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Julian Bradley takes on '134 years of name recognition' [La Crosse Tribune, Wis.](La Crosse Tribune (WI) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 02--WESTBY -- Julian Bradley doesn't make it to the front door before someone stops him. "Are they having some sort of party?" the woman asks as he makes his way into the Old Towne Inn. "A Republican party?" Bradley holds the door as she enters the supper club, where he's scheduled to speak at the Vernon County GOP's annual fall dinner, where the guest of honor is former Gov. Tommy Thompson. "I thought I recognized you," she says. Inside the banquet room, Bradley works the crowd of party loyalists, shaking hands and introducing himself. "Hi. Julian Bradley. I'm running for secretary of state." I recognize you from TV, one woman tells him, even with a couple of inches trimmed off his afro. Recognition is not a problem for Bradley. As usual, he is the largest person in the room -- and the only person of color. It's a theme he embraces in his stump speech, telling the crowd how people often assume he's a Democrat. "No, not unless the democratic party has changed their platform to being pro-life, pro-gun and pro-business," he says. "I'm pretty sure I'm a Republican." Then he delivers the punch line. "I like to ask a question," Bradley says to growing laughter. "Why? What is it about me that makes you think I could be a Democrat? ... And after some hemming and hawing sometimes I can get it out of them, they say well you know, you're a little tan. It throws us off." Bradley, the 33-year-old vice chairman of the 3rd Congressional District party and the former chairman of the La Crosse County GOP, is considered one of his party's rising stars. A one-time aspiring professional wrestler, he is funny and equally at ease in front of a crowd or chatting with voters one-on-one. He exudes charisma. In 2013, after being elected district vice chairman, Bradley set out on a statewide speaking tour to promote the GOP as a more diverse party. Now he's running for secretary of state, taking on eight-term incumbent Doug La Follette. It was during his "Shattering Stereotypes" tour, Bradley said, that people urged him to run for office. "At the end of the year I started thinking about that, looking at the elections," he said. "Looking from the top down, the governor -- we've got a great governor. He's good; don't need to do anything there. Brad Schimel's running for attorney general. We're going to do very well there. Secretary of state. That's a place that needs a definite positive change." Little discretion or authority Though it is a constitutional position -- second in line of succession, behind the lieutenant governor, should something happen to the governor -- Wisconsin's secretary of state is one of the sleepier offices in state government. The job carries a salary of $68,556, and the office has a budget of just over $500,000 a year and is allocated just four employees. Unlike in Florida, Ohio or Minnesota, the secretary of state has not overseen elections since 1973, when the Legislature created a bipartisan elections board. Nor does it handle business registrations. That role was transferred in 1995 under Gov. Thompson to the newly created Department of Financial Institutions. Most recently the office was stripped of the responsibility for publishing new laws. The physical office has even been removed from the capitol. "One way of looking at the remaining tasks is there is very little discretion or authority left in the office," said Dennis Dresang, professor emeritus of public affairs and political science at the University of Wisconsin. "It's mainly a keeper of records." Today the secretary of state holds the official state seal and maintains copies of official documents, such as incorporation and annexation papers, deeds for state lands and pardons. Need to see a copy of someone's oath of office? It's on file. "That's a problem with the office," Bradley said. "People snicker at it." But unlike other recent Republican candidates, Bradley does not advocate eliminating the office, which would require a constitutional amendment. "I stay out of the elimination debate," he said. "I know it's going to be there for the next four years. While it's there ... my job is to be the best secretary of state I can be, earning my salary." His campaign message hinges on La Follette's low visibility. A former chemistry professor, La Follette was first elected to the office in 1974. After an unsuccessful lieutenant governor bid in 1978, he was elected secretary of state again in 1982, when Bradley was just 2, and has held it ever since. He brags that he turned the office around and has modernized its record keeping and public interface. "I took over an office that was in somewhat disrepair," La Follette said. "There was no modern technology. I brought in computers, set up a website -- one of the best in the country." In his stump speech, Bradley highlight's La Follette's most noticed official action in recent years: waiting to publish Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker's controversial bill that eliminated collective bargaining for most public workers. "My opponent, Doug La Follette, woke up -- after 36 years of hibernation and he said, 'I don't like that bill, so I'm going to sit on it for 10 days.'" La Follette has a different take. With very few exceptions, he said, his office published every bill on the 10th day. "I didn't see this to be an emergency," he said. "I heard there were possible legal actions. ... I did what I felt was the conservative thing and waited until the 10th day." Republicans retaliated, passing a law that gave that responsibility to the Department of Administration. Bradley said he would like to eventually return the business registry functions to the office, but in the meantime he thinks he could do a better job of customer service than the recording that currently greets business owners who don't know to contact the DFI. He also vows to build relationships with the Legislature and advocates returning the office to the capitol. "Good luck with that," La Follette said. "The Legislature is never going to give up the space they took." '134 years of name recognition' Though La Follette, 74, had little success in other races -- he lost a 1970 bid for Congress and came in fourth in the Democratic primary during the 2012 gubernatorial recall -- he has had little trouble winning his secretary of state races. In 2010 he defeated Republican David King by almost 69,000 votes out of more than 2 million cast, his narrowest margin yet. But he does little campaigning and practically no fundraising. Through late October, Bradley had spent nearly $50,000 on the race; La Follette, just $320. "A hundred and thirty-four years of name recognition certainly helps," Bradley says, referring to La Follette's distant cousin, Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette, the progressive governor and U.S. senator who was first elected to Congress in 1885. Bradley's strategy is simple. He's targeting the base in an effort to ensure they vote all the way down the ticket. "You would be shocked how many people vote in the governor's race (and nothing else)," Bradley says. "Just because I'm a Republican doesn't mean they'll vote for me. ... I really want to fire people up." Here's the math: in 2010, Scott Walker got 1,128,941 votes; two spots down the ticket, fellow Republican David King got just 1,005,217. Bradley figures if he can connect with enough core Republican voters he can erase that deficit. But it may not be so easy: La Follette actually got 69,815 more votes than Tom Barrett, the Democrat at the top of the ticket. Republican under-voting could be at play, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the UW-Madison, but so too is crossover voting, likely because they recognize a name attached to statues and public institutions. Dresang thinks the diminished role of the office simply doesn't attract big-ticket candidates. "A serious challenger is probably not going to spend the kind of money to get the same visibility as other people running statewide," he said. "Even the Koch brothers wouldn't invest in this." Still, La Follette spent just $800 on his last campaign, beating an opponent who outspent him 56 to one. "He is just unusual because of the name, which resonates with people," Burden said. "And he's been in office for over 30 years. He has an incumbency advantage that no other politician has. He's won a tremendous amount of elections, even in years that have been good for Republicans." {iframe src="http://cf.datawrapper.de/uS0xW/1/" frameborder="0" width="600" height="400"}{/iframe} Hard work Bradley has been a relentless campaigner, putting more than 56,000 miles, one set of brakes, an alternator and a couple of transmission repairs on his Ford Explorer since entering the race on Jan. 18. So far he's hit one skunk but managed to avoid deer. He earned the party endorsement and handily won the August primary, taking 64 percent of the Republican vote and all but a handful of counties. The Republican State Leadership Committee named him to their "14 in '14" list highlighting promising up-and-coming leaders in the party, and the national party has since launched a "five-figure" digital ad campaign on his behalf. "I'm a firm believer that with enough hard work , if you're willing to invest the time," Bradley said, "you can change people's minds." The day of the Vernon County dinner, he was up at 5 a.m. checking email, put in a 7-4 shift at CenturyLink, where he is a customer service supervisor, changed into his signature campaign uniform -- white shirt, red tie, black sweater vest -- and picked up 3rd District congressional candidate Tony Kurtz, who studied for an upcoming debate as Bradley drove along foggy rural highways, constantly shuffling through the eclectic mix of music on his iPhone. They were scheduled for back-to-back party meetings 92 miles apart. It would be after 11 p.m. before he made it home to Holmen. Bradley, who saved up his vacation for the final 10 days before the election, calls it "an easy day." The hard work may be paying off. Earlier this month, an automated poll of likely Wisconsin voters by Gravis Marketing showed Bradley in a virtual tie with La Follette. "If you're going to do something that's never been done," Bradley said, "you have to do everything." Asked whether he thinks he's working harder than those who've tried before, he shrugs. "I try not to compare myself to previous candidates. "Because they lost." ___ (c)2014 the La Crosse Tribune (La Crosse, Wis.) Visit the La Crosse Tribune (La Crosse, Wis.) at www.lacrossetribune.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |