07/20/07 Pocan's Progress; How Former Dem 'bomb-thrower' Became Assembly's Master Deal-maker

Pocan's Progress
How Former Dem 'bomb-thrower' Became Assembly's Master Deal-maker
Pocan Says Key Is To Meet The Public

The Capital Times
Friday, July 20, 2007
By DAVID CALLENDER The Capital Times

Before Rep. Scott Suder sat down this spring with Rep. Mark Pocan to try to work out a deal on the state Department of Corrections' vast $900 million-a-year budget, Suder says he braced for the worst.

Pocan, the Assembly's only openly gay member as well as one of the state's most liberal Democrats, had repeatedly clashed with Suder, one of the Assembly's most conservative Republicans.

Only months before, Pocan had questioned on his personal blog whether the Abbotsford Republican was "a drag queen" following an incident in which a woman apparently tried to fraudulently use Suder's credit card at a downtown Madison gay bar.

"I had the impression he was just a very angry, partisan liberal," Suder says of Pocan, whose district covers the heart of downtown Madison.

But after the negotiations began, Suder says he discovered that Pocan "was not the devil incarnate. I really expected him to try to trap us, to play 'gotcha,' but that didn't happen. He was serious. He wanted to find an agreement that worked for everyone."

Suder and Pocan's deal paved the way for a rare unanimous vote from the finance committee approving the Department of Corrections' budget.

The agreement also cemented Pocan's newfound reputation as one of the Legislature's most valuable players: an outspoken progressive Democrat who has won the trust of both majority Republicans in the Assembly and fellow Democrats.

As Pocan completes his fifth term in the state Assembly, he's winning praise for his ability to blend progressive ideals with pragmatic politics.

Once the bad boy of Assembly Democrats, Pocan delighted in skewering conservative Republicans - particularly former Assembly Speaker John Gard - by handing out Golden Turkey Awards for what he considered especially bad ideas.

But in recent months, Pocan has scored two high-profile bipartisan victories. In addition to cutting the corrections deal, he also co-sponsored the creation of a new state ethics watchdog agency with Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin.

Within his own party, Pocan has also managed to bridge the divide between progressives like former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed Garvey and moderates like Gov. Jim Doyle - a gap that can be as great as, and often more bitter than, the split between Democrats and Republicans.

Doyle's chief of staff, Susan Goodwin, calls Pocan a "common-sense liberal."

"He knows the way the world works, and he can reach across to people from the other side," Goodwin said. "That gives him entree to a lot of places other people can't go."

Pocan may soon play a key role in securing Democratic votes if Assembly Republicans can't round up enough of their own members to pass a final compromise budget bill with the Democratic-controlled Senate later this year. Republicans hold a five-seat majority in the Assembly, but at least 10 of them have vowed not to vote for any budget that raises taxes.

Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, acknowledges that while some Republicans may still think of Pocan as a bomb-thrower, "anyone who really doesn't like Mark has not had the chance to sit down and work with him."

Pocan's emergence as a bridge-builder is especially surprising given the timing. The Assembly's only openly gay member, Pocan recently campaigned hard against the recently passed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage - a proposal backed by the same conservatives, including Gundrum and Suder, with whom he is now forging alliances.

Pocan, who was married to his male partner in a civil ceremony in Canada earlier this year partly in defiance of Wisconsin's ban, says it can be hard not to take such things personally. But he contends that many of the Republicans who voted for the ban did so to appease their hard-core conservative constituency.

"The problem is the politics of that issue," he says. "I truly believe they don't believe in what that amendment does."

INSTINCTS HONED IN KENOSHA

While Pocan, 43, is to many a stereotypical Madison liberal - a politically involved graduate of the UW-Madison who decided to stay in town after graduation - he says he draws many of his political instincts from his working-class neighborhood in Kenosha where his father served on the city council.

Sticking up for society's underdogs reflects those values, he says.

"I think my dad, and his politics, always stood for taking care of people who needed assistance in society," he says. "It's just a basic, fundamental responsibility of everyone. That's what we should be doing. Especially if you're in government, because then you have a seat at the table, which is even more important."

Pocan also attributes his talent and enthusiasm for going door-to-door - a campaign necessity that many politicians detest - to working on his father's political campaigns.

He recalls first "doing doors" with his father when he was eight years old and found that he had a knack for one of the most demanding parts of the job: facing constituents on their own turf.

The experience paid off. When he first ran for the Assembly in 1998, Pocan says, "if I was having a bad day, for whatever other reason, I would go out and do doors because that would make it better. Going out and talking to people is what this job should be about."

Pocan's Kenosha roots are also responsible for his close friendship with Assembly Minority Leader Jim Kreuser, D-Kenosha, giving rise to what some call the "Kenosha mafia."

"You can take the boy out of Kenosha, but you can't take the Kenosha out of the boy," Pocan quips. "I think what I learned in Kenosha was how to be effective and cut deals. But I learned to make sure you hold all your principles and values by living in Madison this long. I think it's that combination that makes me able to get some things done."

Pocan, who had been active in Democratic politics while he was in college, made his first run for office in 1991 when a seat opened up on the Dane County Board. He won easily.

At the time, the board was split between Madison liberals and rural conservatives, with County Executive Rick Phelps often playing the two sides against each other. Pocan quickly became one of Phelps' key allies on the board, and says he learned a lot about "getting things done" from him.

"I always thought he was an extremely savvy county executive," Pocan says. "At times, people would probably say that he was combative, but people would say that about me, too."

Pocan says the board's emphasis on policy issues - whether it was building a new jail or deciding how to provide services to the needy - prepared him for his work in the Legislature. Most notably, his ongoing interest in prison issues grew out of Dane County's efforts to slow rising jail inmate populations in the mid-1990s.

But Pocan's wonkish tendencies were at times eclipsed by his flair for political gamesmanship.

"He really was a bomb-thrower, all right," says former County Board Chairman J. Michael Blaska, who adds that Pocan became an "attack dog" after liberals lost control of the board in the mid-1990s.

When Pocan retired from the board in 1996, Blaska told reporters that the body would be "much improved" by Pocan's departure. Pocan struck back the following year, using his printing shop he owns to make T-shirts of a Capital Times photo of Blaska, who was then running for county executive, with his arms around several Hooters waitresses.

'GOD, GUNS AND GAYS'

Pocan has had similar feuds in the state Legislature.

Until this year, Pocan regularly lambasted Republicans for pushing an agenda dominated by "God, guns, and gays," his term for the red-meat social issues intended to appeal to social conservatives.

In several instances, Pocan's attacks turned personal.

At one point during the ongoing debate over providing domestic partner benefits to gay and lesbian state employees, Pocan charged that then-Assembly Speaker John Gard was "clearly obsessed with gays and lesbians. I know of few people who so regularly think about sex."

Gard retaliated by refusing to let Pocan hire an aide when his one staffer left; Pocan fired back by recording a voice mail greeting urging constituents who couldn't reach him to leave a message with Gard's office.

Pocan complains that Gard "was kind of the epitome of all of the bad qualities of a legislator put into one person. He was not especially bright and pretty mean. He would go out of his way to be punitive to Democrats."

But some of Pocan's allies, such as Joint Finance Committee co-chair Rep. Kitty Rhoades, R-Hudson, say that Pocan, too, reveled in "in picking fights. He tended in the beginning to make it very personal."

Rhoades, who got to know Pocan because they were both elected to the Assembly the same year and went through "freshman" orientation sessions together, says she took Pocan aside and told him, "'You're better than that. People take you seriously when you're articulating the issue and not rolling around in the gutter.'"

When Kreuser appointed Pocan to one of two Democratic seats on the Joint Finance Committee four years ago, many observers believed that Pocan had been chosen mainly for his ability to throw verbal punches.

But while Pocan regularly sparred with former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, who remained on the finance committee while awaiting trial on corruption charges, he never brought up Jensen's approaching trial. Instead, the two went back and forth, often incorporating their own wry humor, on everything from taxes to social policy.

"If you know the issues, you should have some fun with it. And I think all too often people, especially people on the left, get a little too ardent and rigid instead of realizing that humor can be an amazingly effective tool," Pocan says.

And it appears that those who've regularly clashed with Pocan, harbor no lasting grudges.

"I love Mark," Blaska says today, chuckling at some of the feuds that marked their County Board days. "I always got along with him quite well."

BECOMING A FIELD GENERAL

Over the years, Pocan has become recognized as one of the state's premier Democratic campaign strategists.

Although he has faced only token Republican opposition in his own district, which is considered one of the most reliably Democratic in the state, Pocan has spent most of his summers in election years doing volunteer work for other candidates.

Pocan says his reasoning is simple: When he was elected to the Assembly, replacing Tammy Baldwin when she won a Congressional seat, state Democrats were in the minority. "If you ever want to get into the majority so you can do all the things you want, you have find a way to get there," he said. "You can either sit back and let others do it, or you can be involved and make sure it happens."

Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, whose GOP candidates have faced Pocan's tactics, calls him "as formidable an opponent as the Democrats have right now" when it comes to running campaigns in the field.

"He knows what will play in Ladysmith" and in other areas outside the traditional Democratic axis of Milwaukee and Madison, Huebsch says.

Pocan says that knowledge comes from his experience running a small business. Pocan's University Avenue printing shop, Budget Signs & Specialties, has virtually cornered the city's yard-sign market for political campaigns of all stripes.

He contends that full-time lawmakers who don't venture beyond the Capitol's clubby atmosphere "lose perspective of what the real world is. All the lobbyists come in here and try to kiss your behind and tell you how great you are. If you never leave this area, then you're just not grounded in the way that you need to be to make good decisions."

Pocan also credits those summer campaign trips for giving him a broader perspective.

"When I go to certain parts of the state, the first thing out of some people's mouth won't be any state issue that we talk about in Madison; it will be, 'Does so-and-so hunt?'' he explains. "So you have to think about what issues really impact people. Education is huge. So is health care. But it's also those issues of hunting and things that are important to people, and you have to understand that."

Pocan attributes his ability to work with lawmakers whose views are so divergent from his own to his time on the Joint Finance Committee. The unique nature of the committee's work - a process that takes weeks of debate and scores of excruciating decisions - has forced him to learn more about his Republican colleagues and, in doing so, to find common ground with them.

And in contrast to his stormy relationship with Gard, Pocan says he's taken pains not to personally attack Huebsch, who became speaker earlier this year.

Huebsch, Pocan says, "has always been honest with us (Democrats). In fact, there are times when his colleagues would have probably preferred that he had not been. And you know what? I may disagree with you ideologically, but if I can trust you, it makes a huge difference."

Pocan says he hasn't given up being a bomb-thrower, but knows "there's a time a place for everything."

"There's no question my approach has matured," he says. "And let's face it, as a freshman you don't know people and you don't know state government to the level that I know now. But if I had not been that outspoken person I was in that first term and working hard on the campaigns and everything else, I might not be on Finance today, and I might not be able to get the things done that I have."

dcallender@madison.com