Madison at twilight

I think I first noticed this phenomenon right where I live … Madison Wisconsin (Dane County). This is the site of the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin system, the seat of state government, and the locational choice of an increasing number of hi-tech and professionally-oriented firms and businesses. What else makes the place special? It has become a liberal, should I say progressive(?), enclave.

In fact, it is shifting the balance of political power in a state that has been a toss-up arena for some time now. For years, voters in Dane and Milwaukee had offset strong Republican support coming out of the Milwaukee suburbs and the very rural areas of the state, those places where more cows than people live. Often, the votes from smaller cities decided each election, most of which were pretty close. More likely, voter turnout determined winners and losers with state-election outcomes being settled by razor thin margins. There were more Democrats in the state overall but victory depended on whether they could be persuaded to vote in large enough nuumbers.

That equilibrium seems to be changing. Democratic Governor Tony Evers, not the most dynamic campaigner you will ever meet, has won the last two Gubernatorial races. Even more surprising, the liberals have won back control of the State Supreme Court last spring and rather easily at that. This reversed a number of earlier losses where huge amounts of corporate money successfully backed very conservative jurists. Huge turnouts in Dane county with increasingly larger Democratic majorities explain much of these recent successes. The SCOTUS votes from Dane County in this last election totaled more than were cast in Milwaukee (the state’s much bigger city). More importantly, some 82 percent of all these votes were cast in the Democratic column.

It was not always this way. When I moved to Madison in the very early 1970s, I thought I had stumbled into a large farming town. Sure, the University (and an active anti-war movement) was here but the culture overall was not that progressive. The rural parts of Dane County held sway over the county board; there were almost no upscale restaurants; and local TV and radio ads were dominated by pitches for agriculture products. They kept warning me about root worm. It took me several months before I realized that was something that attacked corn, not humans. I was rather appalled by my surroundings at first.

That began to change soon enough when they got their first upscale restaurant (called Ovens of Brittany) and when a former left-wing student activist from Chicago named Paul Soglin upset the establishment by being elected city Mayor. His critics used the usual fear tactics, that the city would become a Commie satellite if this (Jewish) radical took charge. Amazingly, it didn’t work this time. On his election, a number of shocked Madison residents sold their homes and moved beyond the city limits, fearing God knows what. However, Paul turned out to be a superb mayor who led the city into modern times, eventually serving as chief executive off and on for several decades.

Today, the city and county are nothing like the burgh to which I relocated over five decades ago. It is an exciting and growing urban center with a plethora of cultural opportunities in all the arts, an array of fine eateries and ethnic restaurants representing cuisines from around the world, an extraordinary number of firms that attract highly educated and well-paid employees, and ample recreation opportunities. Mad city is no longer a sleepy big town (or was it a small city then) but now has emerged as a cutting-edge, cosmopolitan urban center where young professionals seek to to live and work.

Campus and Capitol

Not surprisingly, the cutural and intellectual winds have become decidedly progressive including several significant ethnic communities along with a vibrant LBGTQ+ community. It was recently ranked the 5th most educated city in the nation and the 6th most fittest city in the land. It often ranks in the top 3 in many such polls including where professionals want to live, a good place to raise families, and a superb place for those who enjoy the outdoors. Oh, and I just read an article suggesting it is the #1 college sports town in the nation (the Badger fan base admittedly is a bit wacko). The unemployment rate hovers around 2 percent or less and the place is growing like mad. They cannot put up new housing units fast enough with demand pushing the median price of single family dwellings to the $400,000 mark and beyond.

Republicans are not unaware of what is happening. Perhaps that is why they are trying to hurt the University so badly. Recently, the Republican controlled Assembly and Senate wacked $32 million from an already spare budget to attack diversity initiatives in higher education. They also refused to approve a new, and badly needed, engineering building, apparently out of sheer spite. Really, who turns down efforts to enhance the education of students in the STEM disciplines these days. You have to be totally deranged to do that. Oh my, I almost forgot which group I was talking about … Republicans.

Perhaps the words of former Republican Governor (and Presidential candidate) Scott Walker gets at their motivations. “Young voters are the issue. It comes from years of radical indoctrination … on campuses, in school, with social media, and throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.” Of course, we fear Scott doesn’t know much about college campuses. He dropped out of college (or was thrown out depending on whom you believe) with a 2.4 or so GPA after a brief tenure at Marquette University, a decent (but not superior) Catholic Institution of higher learning in Milwaukee.

On paper, I would be one of the brainwashed college students that Republicans worry about … way back in the 1960s’ that is. I entered Clark University fresh out of my stint in a Catholic seminary and yet imbued with many core traditional values straight out of the playbook for my ethnic, working class culture. By the time I left to go to India after graduation, I was a very different young man. Among other sins, I had led the anti-war activities on campus.

Still, my political and intellectual metamorphesis seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with any brainwashing, at least not as far as I recall. I merely had access to a wide range of honest information about the world and, much more importantly, was encouraged to think rigorously and independently about things around me. To my recollection, no one told me what to believe, just how to think. That is a critical distinction. Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of conservatives more than people being able to think for themselves.

[Digression: My change of heart on the Vietnam war came early on. The key moment occurred in a day long dialogue with a fellow student as we both were working on our individual National Science Foundation sponsored undergraduate research projects (he deserved his, not sure about mine). Anyway, he stayed in psychology and went on to get his Ph.D. at Harvard. I certainly knew even then that he was a most worthy opponent. Still, being a stubborn Irishman, I told him at the end of the day that we would have to agree to disagree. But in my heart, I realized he was right and I was defending a hopeless position. I yet look upon that day as when my core political perspective began to shift.]

My Undergrad Alma Mater:

It changed my life.

Back to my main thesis. The call by Scott Walker to do something has not been ignored. Beyond Republican attacks on some of America’s leading research universities (Wisconsin is ranked among the top 50 such institutions in the world), the ‘right’ is mounting their own form of brainwashing to counter what they believe the ‘left’ is doing. Hillsdale College, a small and very conservative liberal arts college in Michigan, is leading the charge to reshape the perceived indoctrination of the young toward a more conservative direction. They only have 1,700 students but an endowment approaching $1 billion, enough to push it’s hard right agenda on to the wider world. I had been on their mailing list for some time, but I found their stuff extremely hard to stomach. I do like to keep in touch with a broad range of opinions but only when shared by those who function in the real world.

They have initiated what they call the 1776 Curriculum. It reframes American history to emphasize what we think of as American Exceptionalism. You know, we are a Christian nation blessed by God to do good in the world and always have been such and done so. It mostly is aimed at high schools but they touch other levels as well. Some 8,400 teachers and administrators have downloaded the materials so far, which also includes suggestions on which books to ban. Their lessons and perspectives have crept into the college ranks. Some Florida schools of higher education are teaching that slavery was good for black people since it taught them useful skills. Perhaps, but it doesn’t come out very well for the enslaved in a benefit-cost analysis when all pros and cons are considered.

The potential Wisconsin political shift story is illuminating but only part of this larger story. There are some 171 cities and counties designated ‘college towns’ where the ambiance and environment is materially impacted by one or more local schools, at least as defined by several metrics. Since 2000, some 38 have flipped from red to blue, while only 7 have flipped in the other direction. Moreover, the Dems grew their percentage of the vote in 117 of these jurisdictions (representing an average of over 16,000 more votes) while less than half that many (54) drifted to the ‘right’ (by a smaller average of some 4,000 votes). Overall, the shift clearly is in a blue direction. In the year 2000, these towns went 48 to 47 percent for Gore. By 2020, the gap had grown to 54 to 44 percent for Biden.

Bascom Hall (Univ. of Wisconsin)

The University of Michigan is like the University of Wisconsin in many ways. Both Big 10 public universities though Michigan slightly outranks the Badgers on the academic prestige scale (both are considered world class schools). The home of the Wolverines is located in Washtenaw County which gave Gore a 34,000 vote plurality in 2000. Two decades later, they gave Biden over a 100,000 vote margin. Like Dane county, Washtenaw may be swinging the entire state into the blue column in what had become a swing state in recent times. Other states are seeing similar swings. Travis County Texas (the University of Texas) has seen a growth of some 290,000 democratic votes between 2000 and 2020. Henneppin County (the University of Minnesota) has seen a similar trend, up some 245,000 over the same period. The triangle area in North Carolina is driving similar trends in that state.

Unlike Scott Walker, I don’t blame recent Republican concerns all on so-called brainwashed students. They have other issues like knowing that your core base prefers candidates better suited to the looney bin than high office. And there are those large demographic trends. Caucasions of European ancestry are becoming a minority in this country, likely in another generation, an inevitability stoking the hostile animus of White Nationalists.

Putting such factors aside, I suspect a less obvious dynamic is at play here in these college towns. Younger people are concerned about things like climate change, growing hyper-inequality, and the still hidden consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) … things that are important to their future. The Republican Party focuses on abortion, the southern border, and mythical attacks on Christianity … emotional issues but hardly fundamental concerns to our future survival. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure who is interested in governing and who is playing classic bait and switch politics. The GOP tells you to focus on this non-issue cultural thing over there while they feverishly continue to make their wealthy friends even richer (really, do the 1%, or the .01%, want it all?).

As students (and younger people generally) swing to the left in places where they tend to congregate, they inevitably set a broader tone for the community. Such places create a more accepting and progressive culture. More than that, research universities attract hi-tech and professional firms which, in turn, demand educated employees. A reinforcing cyclical pattern emerges. Smart, young, accomplished people are not likely to be embedded in the cultural grudges about which Republican enclaves stew. These are people much better able to connect the dots in general, absorb news critically. They tend to have stimulating conversations socially, read a lot, and can see the bigger picture.

My social gatherings (book clubs and just ordinary get togethers) are dominated by sparkling conversations of a remarkably high intellectual order. While my friends are from the geriatric set, they are really smart and accomplished … retired lawyers, engineers, doctors, academics, and other such types. We remain astonished that people out in the rural areas of the state continue to supprt a Republican Party that has evidenced absolutely NO interest whatsoever in addressing their problems or providing solutions for them … and I mean zilch, nada, zero interest. That conundrum continues to amaze me, especially when I see signs on rural farms saying Trump in 2024, stop the bullshit. Really? They are looking to the the biggest conman ever in public life for honesty? Now, that is insanity totally beyond measure.

No one knows what the future will bring but the above trends give me a measure of hope. Remember that our electoral college permits candidates to be swamped in the overall vote but still be elected. While Biden won by a 7 million vote plurality in 2020, some 50,000 to 60,000 votes distributed differently in just five swing states could have handed Trump the White House a second time. When national outcomes remain in doubt, extant trends in these college towns may prove to be a life raft for our democracy. They may save us from going over the edge into the abyss of conservative authoritarianism and even totolitarianism.

I hope so. I’m a bit old to seek political asylum in a foreign country though I may check out getting Irish citizenship (being of Irish decent on my dad’s side) during an upcoming trip to the old sod.

The Wisconsin State Capitol