Most of the early punditry on the 2006 Wisconsin gubernatorial race has focused on whether a trio of possible conservative candidates -- Congressman Mark Green, state Assembly Speaker John Gard, or Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker -- could defeat the centrist Democratic incumbent, Jim Doyle.

But more important for Doyle than the names of his major challengers may be how he handles perennial Milwaukee issues like welfare and highways. Win on those issues and Doyle could win Milwaukee by a large margin and win the governor's race -- no matter who his challenger is.

First, consider the inherited and messy scandals and poor performance at the state-funded Opportunities Industrialization Center of Greater Milwaukee, Wisconsin's largest W-2 agency.

Here, so far, Doyle is on solid administrative, problem-solving ground. He has decided to enforce tough accountability measures at this and other W-2 agencies. The program is deeply in the red. Fiscally, the situation is not sustainable -- especially with OIC having earlier indicated it wanted more funding, and especially with an election on the horizon.

Though the politics of cutting OIC's funding and W-2 caseloads across the board are touchy, Doyle can claim credit for facing up to the issues with a strategic plan.

It's a multiple-step process, and a risky approach: But if Doyle's administration can better manage tax dollars, and downsize OIC appropriately, and not hurt W-2 clients -- all of which will be easier if the economy continues to create jobs -- then Doyle can appear as the problem-solver, especially with the problem being right in Scott Walker's back yard.

On the other hand, a new problem in a thorny area -- the Wisconsin Department of Transportation's spending in Milwaukee -- shows that Doyle's administration can be just as adept at creating problems as it is in trying to fix them.

The anti-freeway neighborhood activists in Story Hill running the online neighborhood news site storyhill.net disclosed recently that WisDOT paid $685,000 in a no-bid arrangement with Marquette Interchange contractors for the creation of a Web site about interchange traffic patterns and other matters.

Six-hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars? For a Web site? Not put out to bid?

Not good!

The story was so stunning that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Associated Press ran major stories about it. And in the face of an arrangement with Halliburton-like overtones, Doyle's office response was clichéd and weak: the Web site was helping along economic development, a spokeswoman said.

In light of recent stories about WisDOT's history of project overspending, grossly expensive consulting contracts, and recent federal bid-rigging indictments, a better response would have been, at least: "We're looking into it.''

Doyle is not the first governor to pour state dollars into poured concrete. They all do it. The highway lobby is huge in Wisconsin and gets what it wants from the smallest village board to the East Wing of the Capitol, regardless of party or personality. And Doyle is not the first governor to take large contributions from highway builders.

The relationship between government and the highway lobby is the state's equivalent of the Military Industrial Complex: Business as usual.

But when the dustup over the $685,000 Web site broke into statewide news, it showed that major media will pay attention to what could be Doyle's Achilles heel.

The pattern began when Doyle approved in 2003 a somewhat slimmed-down Marquette Interchange reconstruction plan -- though $810 million is still a lot of dough in a cash-strapped state -- over the objections of some neighborhood organizations and then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist.

While most people agreed that the decaying interchange needed repairs, Doyle opted for a version that added about 11 miles of new lanes to be squeezed through premium, densely developed property. And he refused to submit the plan to "value-engineering," an objective cost-review procedure.

Fast-forward to just a few weeks ago, when Doyle's administration green-lighted the next stage of a $6.5 billion regional freeway expansion plan that was recommended after controversial and contentious hearings.

The segment just approved advances a plan to rebuild, and probably to expand by one lane each in both directions, 35 miles of Interstate-94 from Milwaukee south to the Illinois state line. One certain outcome: more traffic will be brought into Milwaukee and through the widened Marquette Interchange, moving west, and into a bottleneck at Story Hill near Miller Park.

Freeway expansion critics fear that Doyle's strategy is to first approve expansion outside Milwaukee -- expansion that will jam so much new traffic through the city that opposition at Story Hill will be overwhelmed.

This is a hornet's nest that Doyle or any politician stirs up at considerable risk.

Story Hill is a sophisticated, politically-active stronghold, as indicated by the importance of its online news site.

Remember also that both the Milwaukee Common Council and the Milwaukee County Board are on record opposing freeway expansion at Story Hill. Then there are other issues, such as whether widened or elevated lanes will disturb three cemeteries along I-94. In short, political minefields abound.

The more that Doyle appears to be giving state highway planners the freedom to spend tons of money and to advance highway expansion through Milwaukee, the more he risks the rebellion of a heck of a lot of voters in what should be his base: urbanists, conservationists, Milwaukee neighborhood activists, environmentalists. Add in out-staters who think too many dollars flow to southeast Wisconsin road-building, fiscal conservatives and tax foes -- and you've got the perfect political storm: a broad coalition crossing geographic and partisan boundaries.

Put another way:

There is a sizeable number of people in Wisconsin who believe it's wrong to slice through neighborhoods with divided highways, wrong to extend suburban sprawl with freeway expansion into every available farm field, wrong to turn a blind eye toward cushy transportation consulting deals, and wrong to keep raising the gas tax and vehicle registration fees and state bonding to keep feeding the Great Highway-Building Machine.

So, what can Doyle expect as the 2006 campaign unfolds?

On financial matters, as illustrated by his steady approach at OIC, Doyle can point to a solid record of reason and restraint.

He can say that his administration found a record-setting $3.2 billion deficit on top of the in-basket when it took office, and resolved it without raising state tax rates.

Finding a smaller but significant deficit looming in his 2005-2007 budget, Doyle can be successful politically by continuing to cut the size of state government, reminding voters that this is what big-spending Republican Govs. Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum failed to do.

While Doyle's partisan opponents in the Legislature will try and box him in with a blizzard of tax-freeze bills and constitutional amendments, Doyle should be able to avoid major political damage by maintaining his no-tax-increase pledge while pointing to strategic, deep budget trims.

If the economy continues to grow, and the revenue picture improves, Doyle may be able to run as a successful fiscal manager and show that his right-wing critics are ideologues, not policy-makers.

Doyle is more centrist than Russ Feingold, yet the incumbent U.S. senator has twice defeated right-wing challenges. Two very liberal Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry, out-polled George W. Bush in Wisconsin in 2000 and 2004. Statewide, right-wing is not playing well. This all works in Doyle's favor.

But to fully exploit all his opportunities, Doyle also needs to have what Gore and Kerry and Feingold have had -- energized, passionate core supporters, with a sense of mission about their guy's re-election.

While Doyle will rack up a huge majority in Dane County, the same is not a given in Milwaukee County, where Doyle is less well-known, where the largest number of Democratic voters reside, and where some of those very voters are unhappy that Doyle is not the progressive on environmental and transportation matters that they had hoped he'd be.

This means he will need to spend a lot of quality time in Milwaukee, where getting the vote out by an army of volunteers with the sense of mission that drove the Kerry and Feingold campaigns requires a message that honors the city of Milwaukee's interests, doesn't take its Democratic majority for granted, and isn't delivered by bulldozer.

James Rowen is a veteran journalist and policy-maker who is a former top aide to John Norquist.

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of OnMilwaukee.com, its advertisers or editorial staff.

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