City Council candidate Jeff Erlanger’s No. 1 priority is State Street, where he has lived in the Towers for the past 13 years.
While Erlanger’s campaign volunteers met in the lobby of the Towers eating pizza and strategizing future flier distribution, Erlanger talked in his room about State Street, student housing and his plans for City Council legislation.
“I want to keep State Street from turning into a generic strip mall,” Erlanger said, voicing his concerns about the impact of the State Street Redesign Project. He said he wants to keep local businesses downtown through marketing State Street and offering incentives like tax cuts or assessment cuts. If elected, Erlanger said he plans to introduce legislation to limit the number of storefronts one store can occupy, because small storefronts would discourage chains from buying out the current stores.
Erlanger said his dedication to State Street stems from his lifelong Madison residency, which he said gives him an edge against his opponent Austin King, who has criticized Erlanger because he is not a UW-Madison graduate and older than a typical student.
“Yes, I am 32, but I’ve lived in this district for 13 years; I live in the Towers, and most of my friends are students,” Erlanger said.
In his free time, Erlanger listens to U2 and watches Brewers baseball or Star Trek. On his wall hangs his diploma from Edgewood College autographed by Bill Clinton, an autographed photo of Candace Bergen, and framed photos of himself with celebrities like Jay Leno and Mr. Rogers. Erlanger said his appearance on an episode of Mr. Rogers was Mr. Rogers’ “all-time favorite episode,” which highlighted Erlanger’s disability.
Erlanger said his disability is simply a fact of life, and he has always tried not to make it a big issue in his campaign.
“I’ve been disabled my entire life, so I don’t think a lot of it,” Erlanger said. “It has taught me that everyone needs to work together and rely on other people’s help, and now that’s part of how I work politically.”
He said his abilities to work well with other people and his knowledge of the City Council infrastructure is his biggest strength and the quality that distinguishes him the most from King.
“It can be a very political body, so you need to know how to get your point of view across, and you need to know how to get things passed,” Erlanger said.
Erlanger is chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission and serves on the Lisa Link Peace Park Commission and the Economic Development Commission. He has interned for U.S. Representatives Tammy Baldwin and Russ Feingold and worked as a page for the state Assembly and Senior Summer School Inc.
If elected, Erlanger said he would support raising the minimum wage to $7 per hour and continue to raise it toward an ideal living wage of $8.30 an hour. He said King’s proposal of $6 per hour is actually the status quo in the central downtown district and would not make a big enough impact.
In other issues, Erlanger said he would not support mandatory inclusionary zoning to make housing affordable and would not support drink-special regulation. He said the council unfairly blames bars for a binge-drinking problem.
“The drink-special problem is not actually a problem; it’s poor cause-and-effect analysis,” Erlanger said in December, explaining that students who drink in bars are safer than those binge-drinking at house parties.
Erlanger also wants to encourage the city to buy University of Wisconsin land and build new housing in place of run-down buildings. He said increasing the amount of housing near campus is the only way to lower rent for students.
