Opinion

Why Wisconsin matters

Wisconsin voters go to the polls tomorrow in a special election of national significance — and, oddly enough, President Obama has been invisible in the bitter contest.

Or maybe not so odd.

Yes, the drive to cut short trail-blazing GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s term would seem to be tailor-made for this president.

It would’ve allowed him to bolster his ideological and political base — hard-left Democrats and the public-employee unions who instigated the recall in the first place.

But Team Obama can read the polls. And they suggest that what most Washington pundits gleefully predicted would be a humiliating defeat for Walker may well turn out precisely the opposite.

A humiliating defeat for Democrats and the unions, that is (though the race is still close enough that nothing is certain).

A Marquette University Law School poll last week gave Walker a seven-point edge over his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

And 55 percent of those polled said they support Walker’s dramatic restrictions on collective bargaining for public-employee unions — which is what set off the recall drive in the first place.

(Lest anyone think that the poll was skewed Republican, it found Obama leading Mitt Romney for president.)

But more significant news is the fact that Wisconsin’s public-employee unions have been hemorrhaging members ever since Walker ended “dues checkoff.”

That’s the process in which union dues are automatically withheld from public employees’ paychecks and turned over to the union. Now, all dues payments are voluntary.

And even in union-friendly Wisconsin, public workers seem disinclined to remain under Big Labor’s thumb.

As State Sen. Alberta Darling, a Walker ally, told The Wall Street Journal: “People who refused to pay used to be blackballed. Now I’m hearing from many teachers that they feel free to work with their school boards without going through the unions first.”

Moreover, Walker’s foes predicted dire consequences, including mass layoffs, under his reforms (which include budget austerity and tort reform) — and those predictions haven’t come true.

Voters have also come to realize that the whole recall process is an unnecessary and unjustified drain of millions of taxpayer dollars in what was always a naked attempt to overturn a fairly won election.

That’s also why a Democratic attempt last year to regain control of the state Senate failed.

As former US Sen. Robert Kasten notes, “Scott Walker has restored the balance between public employees and the taxpayer.”

Which is why the implications of tomorrow’s vote extend far beyond Wisconsin’s borders.