March 16, 2015
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All right, fortunately for me, I was born in a two-parent household, a loving mom and dad. We didn’t have much. All right? We started out in the housing project in the City of Milwaukee. My dad went to work every day for 33 years, United States Postal Service; served in the United States Army, a segregated army by the way; fought in Korea. He was an Airborne Ranger. He had several combat jumps. He gave me my stake in America, and that’s why I feel that everything that’s out there that can be had, I’m entitled to as well. I know, that entitlement word, but I’m only entitled if I work hard, if I persevere, if I overcome obstacles, if I embrace education, and if I hold myself responsible for my actions. My attitude has always been in this country, and it was my dad’s attitude. Like I said, he fought in a segregated army. He should’ve had a chip on his shoulder, but he didn’t. He went and fought for his country in that segregated army because he knew at one point that this country would live up to its ideals, and his dream was that his kids could go on and grasp everything that America had to offer.

I was my dad’s kid. Okay? That’s why I mention my dad. I’m more so. He knew this was an unfair world. His attitude was, “Son, you have to be doubly prepared to deal with an unfair world, because this world is unfair to everybody.” Ask somebody who’s been diagnosed with cancer. All right? What’s one of the most common things you hear? Why me? So when I look at obstacles that other people have to overcome, I don’t look at my bumps in the road and say why me, because I have a tremendous belief in myself. It starts there. That’s how it started for me. I believe in myself. If I don’t believe in me, how can I expect anybody else to believe in me? So he knew his kids would have an opportunity to go on and experience their God-given potential. That’s all my parents ever asked of this world, of this country. “Let my kids,” my dad saying, “Let my kids reach their God-given potential.” I don’t know if I have yet, but I think I’m on the way anyway.

So anyway, I took this role if you will, this national role, to be just a messenger. All right? I’m not in this for anything else. I tell people everywhere I go, I say, I just want to be a foot soldier in this conservative movement, and I don’t think the conservative ideals, conservative principles are the sole province of any political party. All right? Because when you talk about hard work, preparation, belief in oneself, or belief in God, and you take those concepts, those aren’t Republic or Democrat. Those are human.

So as David mentioned, you know, I run as a Democrat. It’s a Democrat county. My mom and dad weren’t politically active, but like many people in their generation, black, voted Democrat. Those were different Democrats. All right? Truman Democrats, Jack Kennedy Democrats, Robert Kennedy Democrats, Scoop Jackson Democrats. My mom and dad voted for George W. Bush, twice. They also voted for Barack Obama, but they don’t – well no, they don’t play the straight-line anything. All right? They had hope like a lot of other people. I remember that conversation I had that day when Barack Obama was running for President of the United States. For someone in my mom and dad’s generation, they came through Jim Crow. Okay? They came through a lot of the ugly past that this country started out with, and one thing they wanted to see before they died, they said this to me. They said, “We’d like to see a black man in the White House before we die.” My mom and dad are in their 80s. I was not getting in the way of that, emotionally, for them. From what they’ve come through, okay? I was not gonna get in the way of that.

But anyway, when I grew up, they voted Democrat. We didn’t talk politics around the house. They just weren’t political people. All right? They admired people like Robert Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and so I’m in a very liberal county, Milwaukee County, and you have to run as a Democrat to get elected. It’s the reality. I deal with life the way it is, not the way I wish it was. We haven’t had a Republican sheriff in Milwaukee in 57 years, and I didn’t want to buck that trend. I wanted to be in a position of leadership, so I had to use my head. I do not belong to the Democrat Party. I don’t belong to any political party. I probably never will. Personally, I think that’s part of the problem in Washington, the political parties. I really do. If you belong to a political party, that’s your business. I should set some ground rule. I should’ve said that before I started.

I didn’t come here to offend anybody, all right? If there’s some things that I say that rub you the wrong way, you want to talk to me later, that’s fine. We’re not going to solve the world’s problems here. I’m just going to share my views with you, and it’s just my view. I don’t believe I’m right on everything. It’s just my view, and I can tell you how I came to that position and walk you through it, but the way I look at it, life’s too short. So, if I say something that rubs you the wrong way, you know? Let it roll off your back like water off a duck’s back. Life’s just too short, okay? But when I made that comment about Republicans and Democrats, that’s the ruling class, folks, in Washington, D.C. There is a difference between conservative and liberal. A big difference.

Some people might try to convince you there’s a big difference between Republicans and Democrats, and there might be in terms of their platforms and some of the tenets in their belief system, but in Washington, D.C., they’re the ruling class. We’re just subjects. I truly believe that. So, I run as a Democrat. It’s kind of an interesting story, and I’ll share it with you. I don’t share this with many people, and I mean that. There was a vacancy in the office of the sheriff. A scandal hit Milwaukee County. The previous sheriff left early to grab this pension back drop that they created, the County Board created, where people were walking away with hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars upon retirement, and once that scandal broke, the courts got involved. There were recall elections in Milwaukee County. For those of you, you may remember that led to the ascendency of Scott Walker to become County Executive. He was in the State Legislature at the time. The county executive, at the time, got recalled. So, the sheriff left. By state law, there cannot be a vacancy in the office of the sheriff, so the then Governor Scott McCallum, who followed Tommy Thompson, who went to Washington with the George W. Bush Administration, took applications to fill. There were only about 5 months left in the term, and there was an election coming up, but he had to fill it for those 5 months, and it’s kind of unique, when I start looking back on all this stuff.

I was with the Milwaukee Police Department. I spent 24 years there. I was a command officer, commanded the Crimes Against Property Division, moved over to command the first district, which is the downtown district, and then I was the commanding officer of the Intelligence Division. I’m sitting in my office one day and I’m just thumbing through the local section of the news, and I see this little article in the regional briefs, and it said, “Governor to accept applications to fill sheriff vacancy.” It just caught my eye. All right, I had prepared my career to lead a law enforcement agency. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a chief executive of a law enforcement agency. I didn’t want anything to do with an elected sheriff. I thought I would compete for chief’s jobs, okay?

So, I see this and I said, “Wow. Why don’t I seize this?” Remember, opportunity? That’s all I ask this country to do is just present opportunities, all right? And I’ll prepare myself, even on an unlevel playing field; I’ll prepare myself to be able to compete. So, I started thinking about it, and I didn’t have a lot of time, because the deadline was like about 5 days away. You know, they hand you this thick application, and when I got the application, I said, “I’ll never get this done in 5 days,” so I put it down. But see how it, this here, can defeat you if you let it? Remember I talked about overcoming obstacles? It was an obstacle in the way. You know, this 12-page application, where I had to actually go back and find records and stuff, because part of it was they wanted to know any time you left the country. My wife and my – my wife’s here today – we go to Mexico every year, the Caribbean, somewhere on vacation, so we had to go back and find all those dates of when we went on — and I’m looking at this, and I’m like, “I’ll never get this done.” See, again, getting in the way.

So, to make a long story short, or a long story shorter, I get the application done and they take interviews, and I already had a bound outline, Reform in a Law Enforcement Agency, because I wanted to do then as an executive was take over a struggling agency and bring it back. I didn’t want an agency that’s already finely tuned, running like a top, because I like to fix things. So, I go to the interview and everybody that talked to me that knew I was in the application, 11 people applied. Everyone that I talked to, “Oh, you’ll never get it. You’re not politically connected.” I wasn’t. They already have, there’s two guys who were the odds-on favorites. You know what I kept saying to myself? Watch me. To myself. I whispered that every time I heard it. Watch me. Because remember I started out saying I believed in myself?

So, I get the appointment, and won the election, 5 months later, but during that process, the reason I bring it up, I’m interviewing with the Governor’s chief legal counsel. He says, “We notice on your application,” he says, “If you get the appointment, the question, what party will you run under.” I put Republican. Okay, remember, I had no political connections, and he brings it up. He says, “Do you know what county you’re in?” I said, “Yeah.” I guess this shows my political naiveté, right? He said, “Whoever the Governor selects, he wants them to win in the fall,” like I said, 5 months away. He said, “I want you to consider running as a Democrat.” You know what my response was? I said, “No way. No way.” He said, “Sleep on it.” I said, “I don’t need to sleep on it.” I said, “No way.” So, he said, “Well, just think about it.” A week or two goes by, he calls up again, and he says, “Have you given it any thought?” And I calmed down by then, and I wanted to win. Obviously, the Governor wanted me to win. So I held my nose and I said, “I’ll do it.”
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for more:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpa...eir-own-demise/