Wisconsin is no stranger to the role of political battleground, but its intense year and a half in the national spotlight culminates Tuesday with voters heading to the polls either to keep the state’s Republican governor or throw him out of office in the middle of his term.
Gov. Scott Walker faces a recall election over his contentious battle with public employee unions over limits on their power. Republicans have argued the limits are necessary to reign in state and local spending, while Democrats have rallied behind the unions, accusing Walker and Republican lawmakers of overreaching.
By the Tuesday’s end, Walker either will keep his job or be voted out in favor of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the same challenger Walker defeated in November 2010.
Polls have tightened leading up to Tuesday’s election but still seem to show Walker with a slight edge. Both sides are hoping for a victory in Wisconsin to send a broader message of party strength nationwide heading into November’s general elections.
“Now it’s our turn to speak,” an exuberant Barrett told campaign workers Monday in Portage. “We the people of the state of Wisconsin are going to reclaim our future.”
During Monday’s first campaign stop, Walker said he expects a close race, too, and he’s focused on turning out voters who supported his efforts to take on public-employee unions.
“We want to move on and move forward,” Walker said at a plastics plant near Madison. He was joined by his wife, Tonette, who wore a button that read “Luv My Gov.”
Walker planned other campaign stops at a brewery in Stevens Point and a distillery in Green Bay before wrapping up with a nighttime rally in Milwaukee.
Barrett was spending most of Monday in western and northern Wisconsin before ending his day with a rally at a United Auto Workers union hall in Kenosha.
Walker is only the third governor in U.S. history to face a recall vote. The other two lost, most recently California Gov. Gray Davis in 2003. Wisconsin’s recall election is a rematch of the 2010 governor’s race in which Walker defeated Barrett by 5 percentage points.
Anger over Walker and his conservative agenda began building almost as soon as he took office in January 2011. Just a month into his term, Walker took the state by surprise with a proposal to effectively end collective bargaining rights for most state workers — a measure he said was needed to ease budget problems. The recall idea emerged soon thereafter.
But the recall petition drive couldn’t officially start until November, months after Walker signed the union changes into law. Organizers hit the streets a week before Thanksgiving and spent two months gathering more than 900,000 signatures — about 360,000 more than were needed to trigger the election.
Walker, the 44-year-old son of a minister, has remained unflappable throughout the campaign just as he was during the massive protests that raged at the Statehouse for weeks as lawmakers debated his proposal.
Along the way, he’s become a star among Republicans and the most successful fundraiser in Wisconsin politics, collecting at least $31 million from around the country since taking office. That obliterated his fundraising record of $11 million from 2010.
About $63 million has been spent on the race so far, including $16 million from conservative groups such as the Republican Governors Association, Americans for Prosperity and the National Rifle Association.
Democratic groups — including those funded by unions, the Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic National Committee — have poured in about $14 million, based on a tally from the government watchdog group the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
The majority of Walker’s donations have come from people outside Wisconsin. Most of Barrett’s $4.2 million came from inside the state.
The race has broad implications for national labor unions. It’s also seen as a proxy fight for the presidential election, especially given the importance of Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes.
Walker’s lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, and three Republican state senators also face recall votes Tuesday. And voters will fill a fourth state Senate seat after the Republican incumbent resigned rather than face the recall.
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11 Responses
to reign in state and local spending
I think you’ve mixed this story up with the Queen’s Jubilee. Walker is a governor, not a king!
Organizers hit the streets a week before Thanksgiving and spent two months gathering more than 900,000 signatures — about 360,000 more than were needed to trigger the election.
Most of these signatures were duplicates or frauds, but the state elections board refused to investigate them.
Keep Walker ….
DEFEAT Unions & their thugs!!
The fool should be realled
#4 What language is that? Not English, that’s for sure. It’s impossible to tell what you’re trying to say.
If Barrett wins it will only be by fraud. WI allows same-day registration, and a partisan Democrat judge suspended the law that requires photo ID. In previous elections ACORN has bused people in from Chicago and had them register to vote from a fake address, and immediately vote before it could be verified.
5. He’s probably a brain dead lib hack with no hope for any change.
DEFEAT Mark Levin…or at least make him read American labor relations history…the thugs, beatings and killings were almost exclusively the purview of management and their paid enforcers. Just the facts.
Personal anecdote.
In the late 60’s I was a young deck seaman on merchant ships, and was a member of the National Maritime Union (NMU). In 1969, on the SS Texaco Massachusetts, I sailed with a Chief Mate who still carried, but did not use, a billy club on his belt…some 33 years after the 1936 founding of the NMU and legislation prohibiting corporal punishment of merchant mariners. The Chief was in his 60s…and came up during the days when it was allowed.
This is an extreme example…but there are others…collective bargaining didn’t develop as some sort of “liberal communist conspiracy”…it developed because of very real abuses against employees…and is still needed because of the tremendous imbalance between the power of the employer and the lack of power of the individual aggrieved worker.
So Mr. Levin…be as strident and ideological as you wish…cite to the very real abuses on the fringes of the labor movement…and sit back and watch with ignorant glee as employee rights are steadily whittled away in the current economic climate where scapegoats are trashed by demagogues. American union workers are today’s Jews and Gypsies of early-twentieth century.
Doesn’t really matter — more important are the races for the state senate and lieutenant gov — especially given that there are rumors circulating that they have a shiny orange suit ready for Governor Walker and several other state Republican leaders
the thugs, beatings and killings were almost exclusively the purview of management and their paid enforcers. Just the facts.
Garbage. The union movement from its very beginning has subsisted on thuggery and nothing else. The 19th century saw union mobs burning factories and murdering the Pinkertons hired to guard them.
Peretz123, in your dreams. The “John Doe” investigation is going nowhere. The rumors are being circulated by your desperate sick lefties. Oh, and Kleefisch won overwhelmingly too.