Farmer Gard insults his constituents

How dumb does John Gard think voters in his district are?

He's betting that they are dumb enough, or uninformed enough, to swallow the idea that he's just a down-home farm boy from Lena who's been workin' hard for them in Madison and now wants to go to Congress, as soon as he wipes the manure off his boots.

It's not cow manure, though. It's bullshit.

Gard, the Assembly speaker, and his family had been living since 1990 in Sun Prairie, a Dane County community a dozen miles from the State Capitol -- but taking the full per diem as though he had been commuting from Peshtigo, his "legal" residence. His kids have been attending school in Sun Prairie. Gard has commuted back to his district for events and to campaign.

In May, he and wife Cate Zeuske announced they were selling the Sun Prairie property. WisPolitics reported:

But Zeuske says the congressional race had nothing to do with the family move. Their daughter, Libby, will be a freshman at Marquette University this fall, while their son, John Vincent, will be a freshman at Notre Dame High School in Green Bay. The home, assessed at $170,500 in 2005, was listed at $194,000, Zeuske said.

"We have spent summers at our home in Peshtigo, and we knew that with this legislative session ending in May and Libby's high school graduation -- the timing was right to do this," said Zeuske, a former lawmaker and state treasurer who now works as administrative director for the Taxpayer's Network in Green Bay.

The Congressional race had nothing to do with the move? Wouldn't it be a little hard to explain to Green Bay voters why they should vote to send someone to Congress who lived in Sun Prairie?

What makes this discussion timely is a new television commercial Gard is running, portraying Gard as "just a Lena farm boy," as his daughter, Libby, says on-camera. Here's the script.

State Dem chair Joe Wineke calls Gard's ad a trick.

Gard and Zeuske insist they've been very open with the voters about the fact they've lived in Sun Prairie for 16 years.

But it seems more like they think a lot of voters just fell off the turnip truck and will want to vote for a farm boy. The question is, after all these years, whether Gard still knows which part of a cow gives the milk.