Wisconsin Takes Another Step Forward Fighting Off America's Right-Wing Counter Revolution

Yesterday Wisconsin Democrats picked Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett as their candidate to take on Scott Walker and the Koch brothers on June 5. He had 57% and his closest rival, Kathleen Falk, the union favorite, took 35%, in the 4 person primary.

Addressing jubilant supporters at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Milwaukee, a fiery Barrett called for unifying his party and ending Walker's term before it reaches a year and a half. Barrett, who defied unions by getting in the race, repeatedly referred to himself as the independent candidate in his speech to supporters and said he would not be beholden to special interests.

"Do we want a governor who has divided this state like it has never been divided before? Do we want a governor who has caused this state to lose more jobs than any other state in this country?" Barrett asked the crowd. "This race is not about the past. It is not about the past. It is about the future of Wisconsin."

Just before voting started historian Rick Perlstein was out with a piece in Rolling Stone about why voting in Wisconsin's cluste#@ck recall was so important. Walker's boast of being a job-creator," he writes, "was crushed when it was announced in October that the state had added only 5,500 non-farm jobs in the previous twelve months. His claim to be a budget balancer was undone by the $1.6 billion in corporate tax breaks he had championed that left the state budget $117 million deeper in arrears. He bent regulations to allow a mine to be built by some sensitive Lake Superior wetlands-- no small political blunder in a state where hunting and fishing is religion. By the end of the year, polls found 58 percent of Wisconsin voters favoring his recall-- including 24 percent of Republicans, up from only 7 percent in spring.

In January this year, the recall election was scheduled for June 5 after an astonishing million voters' signatures were submitted, way more than they needed. In March, a federal judge said Walker's law violated the First Amendment because it maintained collective bargaining rights for the police and fire unions that endorsed him while stripping them from the unions that didn't. In April, the federal courts struck down a strict voter I.D. law designed to make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote and counted upon by Republicans to help Walker pull through. Then Walker found himself reeling further with the announcement that during the month of March state had lost 4,500 jobs.

And then there's the whole Joe Doe investigation... Walkergate, which could see the governor rotting in prison for criminal activities, something even the Koch brothers won't be able to save him from if a jury finds him guilty. But, Perlstein reminds us, the reason this is all so important nationally is because "If conservatives succeed in breaking public unions in Wisconsin, they will try the same thing everywhere, with mind-blowing seriousness. Already by this February, Walker, taking advantage of a loophole that allows donors to recall targets to blow through the state's $10,000 contribution cap, had raised an astonishing $12.2 million dollars; then, by April, he had added $13.2 million more... [mostly] from corporate titans and movement conservatives for whom, as per usual on the right, Walker's law-skirting brazenness has made him a hero, not a pariah."


Writing this week in Madison's progressive Capital Times Wisconsin's savviest and most respected journalist, John Nichols, explains how his state has turned against Scott Walker-- and he's not just talking about cosmopolitan Madison and Mikwaukee. This time he's talking about "small towns and dairy farm country of western Wisconsin."

For all the efforts of Gov. Scott Walker to convince the hosts on Fox and CNBC that he is a popular governor who is threatened not by angry citizens but by “the left, the radical left, and the big labor union bosses” who are “somehow counting on the idea that they can bring enough money and enough bodies into Wisconsin to dissuade voters,” the message from farm country tells an entirely different story.

Walker has had the overwhelming spending advantage since the recall fight started last November. Walker has had all the benefits of the Republican Party organization, which has gone into overdrive to aid his candidacy, while Democrats have faced a multi-candidate primary fight.

Yet Walker does not have the swing counties of western Wisconsin wrapped up. Not by a long shot.

Along Highway 14, heading out of Dane County and into Iowa and Richland counties, hundreds of hand-painted signs propose to “Recall Walker.” Most list reasons for the governor’s removal: “Worst Job Losses in U.S.,” “Attacks on Collective Bargaining,” “Cut Education,” “Cut BadgerCare,” “Divided State,” “John Doe.”

...[T]here is genuine, broad-based and statewide opposition to this governor in every region of Wisconsin-- especially in the western and northern parts of the state. Even as he has spent $21 million so far on the recall campaign, that opposition is growing.

In the new Marquette University Law School Poll, disapproval of the governor’s performance had moved up to 51 percent. Indeed, his approval rating has now declined to 47 percent, the lowest point so far this year. And one of the prospective Democratic challengers, Tom Barrett, has now moved ahead of Walker in head-to-head matchups run by the Marquette pollsters.

What has changed? The polling shows that Wisconsinites, who once felt that Republicans had the right equation for creating jobs (tax cuts for multinational corporations, attacks on public employees and their unions, slashing of education and public service funding), have soured on the GOP and its poster-boy governor. They’ve been influenced, of course, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics study showing that, in the year since Walker implemented his austerity agenda, Wisconsin has suffered the worst job losses in the nation. The Marquette poll shows that Wisconsinites now believe that investments in education, good relations with unions, and fair tax policies are more likely to grow the economy than Walker’s “war on workers” approach.

The governor admitted Wednesday that the recall contest on June 5 is “a 50-50 race.” But what’s notable is that his numbers are declining, while numbers for the opposition are rising.