Toon: He Calls It As He Seized It

I was considering drawing a cartoon naming Donald Joffrey Trump as Vladimir Putin's "Apprentice" (get it? get it?). Then I decided I'd rather go with a more up-to-date reference.

Brevity being the soul of wit, I'm sure that if this conversation between Trump and Putin ever occurred, Trump would go on and on about how nobody knew that dumb has a "B" in it and he's so surprised that he hadn't thought of this clever wordplay before now; and then he'd repeat the joke and congratulate himself for being such a stable genius, much better than that Jimmy Kimmel fellow who gets such lousy ratings and ABC ought to lose its broadcast license, just like CNN and the failed New York Times because everybody says Trump should have gotten the Nobel Prize for bringing peace to the Gulf of America but they refuse to report it—

All the while, Putin would have shut off the portion of his brain that translates English to Russian much earlier.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I have an update for my recent caricature of local congressional candidate Mitchell Berman.

Contribution reports for the third quarter have Berman outraising Incumbent Congressman Bryan Steil; Berman's principal donors include labor unions and the Democratic Party, but the majority of contributions have been smaller donations from individuals.

The punditocracy is chattering about Democrats having a chance here this year, and Steil has taken notice. He has a new ad on TV in which a woman, who appears to be in her bathrobe in her kitchen, says she has hear that "radical activist Mitchell Berman went to a local school and confronted school officials. With children inside, he was escorted out. His actions put the school in lockdown."

She doesn't want Berman's antics at her children's school, or in Congress. A black-and-white photo of Berman takes over the screen, and a narrator pronounces him "too radical, too crazy."

Racine County Eye fills in the missing details of this story.

Long story short: Berman lives in Raymond, a rural township in Racine County. Moms for Liberty candidates won a majority on the Raymond School Board in 2021; the next year, they decided to fire Raymond School Principal Jeff Peterson for being gay.

That's not the official reason, of course. They just wanted to replace him with a principal who wasn't gay.

Peterson had grown up in Raymond; his mother had been in the Raymond Parent-Teacher Organization, his father had served on the school board, and his sister taught at the school. He had supporters in the community, and Berman was one of them.

In December of 2022, the Raymond School Board met at the home of one of its Moms for Liberty members, in violation of the state's open meetings law; they later claimed that it wasn't a "meeting" but a "retreat." On September 27, 2023, Berman went to the Raymond School to ask for the minutes of that meeting. He was eventually told that they couldn't find the minutes, and he was escorted out of the building.

Berman's behavior during his wait depends on which side of the Peterson business you're on. For some reason, someone decided to put the school on "soft lock-down," while Berman reportedly sat quietly scrolling through his phone. 

Superintendent Michael Garvey did not respond to direct questions from the Racine County Eye. Instead, he sent the statement the school issued reiterating there was no threat to students, just a fear of disruptions.

There were panicked parents who came to take their children home due to the soft lockdown, so that "fear of disruptions" was a self-fulling prophecy.

And a conveniently scary campaign ad.

WisToon: He's Not For You

Tom Tiffany, 68, is the Republican candidate to succeed Democrat Tony Evers as Governor of Wisconsin, Since 2021, Tiffany has been the congressional representative for the Badger State's 7th CD, covering the northwest quarter of the state. Before that, he rode the 2010 Red Wave into the State Assembly, upgrading to the State Senate two years later.

He had only token opposition in the GOP primary, enabling him to blanket the airwaves with a lot of folksy, feel-good advertising while some half dozen Democrats were struggling to distinguish themselves from each other. The eventual winner was Milwaukee Chief Executive David Crowley.

Attack ads from Tiffany and various Trump, Musk, anti-abortion and Chamber of Commerce outside groups were all set to portray whomever emerged as the Democratic nominee as a radical outside the mainstream woke antifa tax-and-spend liberal giving free gender reassignment surgery to illegal alien kindergartners without anyone's permission. In Crowley, they had the added benefit of his having had to raise Milwaukee County's sales taxes to make up for the drastic cuts in state revenue sharing made by Madison Republicans.

Crowley's campaign has, in turn, pointed out that Tiffany has voted consistently to further the Trump agenda, including voting against certifying the 2020 election results from Pennsylvania and Arizona, as well as proposing overturning the will of Wisconsin voters, too. 

It came out earlier this month that 90% of the money donated to his campaign came from just three individuals — and that doesn't even count the ostensibly independent aid from outside groups.

All told, campaign finance reports filed this week with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission show Tiffany raising more than $26.3 million from July 1 through Sept. 23, compared with more than $10.2 million raised by Crowley.

Tiffany’s haul includes just over $2 million in individual donations, but the vast majority of funds raised, or more than $24 million, came from the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The state GOP reported raising more than $29.5 million over the roughly three-month span, with $27.6 million, or more than 93%, of that coming from just three individuals — billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, who live in Illinois and own Uline Corp., and Diane Hendricks, co-founder of ABC Supply. ...

 Crowley raised more than $6 million from individual donors. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin contributed an additional $2.5 million to his campaign. The state Democratic Party’s top donors during the latest cycle were Milwaukee philanthropist Lynde Uihlein and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who each donated $1 million. Departing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ campaign donated $565,000 to the state party.

Oligarchs the Uileins and Ms. Hendricks have been the major funders of Wisconsin Republicans for decades, so there is nothing particularly surprising about this news, aside from the percentage of total donations.

Their percentage might appear more within reason once Elon Musk throws his 2% in.

Hoosier Who in the KKK

Today's Graphical History Tour takes us back to Indiana in 1926, when a Senate investigation exposed the extensive influence of the Ku Klux Klan — the MAGA movement of its day — in that state's Republican Party.

“These were the people who held their communities together. They were not the criminal element, they were not the psychopaths, sickos and all that. These were average white people that took an oath to forever support white supremacy.” — Timothy Egan:  A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

"Knosternation in Indiana" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 7, 1926

In the fall of 1926, Senator James Reed (D-MO) was in Chicago conducting hearings into the exorbitant sums of money that had poured into Senate campaigns in Pennsylvania and Illinois, and Indiana politics got tangled up in the allegations made in those hearings. Klan influence in the state's GOP was already well known; it was the influence of Klan money that made it an issue for Reed's investigation.

"Feet of Clay" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Oct. 9, 1926

Thomas Adams, editor and publisher of the Vincennes Commercial, printed allegations by former Grand Dragon of the KKK David Curtis Stephenson, who was serving time for rape and murder, of political graft and intrigue. Just two years earlier, Stephenson had bragged that his Klan controlled 85% of the delegates at the Indiana Republican convention (we mentioned that here). Now, Stephenson was upset at not having received a pardon or commutation of his prison sentence from Republican Governor Ed Jackson.

In a letter Adams smuggled out of the Indiana state penitentiary in Michigan City, Stephenson claimed that "a prominent Indiana politician" owed him $825,000 as part of a deal for a campaign contribution. He also named 40 other Indiana politicians, including three mayors, as owing him favors.

"Editors Keep Out" by Bob White in Indianapolis Times, Oct. 6, 1926

Governor Jackson refused demands from Adams, the Indianapolis Times, other members of the Indiana Republican Editorial Association, as well as from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago American, to interview D.C. Stephenson in prison. Instead of quashing the story, however, it was spread across the top of several Indiana newspapers' front pages (yet subordinate to the World Series in others). 

The Times did not have a regular editorial cartoonist on staff in those days, and ran only light humor cartoons on its editorial page; but it found room on its front page for Bob White's cartoon of Stephenson above.

"Dirty Linen" by Grover Page in Courier Journal, Louisville KY, Oct. 18, 1926

By the way, there was nothing unusual about an openly partisan media organization like the Indiana Republican Editorial Association. Many cities had a Republican newspaper and a Democratic newspaper, and everyone knew which was which.

The Republican Party Central Committee of Knox County, Indiana, responded to Mr. Adams's role in this scandal to drum the publisher out of their membership:

"Thomas H. Adams is not a Republican; that his newspaper, the Vincennes Commercial, is not the Republican Party organ for Knox County; and when he speaks, whether personally or through his newspaper, he is not speaking for the Republicans of Knox County. ... It is apparent that the actions and conduct of Mr. Adams for the last six months is a deliberate attempt to defeat the Republican state ticket and the local ticket in this county. His pretended cleanup is not in good faith."

"Indiana's White Elephant" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Oct. 12, 1926

Tom Foley's cartoon calls out specific Indiana Republicans by name: Gov. Jackson, Indianapolis Mayor Duvall, Senators James Eli Watson & Arthur R. Robinson.

Allegations against Senator Watson included that there had been a deal between him and national Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans for Watson, a member of a panel questioning the election of Senator-elect Earl Mayfield (D-TX), to vote in Mayfield's favor in return for Klan support of Watson's 1926 reelection campaign and a possible presidential bid in 1928.

When the Graphical History Tour checked into Indiana's Republican Klansmen during the 1924 elections, here, your Humble Scribbler noted that I could not find any editorial cartoons by Indiana's own Chas Kuhn on the subject. Here again, in spite of the national attention drawn by Senator Reed's hearings (and the banner headlines above Kuhn's cartoons gracing the Indianapolis News's front page), Kuhn appears to have been more interested in Reed's other hearing into mob activity in Chicago.

"Spiked" by Chas Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Oct. 23, 1926

The only cartoon Kuhn drew for the Indianapolis News in October about Senator Reed's investigation into the Indianapolis GOP was this one regarding the state's senior Senator.

Senator Jim Watson was recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident on his reelection campaign trail, so Senator Reed and a stenographer came from Chicago to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis to hear Watson's statement. Watson and Robinson (the latter at an Indianapolis courtroom) categorically denied any connection to Evans; Watson admitted only to receiving two visits from Klan lawyer William Zumbrunn during the Mayfield hearings conveying the Klan's objection to some of the witnesses before Watson's committee. 

Otherwise, Watson testified, "I met with Dr. Evans several times, and I assume all senators, or practically all, met him at various times, because he was about and was talking to many of them." 

"The Situation at Present" by Karl Kae Knecht in Evansville Courier, Oct. 14, 1926

Elsewhere in Indiana, the Evansville Courier's long-time cartoonist Karl Kae Knecht was less convinced that the scandal had been put to rest. One of the figures holding up the poster blaming the "League o' Nations an' foreign debt thing" is Clyde Walb, Chairman of the Indiana Republican Party. The other might be U.S. Secretary of Labor James Davis, a native Hoosier who came home to campaign for the GOP ticket in October; but I can't completely rule out Oren Davis, the Republican candidate for Marion County Sheriff.

"Where Knighthood Was in Klover" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 22, 1926

In time, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series by the Indianapolis Times would bring down Governor Jackson — but not the state Republican party — while internal feuding would tear the Indiana Klan down as well.

Q Toon: Chaos at Kennedy Center

I introduced Max's mother into the Leo and Max series last winter as working in some undefined capacity at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Leo and Max are avatars for the divisions in the Ostensibly United States of America in general; Karen is just my opening for addressing a specific topic.

Open homocon Ric Grenell could have served as my excuse to draw cartoons about the JFK Center; I had drawn a few cartoons about him before Trump named him as his Trump’s chief lieutenant there. But he didn't last very long in that position; his career is in foreign policy after all, not performing arts.

So it turns out that having a recurring character remaining behind among Trump’s lickspittle Board of Misdirectors comes in handy. Leo, the liberal, seems to enjoy needling Karen about Donald Diva Trump’s mission of recreating it as a memorial to himself or razing it to the ground.

I took a risk in drawing this cartoon that the JFK Center would still be standing by the time my cartoon saw print. Trump's modus operandi has been to tear things down before anyone has a chance to stop him (e.g, the East Wing, trees of the East Potomac Golf Links, ethical standards, constitutional norms, and he's still just getting started).

Is it telling that the JFK Center board named a new Artistic Director, but as a contractor, not a hire? No, it's not Kimberly Guilfoyle; it's Rick Canny, who, I hear, has worked with ZZ Top and Tommy Lee, so at least he's not some random Trumpster. Since performers have cancelled in droves, and Executive Director Matthew Floca closed the Center's main building months ago on account of supposed life-safety concerns, however, I'm not clear on what art Mr. Canny has to direct.

The Center's current regime put an end to those rainbow ribbons that came with JFK Center awards, so perhaps Mr. Canny can work on a more Trumpy design for when Trump celebrates giving all the awards to himself. A Confederate flag motif, perhaps.

You can guess whose scowling face will be on the gold-plated marble award medal.

Well, if I keep this up, I'm gonna spoil any possibility of bringing Karen back in a future cartoon, so enough is enough. 

Unless she ends up working along with everybody else from the JFK Center at the Donald Commodius Trump Presidential White House Memorial Ballroom and Bunker for the Performing Arts.

Toon: Meet Mitchell Berman

I thought I'd try caricaturing the Democrat running for Congress in my home district this year, and here's what I came up with. 

Mitchell Berman is an emergency room nurse who won a three-way race for the Democratic nomination in August. The national Democratic Party sees potential for him to oust four-term Republican incumbent Bryan Steil, so Berman has gotten the benefit of some television advertising, unlike most Democratic candidates for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District in this century.

If Berman were to win election this November, he would be the first Democrat to represent this district since Rep. Peter Barca was defeated in the Red Wave of 1994. (Barca ran again and lost thirty years later.)

Berman's first TV ad showed him fishing from the banks of a small river somewhere with his dog, offering his bone fides as a regular guy. He wasn't wearing his nurse uniform in that ad; he was, however, wearing a holstered gun on his side — a quiet nod to the sportsmen hereabouts. In a subsequent social media video, he explained that he sometimes goes fishing in areas where one might encounter a bear or wolf. Hence the side arm.

In a preliminary sketch for this caricature, I had a holstered gun at Berman's side. I had to scratch that idea when I switched which hand his fishing rod was held in. 

Most of the mail pieces from Berman's campaign show him in his nurse's scrubs and flag-themed do-rag. His latest TV ad depicts him on the job, talking about health care reform.

Steil, and outside organizations supporting him, are attacking Berman with the same charges of being a radical activist that Republicans are flinging willy-nilly at every Democrat. Steil's ads tout his "Stop Insider Trading Act," prohibiting members of Congress (but not Supreme Court justices, Presidents, or their families) from trading stocks while in office. The bill passed the House with a rider requiring voters to show photo identification before voting, but has not passed the Senate.

Steil's bill has "more holes in it than Swiss cheese," according to Berman, because congressional representatives are not required to divest stocks they already own.

Steil is way ahead of Berman in campaign fund raising: the incumbent's war chest is over $5 million, while Berman's was only $713,000 as of mid-September. Outside interest group advertising is similarly lop-sided in Steil's favor.

This Week's Retro Peek

I'm reposting this panel from a Leo & Max cartoon back in January just as a reminder of Max's mother, Karen, and where she works. 

Leo's family background may get treatment someday. Somehow, they never showed up while Leo was abducted by ICE agents and flown to some s-hole country's civil war, so perhaps they're just not very close. 

Or maybe we just haven't seen them because they're terribly shy.