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John Nichols: Ed Garvey and the roots of Fighting Bob Fest

John Nichols  —  9/04/2008 5:23 am

Fighting Bob Fest will be bigger and better than ever this year.

Friday night's 7:30 p.m. pre-fest event at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison will feature a screening of Phil Donahue's brilliant new film "Body of War," as well as visits from special guests Phil Donahue and Jim Hightower.

Saturday's festival at the Sauk County Fairgrounds starts at 8:30 a.m. and will feature Donahue, Hightower, Doris "Granny D" Haddock, Scott Ritter, Bill McKibben, Gwen Moore, Tammy Baldwin and other progressive leaders from Wisconsin and beyond.

The deepest roots of Bob Fest are, of course, traced to Fighting Bob La Follette, the Wisconsin governor and senator who battled for economic and social justice at home, and peace and freedom internationally.

But the more immediate roots are in the 1998 campaign by Ed Garvey for governor of Wisconsin. The state Democratic Party was at a low point, having secured barely 30 percent of the vote in the previous gubernatorial election. Garvey was drafted into the gubernatorial race by progressives who recognized that the party's drift to the center was robbing it of energy and focus.

The Garvey campaign dramatically improved Democratic fortunes, boosting the percentage of the gubernatorial vote won by the Democrats to almost 40 percent and restoring the party's fortunes in traditional strongholds. No, Garvey did not win. But his recharging of the party base helped re-elect Russ Feingold to the Senate, just as it helped elect Tammy Baldwin to the U.S. House.

It also renewed the progressive community in Wisconsin.

Ten years after Garvey's remarkable 1998 run, Bob Fest is just one part of the political legacy of a campaign that kept alive the promise of progressivism in the state where the movement was born.

John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times. jnichols@madison.com

John Nichols  —  9/04/2008 5:23 am