As the country’s pol­i­tics take a right turn, an unlike­ly pro­gres­sive wins office as may­or of a major U.S. city. In an era marked by con­for­mi­ty and the pri­ma­cy of busi­ness inter­ests over the com­mon good, he has the temer­i­ty to call him­self a social­ist. Both local­ly and nation­al­ly, his exam­ple serves as a bea­con of hope for the wan­ing left and a light­en­ing rod of crit­i­cism for the resur­gent right. His fun­da­men­tal decen­cy and feal­ty to the demo­c­ra­t­ic process and the pub­lic good see him con­tin­u­al­ly reelect­ed, with most vot­ers regard­ing him on a first-name basis. He goes on to run a quixot­ic cam­paign for President.

His record in office contributed significantly to the city’s socialist legacy. Milwaukee's stock of public housing was expanded dramatically; a lucrative new channel of newfangled television broadcasting was reserved for public education programming; and the city’s tax base was preserved through an aggressive campaign of suburban annexation.

If this sounds famil­iar to fans of Bernie Sanders’ career, it should. But I am describ­ing Frank Zei­dler , the social­ist may­or of Mil­wau­kee who served three terms from 1948 – 1960. When the pro­duc­ers of the tele­vi­sion series Hap­py Days want­ed to cast a nos­tal­gic look back on the sup­pos­ed­ly placid 1950s, they chose to base their sit­com in Mil­wau­kee. Of course, no men­tion is made that not only is the may­or a social­ist, but the state’s junior Sen­a­tor is the dem­a­gog­ic anti-Com­mu­nist Joseph McCarthy.

This is a his­to­ry that’s been hid­ing in plain sight, giv­en focus by a new book from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Press’ Work­ing Class in Amer­i­can His­to­ry series. Con­ser­v­a­tive Coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion: Chal­leng­ing Lib­er­al­ism in 1950s Mil­wau­kee, by Tula A. Con­nell, explores the record of a social­ist admin­is­tra­tion in an era that is pop­u­lar­ly thought to be when Amer­i­cans defin­i­tive­ly turned against social­ism and aban­doned urbanism.

But there was, nev­er­the­less, a right turn in the 1950s, and Connell’s book is a vital study of the roots of mod­ern Amer­i­can con­ser­vatism. The elec­tion of Scott Walk­er and the bat­tles over his anti-union attacks and the sub­se­quent recall effort revealed to many out­siders the extreme polar­iza­tion that have marked Wis­con­sin pol­i­tics since before Zei­dler and McCarthy shared the stage (A polar­iza­tion that can be seen in Tuesday’s pri­ma­ry results, where Wis­con­sin Democ­rats went strong­ly for social­ist Bernie Sanders and Repub­li­cans chose Ted Cruz because he is more reli­ably con­ser­v­a­tive than Don­ald Trump).

Connell’s his­to­ry doc­u­ments how Mil­wau­kee busi­ness and sub­ur­ban inter­ests inveighed against the expand­ed role of gov­ern­ment in as an attack on ​“Amer­i­can free enter­prise” and used racial dem­a­goguery to peel off vot­ers from the New Deal coali­tion. This local right-wing push­back became part of a nation­al net­work that gave rise to Gold­wa­ter, Nixon and Rea­gan. If Wis­con­sin DNA is so cen­tral to mod­ern con­ser­vatism, then today’s polar­iza­tion of nation­al polit­i­cal dis­course was seem­ing­ly inevitable.

The pub­lic good or the virtue of selfishness?

Mil­wau­kee was an ear­ly strong­hold of the Social­ist Par­ty, fur­nish­ing the par­ty with wins for may­or, coun­cil, state leg­is­la­ture and even a seat in Con­gress. In city gov­ern­ment, they empha­sized hon­est gov­ern­ment and effec­tive pub­lic ser­vices. Crit­ics on the party’s left derid­ed them as ​“sew­er social­ists.” The Mil­wau­kee Social­ists wore the term as a badge of honor.

Although, to this day, the Social­ist can­di­date can draw upwards of 20% in first round bal­lot­ing in Milwaukee’s non-par­ti­san may­oral elec­tions, Zeidler’s elec­tion was some­thing of a last hur­rah for the par­ty. He ran as part of a lib­er­al coali­tion and ben­e­fit­ed as much from name recog­ni­tion (his old­er brother’s tenure as may­or was cut short by his WWII casu­al­ty) as it did lin­ger­ing vot­er loy­al­ty to socialism.

But his record in office nev­er­the­less con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the city’s social­ist lega­cy. Mil­wau­kee’s stock of pub­lic hous­ing was expand­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly; a lucra­tive new chan­nel of new­fan­gled tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing was reserved for pub­lic edu­ca­tion pro­gram­ming; and the city’s tax base was pre­served through an aggres­sive cam­paign of sub­ur­ban annexation.

Zeidler’s annex­a­tion agen­da was par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial for Mil­wau­kee, and rep­re­sents a road not tak­en for too many oth­er post-war cities. The com­bi­na­tion of white flight, high­way con­struc­tion, sub­ur­ban devel­op­ment and tax breaks for mort­gage inter­est is a unique­ly Amer­i­can tragedy that left great cities blight­ed and bro­ken down. Zei­dler refused to accept that sub­ur­ban­ites could just cut them­selves off from respon­si­bil­i­ty from the wider soci­ety. His office orga­nized over 300 annex­a­tion votes that incre­men­tal­ly expand­ed the city by more than 35 square miles. Zeidler’s pre­ferred method to win these votes was through edu­ca­tion cam­paigns about the ben­e­fits of pool­ing resources and the effi­cien­cy of Mil­wau­kee gov­ern­ment, but he was also not shy about engag­ing in water wars. Sub­urbs that insist­ed upon inde­pen­dence were denied Mil­wau­kee city water and sew­er ser­vices, among oth­er benefits.

Of course there was a back­lash. The sub­urbs sued, right-wing ele­ments pushed state leg­is­la­tion to make annex­a­tion more dif­fi­cult while some town­ships merged to form ​“cities” of their own to fore­stall annex­a­tion by Mil­wau­kee. An ​“iron ring” of rich sub­urbs encir­cled Mil­wau­kee, ulti­mate­ly pro­duc­ing the same racial ten­sions and defund­ing of pub­lic ser­vices that plagued oth­er Amer­i­can cities.

In fact, much of Zeidler’s agen­da was vocif­er­ous­ly opposed by a ris­ing right-wing move­ment. This sub­ject is the heart of Con­ser­v­a­tive Coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion. Author Tula Con­nell calls the post-war con­sen­sus around full employ­ment and liv­ing stan­dards that rose with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ​“a mirage” and doc­u­ments how mod­ern con­ser­vatism ​“was not new­ly gen­er­at­ed in the 1950s or 1960s but rather rep­re­sent­ed a resur­gence of a deep cur­rent in America’s history.”

It is per­haps not sur­pris­ing that it was small and mid-sized busi­ness­men who first chafed at the New Deal, and were in the van­guard of right-wing oppo­si­tion. Con­ser­v­a­tive Counterrevolution’s bête noir is William Grede, who oper­at­ed a Mil­wau­kee area steel foundry that he (of course!) inher­it­ed from his dad. Grede was a vicious­ly anti-union boss, who took the then uncom­mon step of hir­ing per­ma­nent replace­ment scabs when his employ­ees went on strike in 1946.

Grede served a term as the pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Man­u­fac­tur­ers, and, accord­ing to Con­nell, ​“had a fundrais­ing fin­ger in near­ly every orga­ni­za­tion that chal­lenged per­ceived encroach­ments on free enter­prise,” includ­ing Amer­i­cans for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Action, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Busi­ness­men and the John Birch Soci­ety. His phi­los­o­phy – which can be effi­cient­ly summed up by the title of the book he nev­er fin­ished writ­ing, The Virtue of Self­ish­ness – remained far out­side the main­stream of Repub­li­can pol­i­cy­mak­ing dur­ing his life­time. Today, his brand of self­ish­ness has utter­ly cap­tured the GOP, thanks in part to the deep pock­ets of odi­ous men like the sons of Grede’s Birch Soci­ety co-founder, Fred Koch.

Although Grede’s and oth­ers’ oppo­si­tion to Zeidler’s pub­lic hous­ing pro­gram was root­ed in a fear of ​“creep­ing social­ism” and a desire for pri­vate prof­it, his oppo­nents resort­ed to the most base racism in order to win vot­ers over. His oppo­nent in his third and final elec­tion, Mil­ton McGuire, waged a dem­a­gog­ic cam­paign that focused on the ris­ing num­ber of African-Amer­i­cans mov­ing to the city. McGuire accused Zei­dler of plac­ing bill­boards through­out the south, to attract new black res­i­dents with promis­es of low cost pub­lic hous­ing. Zei­dler won re-elec­tion hand­i­ly, but had decid­ed that his third term would be his last.

“ The great­est liv­ing American”

Zei­dler was suc­ceed­ed by Hen­ry Maier, a con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­rat who won office by race-bait­ing his oppo­nents. His admin­is­tra­tion aban­doned pub­lic hous­ing con­struc­tion, slow-walked civ­il rights, respond­ed to 1967 riots with a law and order agen­da and con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er. He remained in office for an unprece­dent­ed sev­en terms. By 2002, research showed that Milwaukee’s racial dis­par­i­ties were the worst in the nation.

One of the rea­sons Frank cit­ed for not run­ning for re-elec­tion in 1960 was his frail health. He was always in poor health, and yet he some­how lived to the ripe old age of 93. He even ran for Pres­i­dent as the stan­dard-bear­er of the recon­sti­tut­ed Social­ist Par­ty in 1976! It was in his capac­i­ty as the party’s chair­man emer­i­tus that I had the plea­sure of get­ting to know Frank .

I always found it fas­ci­nat­ing to vis­it Mil­wau­kee while Frank was still alive; it was a bizarro world where the Social­ist Party’s leader was revered as a states­man and warm­ly greet­ed as a neigh­bor. To whit: when I was doing press for the party’s 100th anniver­sary con­fer­ence in 2001, a reporter for the Jour­nal-Sen­tinel asked me what social­ists in oth­er parts of the coun­try thought of Frank. I answered that most of us think he’s a real­ly great man. The reporter nat­u­ral­ly heard that as ​“ the great­est liv­ing Amer­i­can” and put it in the sto­ry, embar­rass­ing Frank slightly.

With the racial strife and eco­nom­ic decline of the city that came lat­er, it’s not hard to see how Mil­wau­kee res­i­dents look back on the Zei­dler years as, indeed, hap­py days.