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| Scott Walker |
As they gear up to face recalls, some Republican legislators are complaining that their message hasn’t gotten through to the public. The implication is that the media was listening more to the pro-union side and to the GOP’s rationale for eliminating most collective bargaining rights.
My impression is that the media was madly scrambling to understand what Gov. Scott Walker was doing and why, without being able to get the full story. The Walker administration’s strategy seemed to involve moving as quickly as possible before enough opponents could scream bloody murder.
In doing so, Walker put his party’s legislators in a perilous position. To radically change the laws, you need to first educate the public. When Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson completely revamped welfare with his W-2 program, or passed a revolutionary change like school choice, there was long discussion of these proposals.
Walker, by contrast, wanted to completely remake collective bargaining rights in one week. With almost no discussion. In fact, he said there was nothing to discuss because the state was broke.
That might have worked if he just changed unions’ rights to collectively bargain salaries and benefits, but he added all kinds of other restrictions that had little to do with saving the state money – and everything to do with decimating the political power of unions. Indeed, as State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald told Fox News, the new law will reduce the dues collected by unions, and “what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a … much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.”
It’s already crystal clear how partisans will vote in any recall election: Polls show about 90 percent of Republicans approve of Walker, and about 90 percent of Democrats disapprove. That brings it down to the independents. As a poll by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute found, 41 percent of independents approved of the governor, and 57 percent disapproved. The ongoing efforts to recall 16 state senators will be a War for Independents.
Of the 16 that could be legally recalled (it must be at least a year since their election), two Republicans are in super-safe, heavily (about two-thirds of voters) Republican districts: Glenn Grothman and Mary Lazich. Four Democrats are in super-safe districts: Spencer Coggs and Lena Taylor (85 percent or more Democratic), Fred Risser (80 percent) and Mark Miller (about 64 percent).
I came up with these percentages by averaging each district’s vote in the 2010 race for governor (with its big turnout of Republicans) and 2008 race for U.S. President (big turnout of Democrats). Using that same approach, four Democrats look potentially vulnerable to a recall: Jim Holperin (48.4 percent Democratic district), Dave Hansen (51.7 percent), Robert Wirch (53 percent) and Julie Lassa (55 percent).
Six Republicans could be vulnerable: Dan Kapanke (45 percent Republican district), Alberta Darling (50.8 percent), Robert Cowles (51.8 percent), Luther Olsen (52 percent), Randy Hopper (52 percent), Sheila Harsdorf (53 percent).
The key factors in these elections? For starters, the message. Democrats have already launched an ad against Olsen, created by the national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, saying this: “Last month, Sen. Olsen said eliminating collective bargaining is, quote, ‘pretty radical.’ But Olsen voted for Gov. Walker’s backroom deal to end collective bargaining.”
The “backroom deal” phrase is key because voters don’t normally vote to recall just because their representative voted for something they oppose. There usually has to be a sense that the politician betrayed the voters in some way.
Republicans, by contrast, will target Democratic senators for abandoning their posts in Madison and hiding out in Illinois – “for not doing their job,” as state Republican Party Executive Director Mark Jefferson explained to me. I doubt they will target Democrats for their stand on the Walker bill because polls show most voters opposed the elimination of collective bargaining rights.
A second factor is who is more fired up. Clearly that’s the Democrats and unions, who are angry and motivated and will have little trouble getting volunteers to go door to door. Democrats have reported they have already gotten more than 45 percent of the signatures needed to recall the eight Republicans, while Republicans have declined to release any such data.
A third factor is the number of government employees in a district. They – along with their spouses – can be expected to vote for recall. Olsen, Hopper and Cowles are all in districts with a significant number of government employees.
A fourth factor applies uniquely to Hopper, whose angry wife reportedly told protestors who came to her door that her husband was now living in Madison with his mistress, a 25-year-old former Senate staffer. I don’t think that will help Hopper’s cause.
As Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Craig Gilbert has noted, it would be historically unprecedented for a state to recall more than two legislators. But I’m betting that happens here. I don’t think Kapanke and Hopper can survive a recall election. A recent poll shows both could lose.
Then there’s Alberta Darling, who won a tight election against Sheldon Wasserman in 2008, and is likely to face him again, but this time in a race where she is the issue. As for Luther Olsen, he’s the first one Democrats have singled out for negative ads. I think Olsen and Darling are both in trouble.
On the Democratic side, by the time any recall election occurs, it will have been months since the Dems decamped to Illinois. Ultimately, they simply delayed the bill from passing for three weeks. Will voters still care? Perhaps in the case of Holperin, the only one of the eight Democrats whose district leans Republican.
Elections are usually about a comparison between two candidates, but in a recall, if there’s enough anger in a district, it may not matter who is running against the targeted incumbent. I think the odds of a flip-flop of three seats in the senate – and a loss of GOP control – are very high.
Prosser in the Crosshairs
The blowback from the union issue is clearly having an impact on the race for Milwaukee County Executive, where Chris Abele is running ads attacking Jeff Stone for supporting Walker’s bill. You can expect more of the same in the race for state Supreme Court.
I got called by a pollster who was clearly working for someone supporting JoAnne Kloppenburg, who is challenging incumbent David Prosser. The pollster asked very specific questions – it felt like a push poll, an attempt to push the respondent in a certain direction – revolving around the fact that the law restricting collective bargaining could be reviewed by the state Supreme Court and that Prosser is a Republican who backs Walker. I think we can expect a TV ad pushing this idea.
The pollster also tried one other issue, suggesting Prosser had mishandled a case of clergy sex abuse back in 1979 when he was an Outagamie County District Attorney. The case was reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I’ve been told by one GOP insider that Prosser felt the article was unfair. Certainly the incident happened long ago, at a time when the media and law enforcement authorities were both, regrettably, asleep on this issue.
One way or the other, you may find both of these issues surfacing in the Supreme Court election.
The Buzz:
-Out of curiosity, I asked the Milwaukee County Board for a record of Scott Walker’s vetoes as County Executive. In eight years he used the veto 204 times, or about 25 times a year. His vetoes were overridden all but 65 times, or more than two-thirds of the time. I doubt you’d find an executive in Wisconsin history with a greater percentage of vetoes overthrown, or a greater unwillingness to compromise. It almost never happened for former governors Thompson or Jim Doyle, who would have feared the loss of power it might signal for them. Walker is remarkably unbending.
-Our changing priorities, as noted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof: “In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.”
-UW-Madison chancellor Biddy Martin slapped at UW System officials, saying she objected to the “smug snottiness” in their reactions to her proposal to give UW-Madison independence from the System. Did that get a bold rejoinder from them? Not exactly. “I don’t think saying we’re smug and snotty is fair,” sniffed UW System President Kevin Reilly.
-Is MU coach Buzz Williams being recruited by Oklahoma? The Sports Nut reports.
