Frederica Freyberg:
Democrat Tom Barrett adds his name to a gubernatorial race that includes Republican primary candidates who have already appeared on “Here and Now.” Nashotah businessman and former U.S. congressman Mark Neumann and current Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. The race is on and we turn now to someone who follows and teaches government and politics, Prof. Mordecai Lee of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Thanks very much for being here. We've got three big name candidates, Walker, Neumann and Barrett. They are all basically from Milwaukee and environs. How different is that?

Mordecai Lee:
This is really weird, peculiar, unusual. Generally speaking, the conventional wisdom of Wisconsin politics is that you don't want to be from Milwaukee. You want to be from outstate. There’s this sort of asymmetry that if you’re from outstate, Milwaukeeans don’t hold it against you, but if you’re from Milwaukee, outstaters do hold it against you. That’s why we’ve tended to have so few candidates from Milwaukee.

Frederica Freyberg:
Why is it bad to be from Milwaukee?

Mordecai Lee:
You know, I think it's a couple of things. Believe it or not, it traces back to Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson hated cities and praised rural life. Somehow that's gotten deep inside our political DNA. We think that living in a rural area is so much better than the corrupting, awful city. That's part of it. Part of it is probably the role that Milwaukee has played in Wisconsin politics during the last 50 years, always seeking money, always being a center of poverty. Now it's a minority-majority city, the only one in Wisconsin. So it tends to be a little different, and people outstate aren't sure how they feel about it.

Frederica Freyberg:
So do you think these candidates can get past those stereotypes?

Mordecai Lee:
Well, I think the luck is that the Republican candidate and the Democratic candidate will both be from Milwaukee. So any bias that voters have outstate against Milwaukee in a sense gets negated because both candidates are from there. If there were a situation that somebody was from La Crosse and the other candidate from Milwaukee, then I might think there would be a serious problem.

Frederica Freyberg:
One headline this week asked who would want to be governor with the myriad of problems that the next one is going to face. What about that?  

Mordecai Lee:
I think that's a great point. That would be like saying do you want to be governor during the Great Depression, 1933, 34, 35. But generally speaking elected officials are in politics because they want to be where the action is, they want to make a difference. And we have to remember that politics is very ideological. Somebody who's republican has views about the world and fixing the economy that are very different from a democrat. So here you got two men, I'm talking about in this case Walker and Barrett, both having served in the state Legislature, both know state government very well and both have very firm opinions about what they'd like to do if they were governor.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, Tom Barrett apparently has the imprimatur of the Obama administration. Is that a blessing or a curse at this juncture?

Mordecai Lee:
A year in politics is just an eternity. November of 2010 will Obama be popular or unpopular? Will the economy be in good shape or bad shape? That will be one of it. A president is always good, whether the president is popular or not, for fund-raising. The $1,000 a plate dinner, $5,000 to stand next to the president, get your picture taken. So that is a benefit to the person who's from the same party as the president. But it remains to be seen whether campaigning with him will be an advantage. If it is, he'll do it.

Frederica Freyberg:
You told me this race will be the usual fight for the truly independent swing voter. If that is the case, what is the message that wins the vote?

Mordecai Lee:
You know what? I'm not sure. That's sort of why we still hold elections. I think Scott Walker, assuming that he's the one, he's got a nice, clean message. He said the problem is government itself. ‘I will never raise taxes. I want to diminish the size of government.’ Neumann says, ‘I'm a businessman. I'm going to try to run government like a business.’ Barrett is going to be saying, ‘government needs to be temperate and moderate. I'm going to govern the way I did in Milwaukee.’ I don't know which of those is going to work. They're all sort of nice, simple slogans. Maybe the wave of history is slightly more toward the Republicans because this is an off-year election, and generally speaking in the off-year election the party of the president doesn't do as well. But I think Tom Barrett has as good a chance of winning as the republican candidate.

Frederica Freyberg:
Well, that is a very safe answer. Thanks a lot for your insight.

Mordecai Lee:
Thanks for inviting me.