Quick: Name one thing Wyndham Manning does as an elected official. Now, name one thing Bryon Eagon does.
Wyndham Manning, if you didn’t know, is the student representative to the Dane County Board of Supervisors for District 5, responsible for protecting the environmental resources of Dane County, reorganizing the County’s mass transit system and ensuring its economic growth. Eagon, on the other hand, holds a similar, though slightly more powerful position as the student representative for District 8 on the Madison Common Council.
I wouldn’t blame any informed campus observer for having no idea what Wyndham Manning does, or even who he is. On the other hand, one would hardly qualify as an informed campus observer if they had no idea who Bryon Eagon was. And that is precisely the point. Both students hold elected positions that rank as two of the most powerful open to UW students, and yet Manning’s position has become embarrassingly “invisible” while Eagon’s has become anything but.
This is the case still, even while a campaign is supposedly being waged for Manning’s seat — even if it may seem as though someone forgot to tell the candidates. Analeise Eicher and Michael Johnson both declared their intentions to run for Manning’s seat on the Dane County Board more than two months ago, and yet when you try to access their websites, one (studentsforanaleise.com) greets you with an open-ended “coming soon,” and the other (mikeformadison.com) directs you to some puzzling “DJ Design Studio” template/homepage.
So what do we know about these candidates that wasn’t included in their riveting editorials published in this section a month ago?
If you want a quick and reliable way to figure out what the real difference between Johnson and Eicher is, look no further than the endorsements each has already garnered. In a local political scene where just about every viable student candidate is an “insider” of some stripe, examining a candidate’s endorsements is the most accurate way of knowing the political circles they frequent and, essentially, judge their political inclinations.
Early this year, Eicher received the endorsement of the Dane County Democrats, and Johnson the endorsement of that lefty local party, Progressive Dane. What these endorsements mean is found in a game of name association, Eicher would be associated with the likes of Bryon Eagon and Eli Judge, and Johnson would be grouped with Wyndham Manning, Jonah Zinn and Katrina Flores. In other words, in the eternal battle between far-left and center-left in Madison, Johnson is on the side of the former, and Eicher the latter.
That may be the rough and ready setup of the election, but the question still remains: What should the campaign be about? When asked in a recent interview with a local blogger what the single most important issue was to her, Eicher stumbled a bit and then blurted out something about campus safety and the cleanliness of Madison lakes. I’ve got a better answer for both her and Johnson: increasing the visibility of the seat you want to fill.
What does that mean? A couple of things. First, it means championing issues that most students can get behind, informed students can get excited about and the campus press can be rewarded for writing about. Second, it means actively communicating and working with the campus press, as well as the movers and shakers on campus, to bring those issues into the fore.
A more visible student representative means a more powerful student representative, which should lead to more sway and hopefully victories on issues that affect students. That equation worked for the student representative on the Common Council, and following suit should be the first priority of the next student representative on the Dane County Board of Supervisors. Sure, office hours and quick e-mail responses to constituents are great, but we need to hear how you are really going to get more people interested in the issues you have a say over, who you are going to be talking to when elected and how often.
The position both Eicher and Johnson seek deals with important and complicated issues, and it is essential both candidates demonstrate sufficient knowledge of those issues in the coming months. But because the most important thing either candidate could do while in office is increase the stature of their position, it logically follows that presenting a detailed and impressive plan on how they intend to do so is the most important thing they can do in the campaign, whenever it actually begins.
Alec Slocum ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in philosophy and legal studies.
