By EMILY FREDRIX
Chippewa Herald
April 5, 2006
MILWAUKEE - It was a purely symbolic message but a heartfelt one. Thousands of voters turned out in Wisconsin communities large and small to tell President Bush to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq.
By margins overwhelming in some places and narrow in others, voters in 24 of 32 communities approved referendums Tuesday calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Joy Kenworthy, 78, of Madison, doesn’t mind that the nonbinding referendums have no bearing on federal policy. She was one of more than 24,300 voters in the state capital who gave 68 percent support to a referendum calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops.
She said she’s sick of watching young men and women dying in Iraq and the government spending billions of dollars on war.
“I thought this war was ill-advised from the moment it started,” she said.
Voters in Madison, the Milwaukee suburbs of Shorewood and Whitefish Bay, the western city of La Crosse and the northern city of Ladysmith were among those approving a pullout.
Those voting down the measure included the south-central city of Watertown, where 75 percent of voters disapproved. Others included the northwestern city of Hayward and the small Door County villages of Forestville, Sister Bay and Egg Harbor.
Residents gathered signatures on petitions that put the referendums on the spring election ballot.
Most of the referendums asked if the voters supported withdrawing the troops immediately, and Evansville also had one urging support of President Bush, a measure voters rejected. In the Columbia County town of Newport, voters rejected a referendum asking if the United States should hand operational command of Iraq’s national security over to the Iraqi government before the end of 2006.
Such measures have been passed by city councils and voters in other states, including Vermont, which served as a model for Wisconsin’s effort, said Rachel Friedman, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. The group, which helped organize Tuesday’s initiatives, is already looking at ways to take the referendums into more communities, she said.
Elected officials can’t ignore the results, especially as the November election season looms, she said.
“They have seven months to listen to us, to the voters and to do the right thing,” Friedman said. “The people have spoken. This is what democracy looks like.”
The morale of soldiers _ and their safety _ could dip when they hear about these referendums passing, said Bill Richardson, treasurer of Vote No To Cut And Run, a group that opposed the measures.
“It’s a political statement and it’s hurting people and it could cost lives,” said Richardson, 63, of Madison, a one-time bandmaster in the Wisconsin Army National Guard.
Bush has refused to set a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Fifty-one soldiers from Wisconsin have died in Iraq since the invasion three years ago.
Sister Bay resident Peter Trenchard said he wasn’t surprised voters in his village voted against the measure. He said many people there did not approve of the war in the first place, but they don’t see pulling troops out as a solution.
“Logic tells you you can’t pull out of there. It would be a mess,” said Trenchard, 67.
Feeling that America shouldn’t have ever gone to Iraq was enough to prompt 18-year-old Tricia Thompson to vote for Monona’s successful referendum to bring the troops home.
“I just believe that the president made a poor choice sending them over there,” said Thompson, a senior at Monona Grove High School. “I’m just not a big believer in using our military to solve all our problems.”
Supporters shouldn’t be too pleased with the results, said John McAdams, an associate professor of political science at Marquette University.
Victory margins in many of the liberal-leaning cities were lower than rates won by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004, meaning swing voters haven’t been swayed by anti-war sentiment, he said. It’ll be up to Democrats to determine how misgivings about the war will be used in the midterm elections and beyond, he said.
Voter turnout in spring elections is often lower than general elections, and those that rallied to get the measure on the ballot were certainly mobilized to turn up at the polls, said Joe Heim, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Still, “they’re reflecting that there’s perhaps not a majority but a substantial dissatisfaction with the war,” Heim said.
Associated Press writer Todd Richmond in Madison contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2006 Chippewa Valley Newspapers
