The battle of Wisconsin

Yesterday's recall elections in Wisconsin were a watershed moment for America. It all began last winter when newly elected governor Scott Walker put forth a plan to close the budget gap in that state and to keep it closed. Walker called for many changes, but the one that got all of the attention was the requirement that public employees pay part of the cost for their own health insurance and pensions. The amounts that Walker asked of the state workers were less than half of what workers in similar private sector jobs pay for the same things, but the state employees were outraged. Since Walker knew that any changes he pushed through could be easily undone in future labor contracts, he made benefits something that were no longer the subject of collective bargaining under state law. With that change, all hell broke loose in Madison. The state employee unions mustered tens of thousands of supporters (many of whom were teachers who just called in sick to work) to crowd the State Capitol. The Democrats in the State Senate ran away and hid out of state so that there was no quorum for legislative activity. Finally, after weeks of uproar, the legislature passed Walkers bills without any support from senate Democrats.

Following the passage of the bill, the Democrats began a big push to recall certain Republican state senators, and the GOP followed suit with a push against certain Democrats. Ultimately, six GOP senators were up for recall and three Democrats. Yesterday, the result of this effort by the Democrats to take control of the state senate became final. while there are still two more recall elections that could increase the margin in favor of the GOP, it is now clear that the Republicans will retain control of the Wisconsin senate.

This is no small accomplishment. In six elections for state senate seats, the Democrats and their labor allies spent over thirty million dollars. That is five million dollars per seat. Almost none of the candidates for Congress spend that much on their campaigns, and very few candidates for the US Senate reach that level. What makes this spending all that much more extraordinary is the small size of the districts. The average Democrat got in less than thirty thousand votes in each of the six elections. In other words, the Democrats and the unions spent about $170 per voter in their effort to win. Let's put this in context. President Obama is planning to spend the unheard of amount of one billion dollars on his re-election campaign. That will come to about $9 per voter and will dwarf any prior spending in a presidential election. Even so, it is proportionally about 5% of what the Democrats spent in Wisconsin. But they failed even with that onslaught.

The spending was not the only part of the Democrats' efforts. People all across the country were enlisted to aid in the Democrat cause. I know folks in Connecticut who were making GOTV calls yesterday to Wisconsin in the hope of beating the Republicans. But they lost.

In other words, the Republicans in Wisconsin faced an attack of unbelievable size, but they won. They won because the people realized that the Republicans were doing something to overcome the problems endemic to the state's budget. They won because the people understood that you simply cannot go on spending money that you do not have.

Congratulations to Wisconsin.