Doyle campaign makes contact, excuses

After one month and three days, the governor's office has finally returned a phone call. That phone call was made last night at 6:21 p.m. at my work number -- long after I had left work for the day.

"Unfortunately the governor’s schedule will not allow for the proposed debate," said Sarah, a woman who identified herself as Doyle's scheduling person. "I hope you can understand the complexity of the governor’s schedule at this point."

Of course I can. That's why I proposed this student forum three or four months ago -- to give all campaigns plenty of time to fit it into their schedules.

First I'm told it's too far out to schedule the forum for Doyle, now it's flipped to be we're too close to the election.

I think there need to be clear differences drawn here:

The Green campaign runs these ads where he discusses the importance of higher education and has college students in the background. But he won't commit to event he was interested in doing all along because his campaign conferred with Doyle's and decided reaching students state-wide in the largest city in the state was a bad idea--for whatever reason.

I will say this: Green's campaign was polite and prompt about returning phone call. More than can be said of Doyle's:

On Aug. 10, I sent out an e-mail to Nicole Hudzinski of the Doyle campaign:

From: Bradley Wooten [mailto:brad.wooten@biztimes.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 2:57 PM
To: 'Nicole Hudzinski'
Subject: Update

"Nicole: I’m writing to see if there is a timeframe or date I will know when Gov. Doyle could commit to Oct. 8 for the student forum."

One week later, on Aug. 17, she finally responded:

"Bradley,
We will not be looking at the Governor’s October calendar until early to mid-September. I will let you know either way once we begin discussing October.

Nicole"

Well, today is Sept. 22. And it's the first form of contact the Doyle campaign has attempted to make, despite having my cell and work numbers and two e-mail addresses.

Talk about sending a message: You [students] don't vote enough. Why in the world would we make you and sort of priority.