Strange Times in Manitowoc County

 

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Official Manitowoc Co. photo

hese are strange times in Manitowoc County. After some twenty years of Bob Ziegelbaur we are about to receive our first ever un-elected county executive. Current county board chair Tyler Martel was the only candidate to file so he is by default the winner. Tyler brings with him a river of contradictions.

He is what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “a cracked plate [...] fit only for display,”explaining that it was not possible to function while holding two opposing ideas in your head.

With no background in business or public policy Martel has been running for office for a long time, winning some losing others while spouting TEA party jibbrish. Opportunistic, he won his current seat by attacking then supervisor Brunner as a tax and spend Liberal when he supported a County sales tax. But now faced with Ziegelbaur;s six million dollar budget hole decided its a pretty good idea and pretends that a new tax is not really a tax increase. A public school teacher, he supported Act 10 which raided State revenue sharing yet collects school vouchers for his adopted children in private school.

A gay married Trump Republican he is the darling of the local GOP. He gives them political cover for their homophobia and sexual smears on their opponents. His most ardent supporters on the board would under any other circumstances call him a DEI hire and would if they could invalidate his marriage, take his kids away and send him off to conversion therapy. He supported the now removed MPSD school board members whose tenure was marked by obsession with rainbow art and denying school lunch aid citing the federal deficit.

At the other end of this dysphoria is the Manitowoc Democratic party. Once able to fill the old Club Bil-Mar with its membership it is a shell of its former self. Names like Fischer, Aulik, Duchow, Baumgart, Bolle and Holsbach are distant memories. Leadership has aged out or simply left. More recent leaders have had no ties to this State much less Manitowoc. They've had no public image, no family connections, don't engage publicly and dont understand their jobs. State leadership has been AWOL in discipline and recruitment choosing instead to dump something north of $20,000/yr in a mostly unused headquarters.

What can we expect from this strange young man? Who knows? These are strange times. Manitowoc at least deserved a choice..

An earlier version published in the VAlders Journal appears to have gotten under Tyler's skin