type of person running for Supreme Court? Would it give us a different bench than the one we've got now? Of course, we don't know that because we don't have the bill. We don't have it operating. We don't know. But it's important that everybody have an opportunity to run. And you know, judges cannot raise their own funds. We don't do that. And that's good. And you don't want to have people on the bench only who can afford to finance their own races. We ought to have a large number of people who come from different segments. And with that we close Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Buckle up. The Green Bay Packers are poised to finish out the season with guns blazing. They'll do so with the green and gold fan support of one of

the NFL's strongest fan bases. You've heard of the packelope and then there's the Packer none who is a fan of the year a while back. But did you hear about the guy who moved his family from Australia to Green Bay just for the opportunity to root for the Packet Lambo? Time to throw another broad on the Barbie meat Wayne Scolino, the Australian Packer backer who joined us now from Green Bay. Welcome to here and now. I was in New Zealand, which is near Australia a few years ago. And I was there on Super Bowl Sunday. And I was in a sporting goods store that afternoon in Wellington. And nobody. And I mean, nobody was paying a bit of attention to the Super Bowl. How is it that sounds about right? No, somebody out from Australia would even know about the Green Bay Packers, much less care about them. In Australia, we used to get, we had this six hour long sports program on Sundays that used to spend probably 30 or 40 minutes on international sports, which included

cycling from France and European soccer and basketball from the Eastern Block. And it included the NBA, the NFL, the NHL and all of that. So I used to get probably 40 seconds worth of NFL highlights each Sunday. But I had to wait somewhere between midday and 6 p.m. or noon and 6 p.m. to see it. But I used to hang out for it. I just loved that. I loved that 40 seconds or all minutes worth of NFL highlights on sports today. But why the Packers? I'm sure they are highlights from lots of other teams. Why the Packers? It's funny, actually, you're right. The highlights, you know, back 20 odd years ago, we're all about the cowboys, the red skins, the 49ers, the giants. You know, they were the big teams back then. I just couldn't buy into those teams. You know, they're big city teams. And there's so many other things going on in those cities. The first actual full-length game I like to see was Green Bay versus Detroit. And Green Bay won. It was at Lane Bay Field. You know, Don McCasky was the quarterback. And from there on, I just, I fell in love with the Packers. I started researching the Packers

and saw that they were a small town team. It was, you know, a real, field-good story. It was a David and Goliath story. And it just, it got me. You know, if I wanted to support a big city team, I might as well stay home in Sydney. The idea of rooting for a team like Green Bay was just so appealing. Like I said, I couldn't get enough. When you told your wife, I want to move to Green Bay for the season, what did she say? Her first impression, I told her from work. I had lunch with her brother-in-law and, you know, hatched this idea, went back to work, emailed her the suggestion. We spoke on the phone and she loved the idea. Not so much from a football point of view, but she liked the idea of going to a different country, spending six months there and experiencing, you know, the sort of winter that Wisconsin has because we don't get it. She liked the idea of making new friends, you know, eating different foods. So, you know, to start with, we were both really on the same page. Like I said, she loved it. As far as the winter goes, boy, are you getting it this year? This is one of the toughest winters we've had in a while.

Yeah, yeah. In fact, a few people have said that. And, you know, back home in Sydney, it was 111, you know, on game day last week. So, you know, to go from those sorts of temperatures, you know, around Christmas time, where it's anywhere between 90 and 110, to sit in a football stadium at 18 degrees in Green Bay, Wisconsin, it is so far removed from our normal lives. It's not, it's not if it's funny, but mental preparation is what's got us through. When you was going to get cold, when you was going to snow, and my wife, right, never seen snow before, much less out, our boys. So, the idea that we were going to get to see snow, plain snow, build snowmen, do all of that for the first time was everybody's appealing as coming here in the first place. Packer tickets are notoriously hard to get here. Did you have any idea whether you would actually be able to go to a game once you got here, or you might be just watching it in a bar with everybody else? Yeah, that's a funny question, because we arrived on Labor Day, the third of September, and we had no tickets to the game. We had no transport. We had no idea where land by field was.

Yeah, it's sort of looking in a map. We didn't know where the field was in comparison to our hotel. So, yeah, the first job we had to do was find a ticket to get to that Eagles game in Round 1, and I managed to find one fairly quickly. And from then on, we've made a lot of friends, and lots of people who know people, so we've been really lucky. I know how lucky we've been here in Green Bay with the friends that we've made in the contacts that people have got to be able to get us tickets. And even luckier that we're getting them at face value in most cases, the real lucky man. They have been a real last quick question. I don't want to put a jinx on anything, but if the football guides shine on the Packers, and they happen to make it to the Super Ball, do you have any hopes of being able to go there? I've been offered free transportation from Green Bay to Arizona, and I've been offered tickets. So long as the people that I know receive tickets in the ballot for the Super Ball tickets, then I'll have a ticket as well. So we are quietly making planes. Well, we're all hoping for it. So

thanks so much, Wayne Scolino, and have a safe trip back to Australia. That is our program for tonight. Next week, our singing commentator, Peter Lidy returns with the new song. And we also want to remind you of a special program on Wednesday, January 23rd. That's when we'll bring you the governor's 2008 state-of-the-state address live from the state capital. I'm Art Hackett, Frederica Freiberd. We'll be back with you next Friday. Have a great weekend. you