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Governor Evers recently signed his second and last state budget before the November 2022 gubernatorial election. After some strategic vetoes and some additional monies from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 passed in March, the governor was able to improve it enough to make it an acceptable document for him to sign.
In Wisconsin, we have an “executive budget,” meaning the governor, who manages the entire state government, works with all the state agencies to discuss their priorities and then crafts a balanced budget as mandated before sending it to the state legislature. The legislature’s job is to analyze the budget, modify it as it deems appropriate, negotiate with the governor, and eventually pass a budget.
Currently we have split government where one party controls the governor’s office and the other party controls at least one chamber of the legislature. Currently the Republican party controls both chambers of the legislature in what a three judge federal judicial panel (two judges appointed by a Republican President) declared an unconstitutionally gerrymandered legislative map.
Why Bother to Compromise?
With gerrymandered districts, most incumbents are in safe partisan districts which means that their only realistic chance of losing an election is from a primary. As a result, Republicans worry about primary challenges from the right and Democrats worry about challenges from the left. There is no incentive to try to compromise with the other party or any need to pay attention to the polls or any advisory referenda that show what the voters want.
Unfortunately, those unconstitutional districts still exist, so legislators in the majority continue to focus on legislating from the extreme right to avoid a primary and to keep their rightwing check writers happy. With the census now completed, the new legislative districts will be drawn before the November 2022 elections. Hopefully we can have honest and fair district boundaries.
Political parties have different philosophies and have different policies and priorities. That’s why the political parties exist. In a functioning democracy, there should be negotiations, give-and-take, and compromise with the focus on what is good for the citizenry. Unfortunately, that process has essentially broken down in Wisconsin, and the legislature has made the process into a very nasty fight. We, the citizens, are the ones who end up suffering.
Wisconsin used to be a leader among states for its forward-looking policies that not only were copied by other states but also by our federal government. Now after the elections of 2010, the legislature has passed bills that have changed the character of our state, so we are now grouped with states like Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia. That is not what the majority of Wisconsinites want.
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It Doesn’t Have to be This Way
I served three terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly in the late 1980s and early 1990s when we also had split government. At that time, the Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and the Governor was Republican Tommy Thompson. We pushed our agendas hard and so did the governor and the Republican minority in the legislature. We won some; and we lost some, and in the end, I strongly believe the citizens of the state of Wisconsin came out the winners. As difficult it is to believe today, we actually had a number of friends on the other side of the aisle.
The legislative districts at that time were drawn with a lot of competitive districts, so either party could have ended up in the majority. There was also respect on both sides of the aisle for the process and the institution. Occasionally when a procedural question would come up where one had to choose between what was best for the institution in the long term or a short-term win for their party, the integrity of the institution often won. That was inspiring. Unfortunately, those days are over. t is now win at all costs and stay in power no matter what you must do to our Democracy.
Adopting the Senator Mitch McConnell Playbook
Right now, the only agenda the Republican leadership in the legislature appears to have is to do whatever they can to make Governor Evers a one-term governor. This comes directly out of the playbook of Mitch McConnell. We citizens pay a price for this political gamesmanship. For example, when Governor Evers followed the consensus of medical experts at the height of the pandemic regarding mandating masks to save lives, the Republican leadership orchestrated lawsuits to block his mask mandates. As a result, infection rates rose and deaths rose, in the Republican’s efforts to hurt the Governor politically for not protecting Wisconsinites from COVID. Unfortunately, innocent people unnecessarily died in Wisconsin over this political game playing.
With such actions by the Republican leadership as mentioned above, along with the refusal by somewhere between 25% and 30% of the population to accept losing an election—and the proposed legislation in some states that lets state legislatures discard the votes of its citizens if they don’t like the results—this is the first time in my life when I began to feel our democracy is truly under attack. Many democracies have not survived, starting with Ancient Greece. Like a relationship, you must work at it if you want it to survive.
I do believe that we will survive this current challenge to our democratic system, if we pay attention to what is happening throughout our country and get more involved. The usual question is then, so what can I do? The most important issue facing us politically in our state is the need to ensure that when we redraw the legislative district boundaries between now and next summer, they are as fair and as honest as possible. If we can accomplish that, it would eventually improve virtually every aspect of our political environment and begin to heal our cultural divide.
