Well-heeled public-employee unions and die-hard Democrats are pressing their bid to undo Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s pro-taxpayer reforms, part of a conflict playing out in “blue” states across America.
Passed this year, Walker’s “budget-repair law” helped close a $3.1 billion shortfall, in part by restricting collective-bargaining privileges for government-worker unions and forcing them to chip in for their generous retirement and health-care benefits.
Enraged at this loss of privilege, labor and its allies have gone for a series of rollback tactics, including sending hordes of union goons to besiege the state capitol during the debate over the law’s passage, getting friendly judges to temporarily invalidate it and targeting six GOP state senators for recalls — an effort that fell one Senate seat short of returning Democrats to the majority.
Now they’re after the Big Enchilada — Walker himself.
This week, a Democratic-labor front group, United Wisconsin, filed papers to recall Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (a Tea Party favorite) and three more Republican state senators.
“Walker has taken away the rights of workers, is destroying our education system and is selling our state to the big corporations that put him in office,” declared a spokeswoman.
The group has 60 days to collect 540,208 valid signatures (a quarter of the ballots in the 2010 gubernatorial election) to force a new vote.
Democrats are itching to overturn the last election’s results, and don’t want to wait until next November. “There was momentum to do it now,” said a party mouthpiece.
The recall vote could happen as early as March 27, although April or even the summer is more likely.
What’s the rush? Because time is on Walker’s side.
Despite liberals’ claims that the law is ruining the state, it’s working exactly as intended. Education, for example, is the largest line-item in the state budget, but despite the usual dire warnings about mass teacher layoffs, most school districts have balanced their budgets, as reduced costs more than made up for the loss of some state aid.
As regular Wisconsinites come to realize that it’s “Apocalypse Not,” chances for recall will fade.
But the unions simply can’t accept any rollback in what they regard as collective-bargaining “rights” over pensions and benefits — even when such “rights” are the exception, not the rule. (Federal employees don’t have them.) President Obama called Walker’s reform “an assault on unions,” and one local pol trotted out the usual Hitler comparison.
It was clear from the start of this fight that the “progressives” wanted to make Wisconsin an object lesson for others. Unions and Democrats have poured money and manpower into the state, waging a scorched-earth campaign of demonization against the governor.
So far, those efforts haven’t paid off — though the counterrevolution did win last week in Ohio, where a similar bill (which didn’t exempt cops and firemen from its provisions, as Wisconsin’s did) was easily overturned by a referendum, leaving GOP Gov. John Kasich with egg on his face.
Observers put Walker’s chances of survival at about even, although in a recall election he has no fund-raising limits. Nationwide, only two sitting governors have been ousted midterm, including California’s Gray Davis in 2003. But Walker’s approval ratings are in the mid-40s, and he’s up against a formidable enemy that cares not a whit that Wisconsin voters spoke just a year ago.
Labor and its Democratic allies want to take him down, by thuggery and intimidation if necessary. On Tuesday, labor unions mustered 1,000 people to march on Walker’s residence in Wauwatosa, continuing their practice of harassing political opponents in their homes. The governor’s also been the object of death threats.
This, in the Upper Midwest — where people are supposed to play nice.
Walker’s fighting back with a TV ad defending his first year in office. But if the labor-Democratic war on democracy in Wisconsin succeeds, no election will ever again be definitive, and nothing will ever be decided. The GOP needs to do everything in its power to make sure Walker wins — or the country loses.