Following his resounding victory in Wisconsin's recall election on
Tuesday, Go
vernor Scott Walker appeared on Wednesday's The Daily Rundown
on MSNBC, where host Chuck Todd wondered if Walker's signature
achievement was also his biggest regret: "Looking back, do you have any regret of going at the issue of collective bargaining itself?...any regrets on that front?"
Despite Walker's push for fiscal restraint in the state having been
vindicated, Todd fretted over the Governor's success: "Because there are
still Republicans who say, you know what? You poked a tiger that maybe looked like you were going for a political kill rather than focusing on the policy."
Todd
must have forgotten that reforming collective bargaining rights, which
is exclusive to salary negotiations, re-induced economic vigor into the
state. Not to mention the fact that unemployment in Wisconsin is down to
6.7%. A rate that is well below the national average.
Walker responded, on the June 6 show, by highlighting what his
reforms have achieved and offered some areas where he could have
improved in terms of presenting his agenda:
No, I think in our case the product itself was positive – and we've
documented more than $1 billion dollar with the savings, in fact, for
the first time in twelve years property taxes went down on a median
valued home and statewide we went from a $3.6 billion dollar deficit to a
$154 million dollar surplus.
I think though what I would do differently is I would spend more time
last January and early February talking about what we're doing instead
of rushing out to fix it. If I mentioned, for example, last January
that before our reforms, most school districts in our state had to spend
tens of millions of dollars more than they needed to because they
couldn't bid their insurance out because of collective bargaining. I
think most people would have said fix it. If I said in the case of the
city of Addison because of collective bargaining and overtime abuse, a
bus driver there makes over $150,000 dollars, most taxpayers, be they
Democrat of Republican, would say fix it.
Pushing Democratic spin that the race was manipulated by outside money,
Todd grilled Walker: "Are you comfortable with all the outside money
that came in? Most of it benefitted you – yes there outside money on the
other side, but in this case you were the prime beneficiary. You
comfortable with all that outside money that came in and frankly,
overwhelmed TV stations?
Does Chuck forget the Obama outspent Hillary 3:1 in ads in
Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey in 2008 and lost all three
primaries? Meg Whitman spent $150 million of her own money of
California's gubernatorial race and lost. Linda McMahon spent $50
million of her own money in her failed Senate bid in Connecticut. Money
doesn't always translate into votes.
Walker highlighted the frustrations that Wisconsonites have with the recall law and the "permanent election cycle" in general:
Well, we've got to change the recall process overall I think most
people in my state today wake up saying they don't want to go through
this again be they Democrat or Republican. I think recalls, for most of
us here, we think should be about misconduct in office and not just open
ended and that would change the process because the recall law itself
and the portion of the constitution that enables recall really allowed
for that kind of money to come in.
Remember, you know it's a year and half worth of an assault that
started last February against me and it started out with the national
special interest on the left and it finished off with every special
interest, right or left in America, seemingly involved in the state. I
think now that those interests and those people have moved on to
Florida, Ohio, and those other states. We got to get focused on fixing
things in Wisconsin but I think there is just no doubt in the future
people in Wisconsin want to change the law – they want to change the
constitution so that recalls if any here are rare, if ever, used in the
state of Wisconsin that are used for things like misconduct that would
change the money that would change the focus and for most of us that
would end these permanent recall elections – permanent election cycles –
that I think most are sick of.
-- Matthew Vespa is a News Analysis intern for the Media Research Center.