Three commemorative quarter
designs at
http://www.wdfi.org/newsroom/wi_quarter/
By Steven Walters and Jesse Garza
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Sept. 30, 2003
Madison - Gov. Jim Doyle rejected a panel's recommendation and went with voters in an online poll in deciding that a "cow, cheese and corn" design would adorn the back of Wisconsin's commemorative quarter to be minted next year. Wisconsin Quarter
Earlier Tuesday afternoon, the Commemorative Coin Council had voted 12-8 in favor of an "early explorer" theme, featuring a trapper and American Indian, even though it finished second in online voting that ended Sunday.
Doyle spokesman Dan Leistikow said the governor decided to follow the public's wishes in making his decision.
The quarter is expected to begin circulating in October 2004.
Out of 347,662 online votes cast, 137,745 were cast for the agriculture design and 112,907 for the explorer theme.
On Monday, council members were divided on which design to support.
Justin J. Perrault, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse senior, appreciates agriculture's role in the state, but said the cow, cheese and corn "design definitely does not do justice for our state, from an artistic standpoint."
He considered the online poll, but didn't let it dictate his choice. "The only problem I had with the poll is that it's not statistically accurate," Perrault said. "People could have voted 30 times. I know people who did that."
"It's not an easy decision to make," sighed John "Jack" Kundert, a former secretary of the state Department of Financial Institutions, the agency overseeing the process.
But Kundert, from the Monroe area, which argues that it's the state's cheese capital, likes the cow, cheese and corn motif.
Dean Amhaus, who ran Wisconsin's 150th birthday party in 1998, thinks the explorer design represents all Wisconsinites.
"Agriculture represents a portion of who we are and what are and what our history is - but part of this history is manufacturing, lumber, fishing. This is nothing to diminish (agriculture's) role, but it doesn't speak of us as whole, as a total state."
Two other council members said it was important to them that the American Indian coin be included.
Wisconsin has the largest number of American Indians "east of the Mississippi River," noted Michael Stevens, a state Historical Society designee.
He said Wisconsin should be the first state to put an American Indian on its commemorative quarter. "I think that's important," he said.
Gloria Cobb, a member of the Lac du Flambeau band of the Chippewa tribe, agreed that Wisconsin's more than a farming state.
"In 1634, when your Ho Chunk and Potawatomi men in what we now know as Green Bay or close to it, when they woke up one summer morning they came upon a light skinned visitor named Jean Nicolet, bearing gifts," she said.
"To me this quarter is a reflection of a history," she said. "The early exploration coin best fits in my own belief."