Ashok Kumar

I have had only very minimal contact with Ashok Kumar during my two years thus far at UW-Madison. I remember the District 5 Dane County Board of Supervisors race in Spring '06, during which I planned a debate between Kumar and his opponent, David Lapidus. About twelve people showed up, all recruited by me at the very last second. It reminded me that as dramatic as these student races can be (we're still talking about Kumar, Lapidus, Korn, and Cornelius) the issues are often pushed to the back. But anyways, both Kumar and Lapidus were perfectly agreeable to work with and I enjoyed the opportunity to plan the event with them. In terms of a robust policy debate, they rose to the occasion. Too bad nobody -- and here nobody is almost the perfect word -- showed up to hear it.

I have pretty serious political differences with Kumar; he's a radical, I'm a flexible liberal. My favorite memory of the '06 Supervisor race was a handout he circulated declaring himself (probably not with this exact wording) "A Brave Voice Against War and Empire." I remember staring at that and marveling that local Madison politics had only then hit the breaking point for melodrama.

And this recent post by Drifted by a Weil, accusing Kumar of falsely telling a cute girl he was a vegetarian, is hilarious. It's a fun, light-hearted anecdote, and I appreciate Matt sharing it. Kumar is a public figure now, I suppose, and stuff like this comes with the territory. I don't know whether the story is true or not. Probably, it's a little bit of both. But even if it is completely true, it says very little about Kumar's ethics. A lot of people -- myself included --have experimented with vegetarianism and been sincere about the attempt, only to inevitably fall back into a life of burgers and chicken sandwiches. That's probably a little more benefit-of-the-doubt than Ashok needs, but there you have it. And of course, I can't comment on the various other ethical violations he's been accused of -- first, because I have no correspondence with him, and second, because my few times associating with him have been overwhelmingly positive anyways.

That's why I appreciate Something Verbose's attempt to discuss one of Kumar's specific policy proposals: ending revenue gains from incarcerated prisoners in Dane County. There are two equally convincing sides to the issue (one populist, one pragmatic) which Something Verbose fleshes out. I'm not sure where I stand yet, but the existence of the debate suggests that Kumar might be (more research is needed here, and I'm sure some will disagree) actually transferring his youthful activism to actual policy proposals.