• Legal Analysis of Supreme Court and Hamdan
• Senator Plale and his support for the Patient Abandonment Bill, with veto petition by the Wisconsin Medical Society
• More guns in more neighborhoods? Enough! Basta! Ask Senator Plale what was he thinking

More guns in more neighborhoods? Enough! Basta! Ask Senator Plale what was he thinking

Enough! Basta! Ask Senator Plale what was he thinking about yet more guns in more neighborhoods?

Senator Plale’s wishes to license the secret carrying of guns to just about any public place in Wisconsin

*How did you come into politics?

*What was your work before you ran for office?

*Who encouraged you to run for your first elected office?

*Who are your political heroes? and why

*Who are you cultural heroes? and why

*Name some authors, artists, musicians whose work you love. (books, music, sculpture, art)

*Can you tell us any stories about events in your life that helped you form your principles - political or personal?

*Any hobbies or favorite organizations that you spend time or contribute to?

Questions that the Senator did not answer are rendered in RED. As the Senator’s answers are delivered we will publish them in full here.

Interview and writing by Bill Sell.
Comments please: county@bikethehoan.com

Milwaukee Renaissance is waiting for answers to the following questions from the incumbent. We will publish them as soon as we receive them.

Senator Plale has also been invited to contribute a personal profile to this web page.

The purpose of a profile is to give the voter some personal background on each candidate. In response to this invitation (earlier in August), Senator Plale asked me for specific questions, which follow. His answers will be published here as soon as the web site receives them.

Senator Plale and his support for the Patient Abandonment Bill, with veto petition by the Wisconsin Medical Society

Senator Plale addresses questions about Patient Abandonment Bill

Legal Analysis of Supreme Court and Hamdan

Legal Analysis of Supreme Court and Hamdan’‘’

Issues and Concerns

Legal Analysis of Supreme Court and Hamdan’‘’

Issues and Concerns?

Legal Analysis of Supreme Court and Hamdan]]’‘’
SeventhDistrictSenateElection.

Issues and Concerns?

Issues and Concerns

Legal Analysis of Supreme Court and Hamdan?

Attach:Riley.jpg Δ

Issues and Concerns?

Issues and Concerns?

Issues and Concerns?

Issues and Concerns?

Issues and Concerns?

!IssuesConcerns

Senator Plale has also been invited to contribute a personal profile to this web page. The purpose of a profile is to give the voter some personal background on each candidate. In response to this invitation (earlier in August), Senator Plale asked me for specific questions, which follow. His answers will be published here as soon as the web site receives them.

Questions for the profile: (These are sample questions; please feel free to run with them in any way you wish. )

• How did you come into politics?

• What was your work before you ran for office?

• Who encouraged you to run for your first elected office?

• Who are your political heroes? and why

• Who are you cultural heroes? and why

• Name some authors, artists, musicians whose work you love. (books, music, sculpture, art)

• Can you tell us any stories about events in your life that helped you form your principles - political or personal?

• Any hobbies or favorite organizations that you spend time or contribute to?

Senator Jeff Plale has been invited to contribute a profile to this space.

Profile of Donovan Riley, challenger.

[-Interview and writing by Bill Sell.\\

[-Interview and writing by Bill Sell.
Comments please: county@bikethehoan.com-]

Interview and writing by Bill Sell. Comments please: county@bikethehoan.com

Interview and writing by Bill Sell. county@bikethehoan.com

Parents as Role Models

Attach:DonovanRiley.jpg Δ

attach:DonovanRiley.jpg

Democratic Party Primary.

Profile of Donovan Riley, challenger.

The Wisconsin State Senate, 7th District (Milwaukee, Bay View, St. Francis, Cudahy, South Milwaukee, Tippecanoe, Oak Creek)

Primary September 12, 2006. General Election November 7, 2006.

Profile of Donovan Riley, challenger, Democratic Party Primary.

[-The Wisconsin State Senate, 7th District (Milwaukee, Bay View, St. Francis, Cudahy, South Milwaukee, Tippecanoe, Oak Creek)

Primary September 12, 2006. General Election November 7, 2006.-]

The Wisconsin State Senate, 7th District (Milwaukee, Bay View, St. Francis, Cudahy, South Milwaukee, Tippecanoe, Oak Creek) Primary September 12, 2006. General Election November 7, 2006.

Interview and writing by Bill Sell. [county@bikethehoan.com]

Campaign 2006.

The Wisconsin State Senate, 7th District (Milwaukee, Bay View, St. Francis, Cudahy, South Milwaukee, Tippecanoe, Oak Creek) Primary September 12, 2006. General Election November 7, 2006.

Profile of Donovan Riley, challenger.

I first met Donovan in the spring of 2006, as he was considering a run for the State Senate, and asked him if he would be “doing doors” - the marathon walk, ringing door bells, and talking to the neighbors that is the endurance test of a unknown challenger. Without a blink of the eye, he recounted how he had already started and was happy to find voters so receptive to a new voice. He much prefers “doors” than calling up strangers to ask for money. He’d rather meet you at your doorstep and talk about cleaning up state government. Campaign money from narrow interests has corrupted Wisconsin politics, he feels. Finding money separates you from the voters; this system needs to be fixed.

Since Donovan is retired he offers the voter his secure retirement as proof he does not need a job in politics and can rise above “money” and work for all citizens.

And so, with an Irish twinkle in his eye, Donovan launched his campaign by announcing that every Democratic primary should have at least one Democrat; and “in the seventh district state senate race that Dem is Donovan.” The incumbent has been accused of being “too Republican” by voting against stem cell research and opposite the interests of women on health care issues. He voted with Republicans to allow concealed guns at Summerfest and in medical clinics.

Donovan knows what he is up against. There are powerful lobbies - guns, airlines, utilities and some churches - who will try to protect “their man” in Madison.

His campaign, however, has attracted a wide variety of people, some dismayed that the incumbent tried to give away Mitchell Field County Airport to its tenants. Donovan believes he can prevail without that money, and, he smiles, maybe we can make that money the incumbent’s problem.

Donovan is no newbie to Wisconsin politics; his resume and life is all about public service - the kind of work that requires study of State politics.

• Health care administration
  • Vice President for Administration and Finance, Medical College of Wisconsin;

  • Associate Chancellor, University of Illinois Medical Center;

  • CEO, University of Illinois Hospital

• Educational administration
  • Associate Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs, UWM;

  • Vice President of Administration, UW-La Crosse

• Law - attorney (retired);
  • Visiting Professor in Health and Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, Marquette University;

  • Associate Director, Health Law Institute, Loyola University-Chicago Law School

• Government and policy
  • Budget Analyst for Higher Education, Wisconsin Department of Administration;

  • Budget Analyst for Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau;

  • Research Assistant, Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance

Stepping into Politics

His political life started in the Kennedy-Nixon presidential election and so he reflected all the way back to identify his life-long heroes.

He first mentions John L. Lewis, post-war president of the United Mine Workers during President Truman’s government. Now, Truman was determined to keep the mines open, and extended his presidential power without consulting Congress or the union. In a showdown the President lost to the workingman leader. Lewis’ bushy hamster sized eyebrows, and his “waste no words” speeches in front of news cameras brought cheers to union halls everywhere.

Truman, of course, is remembered fondly by Americans but Donovan admired the guy who stood up to the President.

Donovan grew up in a family which revered President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His mother a political progressive and social worker; his father, a university administrator with a variety of duties including approval of private residences where homeowners provided housing to students coming to Whitewater from a distance.

One day Mr. Riley took young Donovan on an errand that the candidate recounts with fresh amazement. His concern this day was a particular freshman from Beloit, to find a room - oh, easy task! When they stopped at the various residences (where Mr. Riley senior already knew the landlords) he was greeted warmly. They liked Mr. Riley; his presence meant a tenant. But when the small talk turned to that particular young man from Beloit sitting in the back of the car, Donovan could see from his seat in the car how the homeowners, every one of them, would peer into the car window, grimace, step back and shake their heads - teaching Donovan an early lesson on racism hidden just beneath the surface of polite Walworth County.

Having failed in this foray, the Rileys returned the young man to the bus station and the long trip home and to the barriers he would still have to jump to enroll in college, somewhere else.

Sipping coffee at Sven’s on a rainy Sunday morning, Donovan then went back to the interviewer’s first question - heroes - “Come to think of it, maybe my biggest political hero was my Dad.”

Donovan understands how young people today do not seem to hero-worship politicians so much any more. His own devotion to the charismatic flare of John F. Kennedy was later in life sobered by revelations connecting the Kennedy family to the political rise of Senator Joe McCarthy. Donovan served the Kennedy campaign with enthusiasm as State College Student Chair, traveling to campuses around the state. Kennedy’s enduring influence on Donovan’s life affected many who came of age in the 1960 campaign, returning politics to a younger generation proud to be American and to bring our idealism to the corners of the world.

Donovan admires Warren Knowles and Gaylord Nelson, two Wisconsin governors whose civility across party lines allowed for the creation of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund, a continuing resource for grants for land trust purchases.

Education

Donovan attended Holy Cross Preparatory Seminary and St. Regis High in LaCrosse, and then Whitewater High when his father’s job took him to the college there. One gets a sense that his personal self confidence and ease with people, his plain spoken English, and his ability to be the affable focus of a meeting - all these political strengths might have roots in the trauma of making a new set of friends so often during adolescence.

But the education system hardly let him down. After a Bachelors in political science from UW-Madison, where he also earned his law degree (J.D.), he went back to school, Loyola University- Chicago School of Law, to acquire a Masters in Health Law.

Should he win he says he does not need or want a career in Madison, but merely a chance to shift politics back to “common good” government. There is wisdom in this executive mind; and that is when you arrive at a job, imagine that it is temporary and then you are free to foster young talent, and build across the generations.

Working in Madison

Voters may ask Donovan, How will you stand with your strong convictions and get any work done in a polarized State legislature? Donovan loves this question because he built a life making institutions work for people. “You need to work with people where they are, know what you must get done, and do not let your heart get hardened at the opposition - no matter what.”

Just as Milwaukee’s Regional Medical Center is “an absolute gem” for Wisconsin, so we can if we try, have Regional Transit that serves the whole state, a health care system that lightens the load on citizens, employers, school boards, and city and county governments. We need to prevent a downward spiral. The Irish twinkle comes forward when he talks about working with people - from that urgent vision of his father searching for one room for one young man to the wide vision of a Wisconsin government no longer polarized.

However, for those “no way” issues like carrying a gun into a County Park or a concert, or giving away an airport, or divestment of Wisconsin’s traditional strengths such as medical research and education, he says with resignation, you need to vote with conviction and hope common sense will prevail.

And then he excused himself for an appointment with some future voters of Wisconsin - a promised Sunday outing with some of his 14 grandchildren.

Donovan Riley has four children from two marriages; both of his ex-wives are financial supporters of his campaign. He is a Board Member of the Urban Open Spaces Foundation, First President of the Wisconsin Arts Council, and Member of: Milwaukee Art Museum, Young Democrats, and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin

Interview and writing by Bill Sell. [county@bikethehoan.com]

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