In a closely watched Milwaukee County judicial race, Fox Point lawyer [and municipal judge] J.D. Watts Tuesday narrowly defeated Daniel Gabler, a prosecutor whose aggressive campaign ads and fliers cost him early supporters and prompted a formal complaint after the primary.Gabler produced some strange full-color fliers in advance of the February primary, including one showing him positioned sternly beside a Milwaukee County police cruiser, and another that accused his two opponents of "hav[ing] a record of defending criminals."
One of those opponents, Ronald Dague, is a colleague of Gabler's in the district attorney's office, and has been a prosecutor ever since his law school internship there. He's never "defended a criminal."
Or even represented a civil defendant.
But see:
Gabler later conceded that he [Gabler] had represented two criminal defendants earlier in his career.Dague lodged a complaint, and a special prosecutor out of Kenosha County declined to file the charge on a theory that Milwaukee voters were better positioned to admonish Gabler than was a jury.
Turns out he was right about that, but it's not much of a remedy for Ronald Dague, who lost in the primary and wasn't on yesterday's ballot. A jury would have heard quite a bit more about the case.
Anyway, it was probably one of the fliers' photo of Daniel Gabler shaking hands with a smiling Scott Walker that did him in.
Gabler-man's -- excuse me, Gabler's -- conduct was disgraceful. He deserved to be rejected at the polls, and he has no one to blame but himself. Like Koschnick, he followed blindly in the footsteps of Michael Gableman and, thankfully, paid the ultimate electoral price. John Chisholm should can him, if he still has a job.
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