November 2019
Still fuming over their loss of the governorship (and all other state level offices) a year earlier, all 19 Republicans in the Wisconsin senate vented a bit of their fury on November 5 by refusing to accept Gov. Tony Evers’ appointment of Brad Pfaff to be Secretary of the state’s Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection – in effect firing him.
Back in January, Evers had named Pfaff as the DATCP Secretary-designee, pending a vote of approval by the state senate as is required by state law for cabinet-level appointments. In February, all five Republicans on the senate’s Agriculture, Revenue, and Financial Institutions committee voted to approve Pfaff’s nomination, sending it to the full senate for a final vote.
After delaying to take action for nearly 10 months, the Republicans trotted out a few lame reasons on why they believed Pfaff was not fit to hold the office. All five of the Republicans on the committee changed their vote.
What happened in the meantime hasn’t had a full airing. Whatever it was doesn’t pass a smell test – barnyard or otherwise. Did Pfaff offend someone or some group – something that has not seen the light of day?
When it became apparent that the senate was going to vote on the appointment and that the Republicans were poised to dump Pfaff, eight state-wide dairy, agricultural commodity, and farm service groups issued a joint statement supporting his confirmation. The list included the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, which supports Republican candidates through its political action committee more than 90 percent of the time.
On the day before the senate’s rebuke of Evers’ appointment, state senator Devin LeMahieu of Oostburg (he’s not a member of the committee) told attendees at a citizens listening session in Chilton that he would vote to oppose Pfaff because he was not capable or competent to hold the office.
That claim was made although Pfaff was the executive director of the federal Farm Service Agency in Wisconsin from 2009 to 2015 on an appointment by former President Barack Obama. He has also been on the staff of former Wisconsin U.S. Senator Herb Kohl and current Congressman Ron Kind – hardly signs of incompetence and ineptitude.
One topic which apparently raised the ire of some Republicans was Pfaff’s scheduling of late summer public hearings to obtain input on potential revisions to the state’s livestock facility siting rules, which have been in place since 2006 but which are required to be reviewed every four years. No such hearings were conducted during the tenure of former Gov. Scott Walker, whom Evers defeated.
Some tweaking of those rules was pending as a recommendation. Two entities which might have opposed those changes are the Farm Bureau and the Dairy Business Association (composed mainly of large dairy farm operations). Yet the Farm Bureau was publicly in support of Pfaff’s approval and the Dairy Business Association, not a member of the group of the eight, independently issued a statement supporting Pfaff’s nomination.
Republican senators also faulted Pfaff for not solving Wisconsin’s agricultural economic woes, particularly in the dairy sector, during his nine months as a DATCP Secretary-designee. Ironically, the Class III milk price for October, announced just four days before Pfaff was given the boot, was the highest monthly price in nearly five years with the November price set to increase to nearly $20 per hundred. Gosh, somebody should have told the Republicans.
That might be a temporary reprieve on milk prices that have been lower than production costs for many dairy farmers for nearly five consecutive years. It’s fair to ask the Republicans why there wasn’t an outcry about milk prices during the tenure of their appointed DATCP Secretary from 2011 through 2018 – why that person wasn’t called on to prevent or solve the problem Pfaff is accused of not tackling.
And someone needs to tell the Republicans that the agricultural economy doesn’t start or stop at state lines. Portions of the current woes can be attributed to the Trump administration’s disruption of international trade channels with the imposition of tariffs and to widespread Republican denial of climate change although extreme weather events have created havoc in agricultural production during the past two years.
Pfaff was also involved in a dust-up with Republicans on the timing and procedure for the releasing of money to provide counseling to farmers plagued with mental health issues due to the stress of their economic situation. That incident was similar to the Republicans’ venting resentment on the outcome of the 2018 election as they strove to limit the powers of both the governor and state Attorney General Josh Kaul.
What should Gov. Evers have done in the wake of the Pfaff firing? He should not have kowtowed to the hypocritical action of the Republicans by immediately appointing Pfaff to a different position and nominating career bureaucrat Randy Romanski as the interim DATCP Secretary.
Although he did show some backbone by describing the Republican action with the eight letter word which can readily be found in a livestock yard, Evers should have reappointed Pfaff as Secretary-designee to force the Republicans to reject him again – over and over as often as necessary to bring more widespread public attention to the hypocritical Republican stance. After all, no cabinet-level appointee had been rejected by the state senate since 1987 although a few of the Republican appointees turned in less than a sterling performance while in office – some of them for a short time, fortunately.
Despite the gerrymandering of electoral districts that are set up to allow Republicans to keep control of the state legislature, it is nonetheless shocking and mystifying, if not terrifying, that a majority of voters in those districts display their “wizdumb” by continuing to support the legislators who have been acting with spite during the past year by spitting in the face of the results of the 2018 state-wide election.
Among those voters are a great majority of farmers who traditionally vote for Republicans. They do so in part at the urging of the entities which supported Pfaff’s nomination this time around. Will farmers and those organizations continue to stay in the Republican political camp after the unceremonious firing of Pfaff?
Was Pfaff’s “crime” that he is a Democrat? Short of any other above board explanation from Republicans on their change of stance, it appears to be so. Pfaff, who grew up on a dairy farm in La Crosse County, and the state of Wisconsin are victims of Republican ego and arrogance.
– Ray Mueller, Chilton