Win-At-All-Costs Can Sometimes Cost You Your Support

Last week I blogged about candidate for Milwaukee Branch 15, Daniel Gabler and a disturbing flyer that he sent out before the February primary. It used that same sleazy kind of attack against his opponents that was saw from Michael Gableman last year. Essentially he attacked his opponents as being "pro-criminal" because they had "a record of defending criminals." Although this win-at-all-costs strategy may have propelled him into the general election, he is now starting to pay a price for the kind of attacks that only undermine our legal system. Apparently some of his own supporters in the legal community are pulling their endorsement as a result and one person even filed an ethics complaint against him. Thankfully this attention is coming before the April election and not after.

Although most of the focus is on the worst of the three flyers that he sent out, the other two are not gems either. One pictures him standing in front of a police car, arms folded with a serious scowl on his face and it reads "Tough, Fair." Yes and I'm sure that Mr. and Ms. Defendant would immediately think that you are going to treat them "fairly" when you are posing like you are going to throw them in the back seat and haul them off to jail yourself.

The other flyer that I have seen seems to hit on an abortion theme even though it does not specifically mention it. That flyer is covered with promises of Gabler "protecting life." To me this seems to be a pretty transparent attempt to reach out to a very specific constituency in Milwaukee County. Gabler should know that he wouldn't be making any decisions about abortion from Branch 15, so why hit that theme?

In my view it seems that Daniel Gabler is the ambitious kind of candidate that wants to win at all costs. Unfortunately for him, his tactics seem to be backfiring and now they are sure costing him something alright – costing him support.