Gableman: I Know You Are But What Am I
Only a matter of weeks ago Michael Gableman made the decision to take the race for State Supreme Court into the gutter. He and members of his operation made outrageous remarks about the incumbent Supreme Court Justice, prompting a rebuke from the newly formed Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee (JCIC). Now he seems to be resorting to outright name calling in a recent email. Unfortunately it seems that they have made the decision to ignore real issues and force the public to endure a season of sound bytes and insults.
Only a matter of weeks ago Michael Gableman made the decision to take the race for State Supreme Court into the gutter. He and members of his operation made outrageous remarks about the incumbent Supreme Court Justice, prompting a rebuke from the newly formed Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee (JCIC). Now he seems to be resorting to outright name calling in a recent email. Unfortunately it seems that they have made the decision to ignore real issues and force the public to endure a season of sound bytes and insults.
In an email Monday, Gableman starts referring to the incumbent as “interim Justice” which is an obvious swipe because Justice Butler was appointed to his position. It is bad enough that Gableman has been reduced to name calling but even worse is his blatant hypocrisy. Michael Gableman was appointed to his current job by Republican Governor Scott McCallum in 2002. Only months later when he actually ran for the position, he failed to describe himself as “interim judge” in the many advertisements that he ran in the local Burnett County papers. This is clearly inconsistent and yet another attempt to drag the race for the high court into a low gutter.
Michael Gableman should know quite a bit about being a true “interim” as he has continuously bounced around the state from job to job, not settling in any one place for very long. From the time that he left law school in 1993 until being appointed by McCallum in 2002, he has found himself in seven different jobs. He did not manage to stay at any of those jobs for even two years, according to one of his own resumes. That amounts to seven job changes in only nine years!
One can gain some possible insight into Gableman’s work history by reading a 1999 story about his departure as a Marathon County Assistant District Attorney. At that time the Wausau Daily Herald stated that “the overwhelming caseload” is one of the reasons that he bailed out of that job. The story also quoted the resultantly overburdened District Attorney saying that “Gableman was shocked at the amount of work in Marathon county when he moved here a year ago from Antigo.”
It is simply outrageous that Michael Gableman and his political operatives have decided to drag this race into the gutter and lower the discourse for the high court to name calling. It is even more disturbing that his intended insult seems to be a better description of himself more than anyone else.