Historically speaking, most senators aren't worth remembering. Wisconsin has had it's share who are-- both among the very worst in history, obviously Joe McCarthy and his current, perhaps worse, reincarnation, Ron Johnson-- and the very best, Bob La Follette, William Proxmire, Gaylord Nelson and Russ Feingold. Oddly enough, McCarthy replaced La Follette and when McCarthy died of cirrhosis of the liver at 48 (alcoholism), Proxmire was elected to replace him. Later, Wisconsin voters also thought it would be savvy to replace Russ Feingold with Ron Johnson. Don't ask me; I've only been there a couple of times.
Once McCarthy did the country a favor by drinking himself to death in 1957, Proxmire won the special election to replace him-- and went on to serve longer than any other senator in the history of Wisconsin (31 years). He served while I was in high school and college and I remember him as an ass-kicking progressive who was adamantly against the War in Vietnam and, as Chaior of the Banking Committee, the scourge of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Former Wisconsin Assembly majority leader, Tom Nelson, has a reputation for being very much like Proxmire-- committed to progressive values, a crusader against government waste, the hardest working man in politics, a public servant above and beyond anything else and completely independent. Currently the Outagamie County Executive, he's the progressive running to replace Ron Johnson in the Senate. Yesterday Nelson <https://nelsonforwi.medium.com/book-review-by-tom-nelson-proxmire-bulldog-of-the-senate-jonathan-kasparek-b6dd1c9d24e0>wrote a review<> of Jonathan Kasparek book, Proxmire: Bulldog of the Senate. I decided to share it with you not so much because of what Nelson has to say about Proxmire per se, as what the review reveals about Tom Nelson. Please give it a read and if you want to see him in the Senate instead of Ron Johnson, also consider contributing to his campaign here or by clicking on our fancy new thermometer above.
Book Review By Tom Nelson
Growing up I didn’t want to be a Green Bay Packer or a Milwaukee Brewer; I wanted to be a Bill Proxmire. Proxmire was the hardest working U.S. Senator in history. I’d happily make the argument, but Jonathan Kasparek did it for me in his recent book, Proxmire: Bulldog of the Senate.
Prox, as he was affectionately known, was a talented man and he could have chosen any career and dominated the field. But, he chose politics.
He came of age during the New Deal. It was a brave new world. The Great Depression had brought the country to its knees. But only one party rose to the occasion. Proxmire saw the Democratic party as the party that solved problems and didn’t just make up excuses for “why nothing ought to be done.”
He couldn’t run for office in his hometown of Lake Forest, Illinois because it was a Republican stronghold. He’d have to go elsewhere. He chose Wisconsin and took a job at Madison’s Capital Times as a reporter in 1949. But before he found the bathrooms, he was off and running for the state Assembly, knocking off an incumbent the following year.
Proxmire quickly established his bona fides as an expert on tax policy, a field of interest nurtured from his time at Harvard Business School. After three tries at the governor’s office (1952, 1954, 1956) he took one more shot at office, running for the late Joe McCarthy’s Senate seat in a special election. He won.
As senator, Prox was widely known for his golden fleece award in which he highlighted-- or rather, pulled down the pants of-- a federal agency that wasted money, like the unsuspecting sociologist who successfully applied for a federal grant to study the way people fall in love.
He was also revered for his grassroots campaigning. He shook millions of hands. No joke. By his last re-election, most folks had shaken his hand at least once according to Kasparek.
Proxmire was the ultimate polymath. He learned the ins and outs of seemingly every piece of legislation ranging from bankruptcy law and lending practices to dairy pricing systems to the UN Convention on Genocide. He rarely delegated tasks. He did his own legislative research, wrote his own speeches and press releases and often did his own constituent casework.
Like any good biographer, Kasparek does well addressing the human side of his subject. What I found fascinating about Proxmire were his ethical lapses despite his squeaky clean persona.
Once, he put too many staff on his payroll, nearly 70 more than that of the average Senate office. Another time he hired a full-time student as a full-time employee. (That amounted to a scandal in 1963, Wisconsin.) And then there was the time Proxmire went a little too far with a golden fleece award and the fleecer sued him, taking him all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where the Court ruled in favor of the recipient and Prox had to pay $140,000 in attorney and settlement fees.
Truth be told he probably could have survived those incidents. Indeed, his strengths outweighed his weaknesses and it wasn’t like any opponent was going to match him handshake-for-handshake.
But to him, those oversights and shortcuts were significant. He made sure full reparations were made-- and he did so out of his own pocket even though he couldn’t afford it-- because in those days you could not put a price on a man’s name. In that way, it didn’t matter so much what others thought of him but what he thought of himself; what he knew to be the difference between right and wrong, no matter the offense.
Sure wish there were more Proxmires today.
He cannot be like Proxmire. Proxmire was a member of a party that was actually trying to do good for the nation. They had limited success.
Nelson is a member of a party that has done NOTHING good for the nation in over 40 years and is not about to start now, clearly, since they've refused every opportunity to address even the lowest-hanging fruit since 2009.
Proxmire was there through VRA and CRA and Medicare/Medicaid.
Tom is a member of the party that has watched VRA be gutted by the courts, CRA ignored and M/M being sold for profit to insurance/phrma... and has done "merrick garland" to get back to their Proxmire roots. The party won't allow another Proxmire o…