Ad Campaign Against Doyle Over Voucher Schools Flops

A conservative group's political ad campaign against Governor Jim Doyle appears to be backfiring.

The ads have incited several African-American leaders, including those from the NAACP, to come out in strong support of the governor and to question the motives of the groups that created and paid for the ads.

The ads were supposed to encourage public support to get Doyle to lift the cap on the city's private voucher school program. The program allows low-income students to attend private schools using state-funded tuition vouchers.

In his State of the State Address, Doyle reiterated his support for increasing accountability for the controversial program and raising the cap to 18%, but only as part of a broader package for improving education opportunity for all children in Milwaukee.

However, the ads have offended many by comparing Doyle to racist Southern governors, such as George Wallace of Alabama and Orval Faubus of Arkansas, who blocked African-American children from enrolling in schools with white children in the 1950s and 1960s.

The authors of the ads have already waffled on the ad's content - replacing the original ad that directly mentions Wallace and Faubus with a version that only alludes to them. A Middleton-based conservative group, the Coalition for America's Families, paid for the ad. Talk show host Charlie Sykes and Mike Holt, editor of the Milwaukee Community Journal, created the ad.

Cory Nettles, a partner at the law firm Quarles & Brady LLP and former secretary of commerce for Doyle, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he was "personally offended by the tone of these commercials." Nettles told the newspaper the ads are "morally reprehensible" and claimed that they rely on "race baiting and fear mongering."

Nettles' comments are only a few of the chastising comments ringing out throughout the state over the ads. Leaders for the NAACP Milwaukee and Doyle's son Gus Doyle, one of two adopted African-American sons, denounced the ads at a news conference at NAACP headquarters Wednesday (January 25, 2006).

Not only are African-American leaders speaking out to support Doyle, they are calling Doyle's administration one of the most progressive and diverse in the state's history.

Group blasts voucher ad targeting governor

Doyle finds no shortage of friends after ads

Resource page: private voucher schools

Posted January 26, 2006