Guest Editorial & Letters

Reflections on a Race

What an exhilarating four months I had running for alderman on Milwaukee’s East Side. The race consumed virtually every waking hour of my day but was worth it – even though we fell 71 votes short of victory on April 1.

The support I had from my partner, my family, friends, LGBT community, neighborhood folks, colleagues in organized labor and progressive organizations, elected officials, clergy and more made it all worthwhile. As an organizer desperate to break open the closed club that is elections, I was thrilled that our campaign brought new people into political organizing in a big way.

For the first 100 years of the city, the Milwaukee Common Council was of the usual straight white male variety. Since the 1950s, women and people of color made inroads. And in 160 years, no openly LGBT person has won the election. The 3rd Aldermanic district has long seemed a logical place to end that streak, as its residents include the city’s largest gay community. Indeed, Karen Gotlzer, a pioneer in Milwaukee’s LGBT community in the 1980s and 1990s, came close to representing the district in 1996, winning the primary (as I did) but ultimately losing the general.

It was in this context that I ran. I had extensive experience with city government, having led passage of four different equality measures and worked on block grant and zoning issues as well as the growing movement to hold corporations that receive city resources to a higher standard.

Our campaign raised the most money of any aldermanic campaign and garnered impressive endorsements from officials and organizations. Our message was informed by the conversations I had with thousands of voters in near-daily door knocking. Straight or gay, voters wanted to know the same thing -- my positions on development, neighborhood safety, declining city services, and relations with UW –Milwaukee.

We also ran the most out campaign in the history of Wisconsin. Campaign communications proudly noted my achievements on LGBT issues and mentioned and depicted my partner Kurt. The day my candidacy was announced in the daily paper I wrote an op-ed describing my organization’s gay rights victories in 2007. In summaries of my candidacy, the same paper spelled out exactly what the “LGBT” in my employer’s name stood for and listed my family status as “domestic partnership.”

We wondered if we were overdoing it when straight voters started confronting me with “what the hell does running the gay community have to do with city hall,” gay voters told me being gay “wasn’t enough,” and the hate mail with detailed descriptions of anal sex started coming in. On Easter Sunday, shaking hands with parishioners outside of my opponent’s church, an elderly woman told me she “knows all about Patrick Flaherty” before shuddering and concluding, “ICKY!”

In such a positive campaign with so many dedicated supporters, to comment on anything negative feels a bit like second-guessing a hugely successful party by noting the few who skipped the festivities. And while I will always be grateful for the overwhelming support of the LGBT community and allies, in the interest of community reflection, I do think it worth noting some below-the-radar tactics by some LGBT community members who favored my opponent.

In a widely circulated email I was accused of hiding my partner because one dozen campaign photos showed me with my siblings and my parents but not him. I was also accused of not testifying for domestic partner benefits at an MPS hearing immediately before the campaign when in fact I did testify and indeed had led the campaign to turn out dozens of equal rights supporters.

There were other factors more instrumental in my defeat, but this defamation was potent because it spoke to the two audiences who ultimately defeated me – the ultra-right and ultra-left. Antigay conservatives were made aware that I was gay, and progressives were left to wonder about the integrity of a man who would supposedly hide something so essential.

Patrick Flaherty
Milwaukee

Letters to the Editor:

Our Own Worst Enemy

Recently, here in Milwaukee, an openly gay candidate for 3rd District Alderman, a good honorable man who I will always be honored to have been part of this campaign lost by just seventy-one votes’ out of almost ten thousand votes cast.
In my opinion, he lost because two members of our community “figuratively” stabbed him in the back.
“A house divided cannot stand” as the saying goes.
Terrance J. Rohloff
Milwaukee

Identity Politics

Having worked on Patrick Flaherty’s campaign from the start of the aldermanic race in the third district, I was always aware of the tension created by having two, well-known progressive members of the Riverwest queer community competing against each other.
Rather than focus exclusively on pertinent issues affecting the district, Sura Furaj chose to make sexual identity a centerpiece of her campaign. She asked us to unite behind her candidacy because she was presenting herself as the “openly gay” candidate, questioning Patrick’s loyalty to the gay community. Identity politics have seldom served our ambitions. As a tactic, it generally pits factions against each other and destroys any hope of finding common ground for the good of the larger community.
So I, and many of my friends, colleagues, and allies of the queer community, was dismayed when Sura endorsed Nik Kovac after losing in the primary. If she truly thought that having a representative of the gay community on Milwaukee’s Common Council was important, why didn’t she try to unite us behind Patrick’s campaign?
Lizzi Dahlk
Milwaukee