Few are more well-versed in state politics than Margaret Farrow, the former lieutenant governor and longtime legislator. But she was stumped recently when a fellow Republican asked her a simple question about Scott Walker: “So who is the inner circle that guides the governor?”
Farrow had no answer. “I haven’t a clue,” Farrow says. “That’s the mystery. That’s the $64 million question.”
Almost overnight, Walker has become nationally famous – and an inspiration to other Republicans – for his dramatic political agenda: killing high-speed rail, slashing state spending, cutting employee benefits and drastically curtailing the ability of public sector unions to organize.
Yet no one can name the advisers that have helped shape his policies.
“His inner circle isn’t so much a circle, it’s a dot – just him,” says one Milwaukee Republican who’s known Walker for nearly two decades. “He is his own counselor. And that has sometimes been a source of frustration. Who were his insiders when he was county executive? No one.”
Walker was first elected to public office in 1993 as an assemblyman from Wauwatosa. He quickly gained a reputation as an independent who could not be counted on to follow Republican leaders. “We called him a sniper,” says a former GOP legislative aide. Rather than “taking one for the team,” Walker had his own political ambitions, the source adds. “There was a joke going around: ‘The most dangerous place in the Capitol is between Scott Walker and a hot microphone.’ ”
In the fallout from the Milwaukee County pension scandal, Walker in 2002 became the first Republican elected county executive and faced a county board of mostly Democrats. “Everything became more partisan,” says one county supervisor.
Walker’s response to those who disagreed with him was unbending, says the supervisor, a fiscal conservative who sometimes voted with Walker. “He’s not collaborative. He’s not a compromiser. His standard approach was: ‘This is my position. I’m willing to listen, but I want 98 percent of my position or I’m happy to lose.’ Top people would say, ‘You really have to compromise here to move forward.’ But Walker wouldn’t go there.”
As his labor negotiator, Walker hired Greg Gracz, former president of the Milwaukee firefighters union. (As governor, Walker would appoint Gracz to head the Office of State Employment Relations.) Gracz knew both sides of the negotiating table and helped teach Walker the unions’ negotiating tools and limitations.
Observers say the often-bitter union negotiations cemented Walker’s anti-union stance. “In Walker’s entire time here,” says the supervisor, “he was in a war with AFSCME [the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the county’s long-powerful union]. He left Milwaukee County absolutely livid at unions.”
Rich Abelson, executive director of AFSCME’s Milwaukee council, paints Walker as inflexible and doctrinaire. “If you’re not agreeable with his solution and put forth another, he’s not interested. It’s his way or the highway.”
But to Walker, it was the union leaders who were to blame. His views are very much his own, says the Republican insider. “This is not someone else’s idea. This is something he is living and breathing.”
Walker himself described his uncompromising style in his February phone conversation with a website editor posing as billionaire David Koch. “Hell, I’ll talk to them,” he said of the 14 Democratic legislators who had fled to Illinois. “If they want to yell at me for an hour, you know, I’m used to that. … But I’m not negotiating.”
Walker’s religious faith seems to reinforce his political beliefs. The son of a Baptist minister, Walker himself has said his commitment to “trust and obey” the Lord has often guided decisions. In a 2009 speech to the Christian Businessmen’s Committee in Madison, he explained how he decided to pull out of the 2006 race for governor: “My wife and I prayed on it,” he said, adding that he made the move without conferring with advisers.
Unlike past governors, Walker doesn’t have an obvious right-hand man or woman. Tommy Thompson had Jim Klauser, his powerful secretary of administration, and Jim Doyle had Susan Goodwin, his tough chief of staff. “I doubt Scott has to pick up a phone and have approval from someone for every idea he has,” says Farrow. “He doesn’t need to. He is so shrewd, so confident, so self-contained.”
In an email response to Milwaukee Magazine, Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said the governor consults with “friends and senior staff,” but declined to name any key advisers.
Walker has built relationships with national Republican leaders. For example, he has met more than once with GOP guru Karl Rove, say observers. He also has been influenced by the new breed of Republican governors who’ve gotten tough with public employees. In his chat with the Koch impersonator, Walker said he spoke “every day” with Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
While some have found Walker’s go-it-alone style frustrating, Farrow believes it could help propel him to national office someday.
“Scott is almost as focused as Ronald Reagan was in what he saw this country needed,” she says. “Scott can see the path and how to get there.”
But not many will walk with him on the journey.
