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“Democrats May Be Choosing A Governor”: Scott Walker’s Austerity Agenda Is Losing

Driving west from Madison, Wisconsin, through the small towns and dairy farm country of western Wisconsin, it quickly becomes clear that the Wisconsin recall election is a statewide phenomenon.

For all the efforts of Governor 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 that 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 US,” “Attacks on Collective Bargaining,” “Cut Education,” “Cut BadgerCare,” “Divided State,” “John Doe.”

Of course, the governor has his supporters.

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

The new Marquette University Law School Poll shows that disapproval of the governor’s performance had moved up to 51 percent. Indeed, the governor’s 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 match-ups 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 that reveals that, in the year since Governor 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.

When I spoke at the Arcadia Bookstore in Spring Green the other night, we talked a good deal about the Democratic gubernatorial primary. I suggested, as I will here, that people should take their vote seriously. After all, they are not just choosing a nominee. If the signs in front of the farms are correct, and if the polls are correct, it looks like Democrats may be choosing a governor.

 

By: John Nichols, The Nation, May 3, 2012

May 4, 2012 Posted by | Wisconsin | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wisconsin Recalls Are Heating Up

Recent protests at WI capitol

Recall elections loom on the horizon as petitions against nine Wisconsin state senators were recently submitted to the Government Accountability Board (GAB). Each successful petition must include 25 percent of the total number of votes cast in that senate district in the last election.

The recall efforts of Republican senators who supported Gov. Scott Walker’s Budget Repair Bill, and the Democratic senators who left the state to delay voting on the bill, are a result of the political firestorm that quickly flared up over the bill that sought to eliminate almost all collective bargaining rights for public workers.

Currently, the Republican senators who are facing a recall election are Alberta Darling, Robert Cowles, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Randy Hopper and Dan Kapanke. Democrats are facing recall efforts are — Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Robert Wirch.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that there have also been petitions that didn’t have enough signatures on them to spark a recall. Democratic senators Lena Taylor and Spencer Coggs (both from Milwaukee), Senate Minority Mark Miller (Monona) and Fred Risser (Madison) all have all survived the recall attempts against them. Recall efforts against Republicans Glenn Grothman (West Bend) and Mary Lazich (New Berlin) also failed to garner sufficient support.

Circulators hired by the state Republican Party have submitted “hundreds if not thousands of invalid signatures” in recall drives targeting three Democratic state senators. Volunteers have been working overtime to enter each name into a data base and cross-check it with the phone book and other record. One man who signed a recall petition was Bill Pocan, the deceased father of State Representative Marc Pocan. The Wisconsin Democratic Party (DPW) is formally challenging  all three of the recall petitions filed against Democrat senators.

Republicans have filed challenges against “all petitions targeting GOP senators. In addition to their individual signature challenges, they claim the GAB should throw out the petitions because the recall organizers did not properly register with the state.” The elections for recalled legislators with completed petitions will likely be held July 12, 2011.

By: Jennifer Page, Center for Media and Democracy, May 6, 2011

May 6, 2011 Posted by | Collective Bargaining, Democracy, Elections, Gov Scott Walker, Politics, Public Employees, State Legislatures, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wisconsin Recall Drive Already Making History

Ever since Wisconsin Dems and labor activists announced late Friday that they had already amassed enough signatures to trigger a recall election against GOP state Senator Dan Kapanke — and filed their petition to make it happen — political observers have been wondering precisely how many signatures activists had gathered. The number could contain clues as to whether the election will actually happen and how much grassroots energy there remains on the ground in the state.

I’ve now been given the precise number by Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesman Graeme Zielinski, and it’s eye-opening: In that district, 15,588 signatures are needed to trigger a recall — and activists collected and filed a whopping total of 22,561.

That’s 145 percent of the total required — and Wisconsin election experts tell me it virtually ensures that a recall election will take place despite any challenges to the veracity of signatures.

Because the news of the petition broke late on a Friday, the signficance of it has gone entirely unnoticed. Dems and labor activists in the state collected nearly 23,000 signatures in Kapanke’s districts in 29 days — less than half the 60 alloted — which has tied the record for the fastest collection of signatures for a recall election in recent Wisconsin state history. And unlike in that previous case, recall drives are now simultaneously proceeding against other Republicans.

There have been only two successful recalls of state legislators in Wisconsin history, against former state senators George Petak in 1996 and against Gary George for corruption in 2003. George was subsequently convicted on felony charges. In the first case, the requisite signatures were filed on the last day of the 60-day period, according to Nexis, and in the second it took 29 days. In other words, Dems and labor racked up the signatures required against Kapanke as fast as organizers did against a legislator later convicted of a felony.

Wisconsin experts tell me that the number of signatures is a reliable indicator that grassroots energy on the ground remains strong. “Given how long you have to get the signatures and how quickly they got these, it’s a strong signal that the activation of the pro-recall forces is very high,” Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, tells me. “Kapanke is in the most Democratic leaning district, but completing a third more than rquired in 20-something days is quite a feat for any petition drive.”

Adds his fellow professor Barry Burden: “I would say it’s a near certainty that they have enough signatures to make the recall go forward.”

The question remains whether the drive on display in Kapanke’s district will manifest itself with similarly strong recall signature showings in other districts. But that said, even though the national press has moved on from this story, the energy and staying power of what has been unleashed in Wisconsin continue to surprise.

By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, April 4, 2011

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Democracy, Elections, Media, Politics, Unions, Wisconsin | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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