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Mayor Paul Soglin, challenger Scott Resnick Talk Race at Urban League Forum
A forum Thursday night hosted by the Urban League of Greater Madison (Madison, WI) pitting Mayor Paul Soglin against challenger Ald. Scott Resnick stayed fairly sedate.
The forum came less than a week after a 19-year-old black man was fatally shot by a white Madison police officer, leading to a series of emotional protests.
The March 6 death of Tony Robinson was touched on only briefly as Soglin and Resnick focused on questions about gangs, employment opportunities, community development and the lack of diversity in city government.
A panel of eight diverse community leaders posed questions during the event at the Urban League’s Park Street headquarters that drew about 75 people.
It was the sixth of eight mayoral forums leading up to the April 7 general election.
Both the mayor and his challenger referred to the shooting and racial disparities in their opening and closing remarks.
“This has been a hard week for everyone. Our community is grieving,” Resnick said. “We grieve right now for the loss of life. We’re grieving right now for the families involved, we’re grieving for our community.”
At 6:30 p.m. March 6, when the shooting took place, Resnick said he and his wife were getting ready for the kickoff of One City Early Learning Centers, a preschool founded by former Urban League CEO Kaleem Caire that will employ “a two-generation strategy,” focusing on both children and their parents in order to foster more successful children.
Resnick, 28, chief operating officer at Hardin Design & Development, said his wife is on the preschool’s board. “If you want to talk about the hope and optimism that you could find in the city of Madison, you would have seen it at CUNA Mutual that night.”
Soglin, 69, said if the debate had taken place more than a week earlier he would have presented a very different focus. He said he would have tried to correct “all the misinformation Scott Resnick has presented to you.”
Regarding Madison’s racial situation, he said he’s spent “four difficult and frustrating years trying to turn around the ship of this city and not getting the full cooperation necessary.”
Soglin, who first became mayor of Madison in 1973 and has held the office at various times for a total of 18 years, said that four years ago when he returned to the office he found a “city badly damaged by poor fiscal practices.” It was a city, he said, with a more serious problem of poverty and social inequity.
He said he has prioritized community centers, child care centers and job creation and job-training facilities over building another police station or fire station.
He talked about how white and middle-class young people are treated differently by the judiciary system than black, Latino or Asian teens. White youths have better opportunities for diversion, counseling and work, he said.
