Wisconsin Dairy Group Welcomes Fascist Presidential Candidate to Speak at Convention
In Which the Dairy Business Association Adapts to Changing Politics
Mike Pompeo is speaking at the Dairy Business Association’s (DBA) annual Dairy Strong conference in Madison on January 20, 2022 at the Monona Terrace. Close watchers of Wisconsin politics will probably roll their eyes at this and maybe get a little worried about a dedicated Trumpist coming to Madison. As a close follower of agricultural policy and a former dairy industry insider, the Pompeo choice struck me as outside of established precedent for a convention like this. In this piece, I will give some background on DBA, explore previous precedent for DBA convention speakers, and make some suggestions about what the Pompeo pick means for the political orientation of DBA.
DBA is one of the top bad guys in Wisconsin politics. Acting primarily as a lobbying association, DBA represents the interests of powerful landowners who are engaged in the business of dairy farming. DBA’s bread and butter work is lobbying the legislature and government agencies for industry friendly policies. In addition, DBA has a “cooperative” milk marketing arm and an environmental front group arm. They also bring suit against state agencies when the agencies do something DBA doesn’t like. Also, they probably do other nasty shit that I don’t know about.
DBA started in 1999. As Figure 1 shows, the founding of DBA corresponds perfectly with the significant increase in dairy CAFOs in the state from 1995-2000. This is what they are about: protecting the interests of large scale dairy producers. In the years since the founding, DBA has become a force to be reckoned with. Even environmental groups - the natural enemies of a pro-pollution industry group - have conceded that they have no power in the Republican controlled legislature and might as well join forces with the enemy. Clean Wisconsin, The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association, have joined a partnership with DBA to lobby the legislature to pass some sorely needed legislation to improve water quality in Wisconsin. DBA works closely with DATCP staff on the state’s farmer-led watershed group program. Six of 33 watershed groups receiving state funding get direct communications and organizational support from DBA. When I was on the Board of Directors for one of these watershed groups, Peninsula Pride Farms, I worked directly with Jamie Mara the Director of Public Relations for DBA on some media pieces.
All of this is to say that DBA has risen to a position of such power that they can force natural enemies to work with them in a subservient position. They have inserted themselves into the inner workings of Wisconsin state bureaucracy such that DATCP has a friendly working relationship with them. This is precisely what is meant by the term regulatory capture.
The thing is, though, it can be tough to see what DBA’s politics actually are. They work closely with both Republican and Democratic politicians. In press releases and other communications with the media, they tend to avoid language that most mainstream media consumers would identify as partisan. They clearly are out to represent the interests of the dairy industry, but they profess to caring about democracy and being good citizens and neighbors.
The choice of Pompeo as keynote speaker offers a unique opportunity to investigate DBA’s political position without relying on statements from the organization. The Pompeo choice struck me as odd when I saw it in the paper. My initial reaction was that he does not conform to the “normal” keynote speaker profile for these kinds of industry conventions. Political figures are a common feature of these kinds of industry conventions. Usually, though, it is a local politician or a bureaucrat from an agriculture related agency. Also, political figures who appear tend to be less powerful and controversial.
I have done an analysis of past DBA convention keynote speakers to give some objective perspective on the Pompeo pick. This conference has been going on since 2015. I couldn’t find old convention programs, so I relied on press releases announcing keynote speakers. The press releases from 2017 on are a consistent data set, and I will only be analyzing these years. It looks like it took them a couple years to develop a standard press release format. There are three or four keynote speakers per conference. I split the speakers up into three categories 1. business 2. politics/government and 3. inspirational. Business speakers tended to be of the author, speaker, consultant variety. Politics/government speakers form a broad category that includes Fox News personalities, policy consultants, strategists, sitting politicians, and bureaucrats. From 2017-2022 there were 8 business speakers, 7 politics/government speakers, and 4 inspirational speakers.
Below is a listing of all politics/ government speakers from 2017-2022. The names contain links to more information about the speaker. Also included in the list is a tally sheet for government control by party.
2017 - WI Assembly (R), WI Senate (R), WI Governor (R), US House (R), US Senate (R), President (R)
2018 - WI Assembly (R), WI Senate (R), WI Governor (R), US House (R), US Senate (R), President (R)
2019 - WI Assembly (R), WI Senate (R), WI Governor (D), US House (D), US Senate (R), President (R)
2020 - WI Assembly (R), WI Senate (R), WI Governor (D), US House (D), US Senate (R), President (R)
-None
2021 - WI Assembly (R), WI Senate (R), WI Governor (D), US House (D), US Senate (D), President (D)
2022 - WI Assembly (R), WI Senate (R), WI Governor (D), US House (D), US Senate (D), President (D)
During years under consideration, the Republican party started with complete control of government and by the end they only control the Wisconsin legislature (which they control through undemocratic gerrymandering). With this in mind, we can begin to ask how the speaker list relates to the political situation. The entirety of the Trump years is represented in this data set, but nobody from the Trump administration appeared while he was in power. Speakers during the Trump years are almost exclusively (Zeihan being the outliner) Republican, but they represent figures that were not within the Trump orbit.
During the neoliberal era (which I’ll define as starting with Carter and ending with Trump) industry groups tended to play nice with both Republicans and Democrats. After all, Democrats have been nearly as enthusiastic about austerity and deregulation as the Republicans. When both parties have essentially the same politics, it makes sense for business to make good with both. Try finding a rural Wisconsin Democratic politician who will condemn the dairy industry. I attended the major conference for agronomists in Wisconsin regularly from 2013-2019. Every year they had a politician or bureaucrat give an address. They skewed Republican, but there were a few Democrats in the mix.
DBA acted differently from other industry groups both during and after the Trump administration. During the Trump administration they didn’t have anybody from the administration as keynote speaker. This doesn’t prove anything. DBA could have tried to book someone, but couldn’t. They could have not liked Trump in the early years of his administration, and not wanted to give him a platform. They also have not given any stage time to any Democratic politicians, as other industry groups have. Again, nothing definitive here. The conference is pretty short, and maybe DBA just decided that investing time in that way wasn’t the most valuable way to spend the conference. The difference becomes stark in the post-Trump years however. In both 2021 and 2022, Trump administration officials are included in the speaker list.
This, I’ll contend, represents something new. If the neoliberal era was typified by industry groups swaying with the political winds, this moment when a fascist movement is on the rise might come to be typified by business showing exclusive support for their fascist political allies. Is this hyperbole? Perhaps. I very much hope that I am vastly overestimating the threat of fascist politics here. However, if DBA was operating under the traditional assumptions of liberalism, it seems to me that it would be in DBA’s best interests to use the convention to cultivate ties with the current Biden administration. But that’s not what is happening.
The choice of Pompeo bolsters this point. If it was the former head of USDA, you could make an argument that he is at the conference to give an insiders perspective on federal agricultural policy under Biden. Pompeo was head of CIA and Secretary of State. Trade is clearly of interest to an industry that exports 16% of total production, but Pompeo wasn’t the most visible figure in the Trump administration on trade. He had other guys for that. Pompeo acted primarily as a sabre rattler. He did give a couple of addresses in Iowa (the state where the Presidental election starts…) in 2019 and 2020 that were focused on agriculture policy. He is from the ag dependent state Kansas. A Google search for “mike pompeo agriculture” doesn’t yield a ton of relevant hits. The top hits were for news stories about members of congress urging Pompeo to issue a statement of support for farmers during the massive uprising in India. From this perspective, Pompeo is a bizarre choice. He holds no institutional power. He hasn’t been particularly engaged in agricultural policy throughout his career. From what I can tell, he doesn’t even really have a job right now.
Pompeo is only a weird choice if you look at it through the lens of liberalism. From a materialist perspective, DBA is acting like we would expect business to act under the conditions of a nascent fascist era. In fact, DBA has been at the forefront of this emerging fascist movement. Eleni Schirmer and probably others have shown that the Walker years prefigure the Trump years in significant ways. DBA has very much risen in power with Walker and the Wisconsin GOP. Walker paved the way by using white resentment politics to gain power. When in power he used his position to weaken the power of organized labor, dismantle the regulatory state, and weaken democracy through voting restrictions and gerrymandering. DBA hasn’t had to consider the opposition party seriously since the beginning of the Walker years. They benefited significantly from Walker’s gutting of the DNR and refusal to allow a reasonable CAFO permitting process to occur. Evers hasn’t been able to significantly reverse any of this. DBA’s organizational political consciousness has been developing for the past decade in an atmosphere where public opinion and democratic will are not powerful forces. These are the conditions under which fascist political consciousness develops in the business class.
Here’s something that Pompeo is pretty clearly doing these days: running for President. The establishment media has been breathlessly reporting on Pompeo’s proto-campaigning. This introduces another area where DBA is bucking the trend. Sitting politicians tend to be the stars of industry conferences. Sure, they are campaigning too, but not like a Presidential hopeful. There is an inherent risk in an industry group giving a highly visible platform to a campaigning politician: what happens if they lose? Under the traditional assumptions of liberalism, this isn’t a prudent move.
While the prudence remains to be seen, this does appear to be a deliberate decision. DBA sent out the press release announcing the speaker list a few months early compared to other years. Not only did they know that they wanted him, but they knew that they wanted people to know about it. I found out about this in a story in the Wisconsin State Journal, not a trade publication.
The Dairy Business Association is one of the top goons in Wisconsin politics. They formed to protect the interests of the emerging dairy CAFO sector. During the Walker years they found a willing ally and were able to work themselves into a position of power such that environmental groups are forced to ally with them in order to get anything even close to their environmental goals through the legislature. The Walker years taught them that they don’t really have to be concerned with the will of the people to get their policies enacted. In the post-Trump era, they have adopted the traditionally unorthodox practice of featuring officials from the previous Presidential administration at their convention. At the upcoming 2022 convention, they are breaking even further from precedent by featuring Mike Pompeo, a 2024 Presidential hopeful. This pick suggests a break from the traditional assumptions of liberalism. This is a deeply concerning turn. We need to watch closely how this develops, and look out for other industry groups moving in similar directions.