Peg Lautenschlager was the truest of the true progressives
Peg Lautenschlager, the brilliant lawyer who was the first woman to serve as our state's attorney general, practiced an old-school Wisconsin progressive faith in putting principles ahead of petty partisanship. Her death, at age 62, will be deeply felt among civil rights activists, trade unionists, feminists and political reformers because, as any of Lautenschlager’s many friends could tell you, she never tired of struggling for economic and social justice.
Lautenschlager’s legal skills were such that she traveled in the circles of the nation’s great lawyers. U.S. Supreme Court justices knew her, U.S. attorneys general consulted her, crusading prosecutors and defense lawyers revered her. She strode confidently into federal courthouses and state capitols to wrestle with some of the biggest legal issues of the age. Yet she was just as comfortable marching in midwinter for worker rights, voting rights and immigrant rights.
Lautenschlager was a scholar who taught law and lectured at great universities. She knew the law, and she knew where she stood ideologically and politically. She did not need political consultants or pollsters to tell her which side she was on. She never followed, she led — standing up to corporations when others lost their nerve, backing unions when they were under attack, endorsing candidates who had the most progressive ideas (as opposed to the most money).
That didn’t always make Launtenschlager popular with the political elites, and pundits never quite understood why her appeal remained so great in the union halls and at the county party dinners where grass-roots activists gathered. It wasn’t a mystery to those who knew her, however. Lautenschlager was one of them — a true believer in the Wisconsin progressive tradition; a woman who, as Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson said, “served in the tradition of Bob La Follette.”
http://host.madison.com/ct/opinion/column/john_nichols/peg-lautenschlager-was-the-truest-of-the-true-progressives/article_43c7018a-b1b8-5a40-871a-75c4487a8562.html
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Our parents were good friends. Although Peg was a few years younger, I remember good times whenever our families got together.
You made Fond du Lac proud, Peg! RIP......
