Of course, Madison is one of the most liberal cities in any state. I've lived in both Madison and Milwaukee. Now I live in San Francisco. I don't think Madison is any less liberal than SF. The big difference is that most of the areas immediately surrounding SF are pretty liberal as well, whereas rural Dane County certainly isn't.

As you and others have said, the segregation there is really shocking. I grew up during the heyday of personalities like Alderman Michael McGee (Sr; I was out of the state before his son was elected) when there was talk of the black areas seceding from the city entirely: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yGcaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=o...

The MPD has a rather, uhm, spotty record with the minority community. I don't know the state of that these days, but the militaristic motif of this website definitely seems to hark back to the dark days of the Harold Brier years. Given their history I think they should be more careful about the tone they project.

Is there a single Republican/conservative in any elected position in Milwaukee?

I realize that the city elections are technically non-partisan, but there are clearly no conservatives in positions of power here.

The only cities Milwaukee would be more conservative than (in WI) would be Madison and possibly Racine. All you have to do is look at the results from the recall election to see that Madison and Milwaukee are the 2 centers of liberal votes.

That said, you are absolutely correct, the division is segregation, not conservatism. The overt racism against whites (by blacks) has gotten violent in the last decade. There is a large Hispanic population here too, while it does have Mexican gang problems, that part of the city is far far safer than the black parts. Lots of Hispanic business in Milwaukee are thriving, plenty of white people as customers. You won't see many whites on the north side unless they're cops.

My threshold for conservatism is rather high. Milwaukee is a liberal city, but not as liberal or progressive as Madison.