Tuesday's The Big Day In Wisconsin-- Will Women Rescue The State?

About a million people signed petitions this year demanding Scott Walker be recalled. And Tuesday's the day. It's Walker versus a so-so Democrat, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, an unlikely hero but... all we've got to face down the dire threat from the destructive, Koch-financed far right. And if we don't beat them in Wisconsin... all hell could break loose across the country. As Andy Kroll warned on Saturday, "Coming soon to your state: The anti-union, education-cutting, free-market-leaning, divide-and-conquer playbook of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. According to a leading conservative activist, the Walker agenda in Wisconsin is the new conservative game plan for all states in the union." But there's a case being made that it's the Republican War on Women, of which Walker has been an eager leader, that will decide the Wisconsin vote Tuesday more than anything else.

[W]hat began last year as a backlash to the governor’s landmark antiunion bill has in many respects become a test run for the national elections to come in November, and the alleged “war on women” that has played out on the presidential stage has also taken shape here.  

In that way, Wisconsin could be a window on how the issue will play out nationwide in the fall. For one, it has made Walker’s battle to fend off his recall harder, with polls showing women viewing him far less favorably than do men. Moreover, it has kindled the fire of women like Kunkel, who are becoming politically engaged-- some for the first time-- as they see his reforms as unraveling the rights they fought so hard to win.

Walker’s name became especially linked with the alleged Republican “war on women” on Good Friday in early April. That’s when news came out that the previous day, Walker had quietly signed four bills.

One bill repealed Wisconsin’s 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which had allowed women and minorities to sue for employment discrimination at the state level. Another ended a 2010 ban on abstinence-only sex education in public schools. The remaining two banned insurance companies participating in the federal health-care reform law from covering some abortions and required an exam by a physician when a patient seeks an abortion-inducing drug.

Activists suggest that those bills were only the tip of the iceberg. Walker’s highly controversial move to end collective bargaining rights for public workers exempted law-enforcement personnel and firefighters, who are overwhelming male, while affecting wage-and-benefit negotiations for teachers and public health nurses, who are mostly female, they note. They add that a newly enacted Voter ID law creates more difficulties for women than men and that Walker’s budget cut all state funding ($2 million) for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading provider of abortions, which also provides other services to low-income women.

...Polls suggest that women have increasingly turned against Walker even as men continue to strongly back him. In 2010, when Walker first faced Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in a gubernatorial vote, women preferred Mayor Barrett 51 to 48 percent-- though male voters pushed Walker to victory. Now, the two candidates are facing off again in the recall vote, and women favor Barrett 52 to 42 percent, according to a Marquette University poll released May 30. By contrast, men back Walker 58 to 36 percent in the May 30 poll.

...At the April rally in Madison, the majority of the approximately 700 people who showed up in rainy, 40-degree weather clearly were middle-age or older. The leader of a group calling itself the Raging Grannies told protesters, “Fifty years ago, we were marching for the right of women to have some control over their own bodies. We fought that fight, all these grannies up here. We did not think we were going to be spending our old age doing it again, but we are not giving up this fight.” 

This rallying cry has echoes throughout Wisconsin. At a noisy primary-election gathering in Milwaukee for Barrett, Joan Blaschke of Brookfield, Wis., stood out from the crowd in her elegant black-and-white suit and diamond jewelry-- this at a gathering where many wore wore T-shirts and baseball caps sporting labor union logos. 

Ms. Blaschke is a late convert to the Democratic cause, but she says Walker’s recent actions so appalled her that she volunteered to help his opponent. “I voted for George Bush,” she said, but now that she’s taken a closer look at national politics, she has decided, “I don’t think I like any of the Republican ideas.” 

Blaschke, a retired teacher, says she paid little attention to the women’s movement in the ‘70s, but adds, “I’m feeling it now. I think there’s just going to be such a trickle-down effect.” 

As for Kunkel, who had never before dabbled in political causes, she was motivated by reading the Unite Women Facebook page, which told of efforts around the country like those in Wisconsin to move toward abstinence-only education in schools and to add restrictions on birth control and abortions.

Within days of visiting the site, Kunkel had started a Wisconsin Facebook page for Unite Women group and volunteered to organize the Madison protest rally. 

“My world is based on science.  We know that, numerically, women are the majority, but in terms of politics, we’re still a minority,” she says. “The way women gain their biggest voices in general is to speak and act collectively.”