Wearing Politics on Your Sleeve

Without even thinking about it Monday, I pulled on one of my Mark Green for Governor campaign tee shirt to go to make a deposit at the credit union branch down the street in the Hill Farms state office building. Hill Farms is also the headquarters of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

One of the items I was depositing at the credit union was my Wisconsin income tax refund. Let’s reflect on how incompetent the Wisconsin bureaucracy is that I am getting my 2006 income tax refund in the middle of August 2007. However, maybe the slowness was deliberate. Slowness in issuing refunds might be a decision by political appointees to make the case that people who file paper returns should have to pay a higher fee: a tax on paying taxes. Under Wisconsin’s income tax laws, I could not file electronically in 2006 because I was a taxpayer in another state in 2005. Those who filed electronically got their refunds long ago.

When I needed to title my car at Hill Farms during the gubernatorial campaign, I waited about two hours until my number was called. Others were waiting just as long and were still waiting when I was done. It was all I could do not to go to my car and start handing out Green campaign literature to people who were grousing about how long they were waiting. Of course, it is not permitted to campaign on state property. Make Wisconsin great again, indeed.

But I digress. Everyone turned to look at my shirt; you could almost hear the vertebrae cracking, but no one commented. Contrast that experience to when I wear a Mark Green shirt to private businesses such as the grocery store. People will make unsolicited comments such as “I voted for him.” Because hardly anyone has seen a McCain sticker on a car, I often get comments about that, too. Navy veterans comment about the Navy Dad sticker.

Sometimes I go to the credit union near downtown at the corner of West Washington Avenue and Regent Street, where I often run into people I know. On one of those visits in early 2007, I ran across Chris Green, Mark’s brother, who works in Madison. Ironically, that very day I had eliminated Chris Green from my cell phone’s speed dial. I gave Mark Green 10 to 15 days in 2006, which is why I have a couple of Mark Green for Governor tee shirts.

Because it is Madison, I see a fair number of shirts for Democratic candidates for President and bearing anti-Bush slogans. Mark Green for Governor is politically incorrect.