POLITICS APRIL 13, 2012
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On June 5, Wisconsin voters will head to the polls to decide whether to recall controversial Republican Governor Scott Walker and his lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch. The current polling shows a close race. But while it’s not yet clear whether Walker will survive the vote, it’s increasingly safe to declare one winner and one loser from the recall election. The winner is the national Democratic Party, which is already reaping benefits. The loser is the cause of civility in the state of Wisconsin.
Democrats may not succeed in removing Walker from office, which would be only the third removal of a U.S. governor ever (following a North Dakota governor in 1921 and California’s Gray Davis in 2003). But the recall vote will likely improve the Democrats’ general election prospects. The June election will be a practice run for get-out-the-vote and other organizing efforts in November. That provides an opportunity to both parties to make sure voters are registered to vote–but it’s Democrats who stand to disproportionately benefit, as they usually have a harder time with voter registration, for various demographic reasons (ie: their voters’ incomes are lower; they move homes more frequently.)
True, if Walker wins, it is possible that the momentum will help Republicans in the presidential contest. But the prospects are much higher that even a Democratic defeat would be helpful. The recall event has already energized union voters, and no doubt Democrats will try to paint Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, as lining up behind Walker and his anti-union efforts.
To be sure, the recall effort does pose risks for Democrats. One possibility that commentators have mentioned is that Republicans in other states will use the same recall tool to remove Democratic governors. (Think of Mark Dayton in Minnesota, for example, who faces a majority Republican legislature.) But this risk seems minimal. There is a reason that there have been only two successful recalls of sitting governors in the last century: It takes time, money, and a lot of voter anger to remove someone from office whom voters have just chosen for the seat. While many opponents of governors talk of a recall, the talk rarely translates into action, and a successful Wisconsin recall is unlikely to change that. It takes an odd confluence of events to produce a potential majority to undo a statewide election.
The real risk posed by the recall effort, whether or not it’s successful, is the continued immobilization and partisan gridlock of Wisconsin state government. Democrats and Republicans have been locked in political battle since Walker took office and took aim at public sector unions. Last summer, Democrats successfully recalled some state senators, but not enough to flip control of the legislative body (although a recent resignation made the state Senate an equally divided chamber). With these political battles raging, state politics is at a standstill. As was shown by Gray Davis’s recall in California (which ultimately led to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger), state business cannot be done effectively when the state’s governor must fight for his political life.
Whether or not Walker prevails in the recall vote, the political temperature in Wisconsin is likely to stay hot. Having already decided the governor is unfit to serve, Walker’s critics won’t be eager to work with him if he remains in office. If the recall is successful, a Democratic Wisconsin governor is likely to face an enraged Republican legislature. Similar conditions led to a divisive and costly government shutdown recently in Minnesota and a fight over voter ID laws (just like the fight in Wisconsin). Emotions riled by the recall will likely also have implications in November’s presidential election: If the race between President Obama and Mitt Romney is close in Wisconsin, the state will be ground zero for claims of voter fraud and voter suppression.
There have already been portents of such division. Before the recall efforts, Wisconsin voters were treated to a particularly nasty race for a state Supreme Court seat. The Republican incumbent narrowly won reelection after a dispute over the counting of ballots, but was accused by a Democratic court colleague of choking her during heated exchanges over the legality of Walker’s anti-union laws. The incident remains under investigation, although prosecutors declined to press criminal charges. Both Wisconsin Democrats and Republicans should pray that come June, nothing gets that ugly.
Richard L. Hasen is a professor of law and political science at the U.C.–Irvine School of Law and author of The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown. He also writes the Election Law Blog.
17 comments
Scott Walker is an American hero. He has had the guts to take on the public employee unions, which are the paradigm case of the greed, stupidity, selfishness and lack of patriotism that threaten the future of the Republic. I am a long-term resident of California and I have seen a once great state brought to financial ruin by those bastards and their political enablers. If Scott Walker is defeated it will be a clear victory of evil over good.
- bulbman1066
April 13, 2012 at 1:03am
Yeah, bulbman. Let's get rid of all unions and go back to paying 10-year-olds a crust of bread a day for 16 hours work. You said you employ immigrants. The GOP wants to get rid of every last union in America, not just the public ones. Right now a mere 7% of American employees are in unions. I'm sure you'll be thrilled when that number is zero. Then you can downscale your immigrant-employees' wages to two cents an hour, if they're not at that level already. Blaming unions for all the ills in America is pure Stalin. He accused unions of wrecking the Soviet economy by demanding too much. You, Stalin, and Guv Walker--quite a troika.
- magboy47.
April 13, 2012 at 2:05am
Um, the Republicans have spent three and a half years trying to discredit Obama, many Republican members of Congress, even some in their leadership, saying that Obama is not the legitimate President. Remember "You lie!", and don't forget Congressional Democrats being spit upon on their way to vote on ACA. When GWB's mendacity was exposed for all to see, he wasn't treated with anywhere near the level of disrespect that Republicans have shown for Obama. Incivility? What goes around comes around.
- rayward
April 13, 2012 at 8:21am
I just keep thinking of that genuis fruitcake winger who shot a pumpkin to try and recreate Clinton murdering Vin Foster. Civility and maturity left the right wing long ago.
- WandreyCer
April 13, 2012 at 10:46am
"Scott Walker is an American hero." Right, and so was Oliver North. Even if he loses--especially if he loses--the recall will make Walker a rich man as it did Ollie. He'll get a big advance for a book and will be able to charge high fees for speaking events in which he poses as a martyr for free market capitalism and any other cause that suits his fancy at the moment. Bulbman and all the other aggrieved patriots in the room will explode in rapturous applause, and the money will roll right in. Poor, poor Scott Walker.
- propjoe
April 13, 2012 at 11:56am
A short list of stories occurring today... Reason did a good piece today on how DC escalators used to be managed by private escalator firms, but they were pulled in to be managed by unions. The result is that 1 of 8 escalators is out of service at any time (88% uptime). A well running organization has one out of 200 out of service at any time (99.5% uptime). Then we're treated to the Gov's GSA making up "award dinners" so that they can send employees to far away places like Vegas and Hawaii. Sure, ribbon cutting ceremony in Hawaii might only take an hour. But if you have an award dinner for the department that night, then you can extend the trip to several days and invite even more government employees to come too. So, the gov makes up awards such as "jackass award" so that they can invite more people to the soiree. Then we learn that our public servants aren't at all among the "high skilled" elite. If you control for education, experience, org size, gender, race and a host of other variables, the summary is simple: The gov pays at all levels significantly higher than the private sector. And you never get fired! It's awesome. From janitors on up, it's lots of money for everyone. When government works well, nobody minds paying taxes. But we are miles away from gov working well. And yet they want even more. Why? Not so they can help someone in a bind. They want more so that they can overpay even more. And take even more trips to Vegas and Hawaii. It's just a mess.
- seattleeng
April 13, 2012 at 12:44pm
The one issue I have with Richard Hasen's article is his comment that "[iI] takes time, money, and a lot of voter anger to remove someone from office whom voters have just chosen for the seat." This is not quite true: it takes time and money only, at the beginning, and the necessary ranks of furious voters can be sketched out and filled in later, as shown by the Gray Davis recall election in California. There, the presence of paid signature-gathering operatives from private companies was obscured or downplayed to give the impression that there was a large popular wave mounting among the electorate. The right went on a bankrolling spree in order to test to see if they could do this, and they found they could. This is not to say that Davis was a particular popular governor, but he wasn't a particularly unpopular one either (colorless might be the most accurate description). He might have lost the next election but there were no circumstances in which anything like Wisconsin today obtained in CA ten years ago. There was, of course, a state energy crisis. That was ENTIRELY created by Enron and similar predatory corporations looking to maximize profits by every method including those that should have been criminal even if they weren't.
- ironyroad
April 13, 2012 at 3:52pm
Riiiiiiiight. It's the dems' fault that there's gridlock in Wisconsin. It's not, say, that Walker is promoting an extreme agenda or anything. Just imagine how much peace and tranquility there would be in wisconsin if every one simply did their civic duty and voted republican. No more closely divided senate. no more gridlock. Heaven on earth.
- miceelf
April 13, 2012 at 7:24pm
Right, seattle. The private sector works so much better than the public one. American businesses are making all-time record profits, and the stock market is at an all-time high. That means that good, or just decent, jobs are falling out of the sky. Right, seattle. Government never works well, but neither does business, because human nature is always there to screw everything up (business booms today are the result of bubbles that always burst and makes things much worse than they were before). I'd like to see government work together with business and employees to make things better for everyone. That 21st-century model is working extremely well in Germany. It worked well in America in the Fifties. But you want to stay in the 19th century, in the Wild West, where government was almost non-existent and robber barons ruled. Nice plan, cowboy.
- magboy47.
April 13, 2012 at 9:11pm
I just hope Democrats don't go the way of Galston and think that Republicans are, at heart, good people. They have to fight, and think, like Republicans. Walker is the tip of the iceberg. The thing is, there are far more people who are resigned to politics that are in their hearts true Democrats, but just believe the whole process is corrupt. And they are probably right, but the alternative is their absolute worst nightmare, the ones who are destroying America i.e. the modern Republican party. The beautiful thing about politics nowadays, is the simple fact that their is a clear cut choice between Democrats and Republicans. It couldn't be any starker, regardless of what Soros says. Romney, Walker, Boehner, Ryan et al are out to hurt people. They want to inflict massive pain on people, and not just poor people, but everyone who falls short of $500,000 in gross wealth. They hate people like that. Democrats at least understand that there are other folks, and other things, worth fighting for. The last thing we need is to be William Galston's and give up because we haven't reached the phantom Center. Fuck that. Stand up and call a spade a spade, and Republicans are awful spades.
- RedState
April 13, 2012 at 10:56pm
Wisconsin Act 10 had two parts that affected unions: (1) increases in public employees' contributions to pensions and health care, and (2) a series of changes aimed at making continued survival of the unions very problematic. There was widespread support for the first part, even including (a perhaps grudging) agreement from the major state unions. For example, Milwaukee's Mayor Barrett, one of the candidates running against Governor Walker, had been pushing for higher payments by city workers. If Walker had stopped there, it is probable there would have been no recall. The attempt to destroy the unions, however, was another matter. As a candidate, Walker gave no hint that he planned to do so, presumably because he recognized that it would have motivated union members to work against his election. While Walker justified Act 10 by the need to balance the state budget, the changes to collective bargaining had no fiscal effect. Instead the attempt to destroy the unions appeared to be part of a broader political strategy to assure permanent dominance by Republicans, which included the nation's most restrictive voter ID law and a blatantly partisan redistricting law prepared in secret.
- brthompson
April 13, 2012 at 11:35pm
Props to RedState.
- chaitless
April 14, 2012 at 1:40am
Public employee unions should be outlawed. First of all, counting benefits, public workers receive much better compensation than do workers in the private economy. On top of that they have all sorts of Civil Service protections that make it difficult to fire any of them, no matter how lazy or incompetent they may be. Second, there is a gross conflict of interest in the very existence of public employee unions. They use the taxpayers' money to contribute to political campaigns in order to pick just those politicians who will pay them more, and, surprise, surprise, hire more public employees. It's a vicious circle that has already brought several states to the verge of bankruptcy.
- bulbman1066
April 14, 2012 at 2:25am
Reply to Red State: There are of course many exceptions - truths in politics are statistical, not absolute. But by and large Republicans are people who work for a living and Democrats are people who vote for a living. This has been true ever since the days of the "Reagan Democrats".
- bulbman1066
April 14, 2012 at 2:35am
The real losers in Wisconsin are the kids. Already %46 of new teachers leave the profession within five years (NCTAF), and now "reformers" such as Walker want to make it even less appealing for teachers to make teaching a career. Whatever the outcome of the recall, let's not forget that ultimately, the burden of teacher discontent must be borne by the kids, their parents and the communities they live in.
- rodrigaj
April 14, 2012 at 5:48am
bulbmann-- you have got to be kidding. Democrats are not all lazy creeps you imagine them to be. I work, at least 10 hours a day. My girlfriend works, 8+ hours as well. We are more liberal than you can imagine, as well as our close group of friends (since parties have largely ceased to hang out with each other, exhibit A being your horrendous comment that Democrats don't work, asshole). Take a good look at your conservative base states and read their unemployment rolls. Take a good look, which states subsidize which states? Where are the counties with massive unemployment and which party is represented? You will see that republicans come to represent as much or more of the unemployed as Democrats. Don't make comments like that, seeking to drive deeper wedges between the ones that already exist. We know Republicans despise working people as much as the poor, but at least Democrats can represent the interests of working people. Jerk off.
- RedState
April 14, 2012 at 4:41pm
bulbman, Your ignorance is showing--again. Public employees are not allowed to use public money to contribute to political campaigns. You're thinking of private sector unions--or you should be thinking. That goes for all topics.
- magboy47.
April 14, 2012 at 11:54pm