Caffeinated Politics

While reading a series of questions and answers to the candidates for the Waushara County Board, one name stuck out as a person more connected, at least in my mind, to Dane County. Luke Joseph is seeking election as a supervisor from the Hancock and Coloma area. Once I read just a few sentences into his unique answers, it dawned on me where I had come across this rhetoric before. He had sought the Democratic nomination for the 80th State Assembly seat in Dane County in 2016. He lost mightily to Sandra Pope. (If you wonder why, just read his current answers to seek a supervisor’s position. Additionally, he is no more a Democrat than I am a financial adviser at Berkshire Hathaway.)

Granted, I have decades of experience dealing with elections and how to shape a candidate when asking for the faith and trust of voters when ballots are cast. Therefore, I can not imagine who advised Joseph that this tactic was the one best suited to burnish his image with the voters. From the Waushara Argus.)

Waushara County has become very destructive after arresting and throwing me in jail because they didn’t agree with my religious beliefs. They also threatened others to do the same. As a fox watching over the hen house, this county board has tossed out my complaints against it and is currently fighting against me in a lawsuit. With that being said, we need to bring back the People’s Grand Jury.

His lack of even a rudimentary understanding of constitutional law is right up there with his lack of awareness about science and the ways diseases are spread. Or the perils we faced in the COVID pandemic. If one takes Joseph at his word, it is frightening to consider. It is on this issue that I oppose his election, representing the hometown area where I grew up. I will make my case in what turns out to be a long column. But someone needs to say it.

A person who dismisses science and disregards public‑health safeguards during a pandemic demonstrates a fundamental inability to protect the people they seek to lead. Crises demand leaders who can absorb evidence, listen to experts, and make decisions grounded in reality rather than impulse or ideology.

Those in the nation who sought to downplay the virus for partisan ends denied science, refuted facts, and encouraged others not to receive the vaccines, and must be viewed by their self-definition. It still is stunning to read and hear people who were scornful and mocking the health protocols prescribed by medical professionals, protocols which history should have taught us worked effectively in the 1918 flu pandemic. (Listen to my Doty Land podcast Extra! Extra! Read All About It! 1918 Pandemic As Reported By The Hancock News. From the pages of The Hancock News, I provide insight into how the 1918 pandemic impacted a small town in Waushara County. From ‘cures’ to accurate medical reporting, obituaries to brighter days following the virus outbreak, this professionally produced podcast from my third-floor home studio is also sprinkled with the music of the era.)

I considered at times how the COVID pandemic would be viewed through the eyes of those no longer with us.  Such as my parents, Royce and Geneva, who lived on Cty Tk KK (Royce served for 40 years on the Hancock Town Board), or those in the extended family who were impacted with a viral disease, such as Uncle Jerry Humphrey, who had contracted polio in his youth.  He walked through life with a constant reminder of what toll the disease took, but also was mindful that science and medicine proved powerful and efficacious with a vaccine to combat what parents had long dreaded regarding their children–paralysis.

When I started to read and hear how views on the Covid virus, or the lack of acceptance of a vaccine, were shaped by tribal politics, I knew those folks had never sat for a conversation with my Grandma. Mom often mentioned over the years that too many people had no idea what it was like to have real concerns about a plethora of diseases that, at times, left a family member dead.  Too much is forgotten, or outright ignored, about our history, I would say, when we had such discussions, and Mom would phrase it as she always did by reminding me that too many take things for granted.  As a reader of history, I think about the diseases that impacted those who resided in the White House, knowing the same outbreaks also afflicted their families. 

Since Joseph seems to enjoy history, let me place the past into the context of why being mindful about diseases is very much a reality for every citizen.

Diphtheria claimed the lives of children from Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and Grover Cleveland. Garfield also lost a child to pertussis. George Washington had bad luck multiplied, contracting diphtheria, malaria, and smallpox, all during his teenage years. Historians note he likely became sterile because of contracting another disease, tuberculosis. The story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt being diagnosed with polio at age 39 is well known. His bravery in the face of his physical limitations provided the tough exterior and utter determination that he employed when leading the nation during the Depression and then fighting a world war.

While horrific diseases often ran rampant through our national story, it needs to be stated that personal responsibility for the greater good mattered when it came to illnesses, and so did the means available at the time to stem their spread.

When someone rejects the very tools that keep communities safe—data, research, and proven mitigation strategies—they endanger lives and undermine the stability of institutions that depend on trust and competence. Public office carries a responsibility to safeguard the common good, and anyone who refuses to take science seriously in moments of collective vulnerability has shown they cannot be trusted with that responsibility.

Joseph wants to be a part of a functioning local government, but we have proof he has no regard for the necessity of making sure public health is addressed in a fact-based and logical manner.

A man who challenged Waushara County’s requirements that masks be worn at County Board meetings during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic lost an appeal Thursday.

Luke Joseph originally made claims regarding violations of the open meetings law, violations of anti-slavery and human trafficking laws, and violations of his rights to religious freedom and freedom of speech. A circuit court dismissed the claims.

In a three-page decision, the appeals court agreed with the county’s position, and noted the lack of the required legal arguments on Joseph’s part.

“We agree with the County respondents that Joseph’s arguments are undeveloped, and we reject his arguments on that basis,” the court wrote. “Moreover, Joseph has not addressed any of the respondents’ substantive arguments in his reply brief. Accordingly, he has effectively conceded those arguments.” (Highlight is mine to make the obvious case.)

But there is still more to ponder when it comes to this candidate. I must say the words written by Joseph on his Facebook page caught my eye. While referring to AI, he stated,..But even live coms will eventually be effected by it too. A movement towards old school landlines phones will happen again too.

I wished he had written just one more line with a prediction about whether party lines would be back in vogue, too. When I was a boy in Hancock, party lines were a source of information and gossip. While I was not supposed to listen to the neighbors, I discovered that whatever news I gathered was eagerly awaited by those in the home, who at other times would admonish me for my behavior. Mixed message for sure.

I am the first to applaud those who step up and throw their hat into the ring for public office. But when one is tossing spaghetti at the wall to see what will stick, it undermines the civic virtue that the election process should highlight. Besides Joseph running for the state assembly in Dane County in 2016 and seeking a village office in Hancock in 2022, he also has his name on the Tri-County School Board seat 3 race in April 2026. And running for county supervisor…….

In case he is interested in running for president in 2028, I want him to know that in Iowa, because of a new law passed in 2025, the petition deadline for independent presidential candidates and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties has been changed from August to June.