Handicapping Scott Walker’s re-election prospects

More than two weeks before he was set to announce his candidacy for a third gubernatorial term, Scott Walker launched an internet commercial that trades heavily on his “regular guy” image. He first appears jogging along as if the camera just happened to catch him living his admirably healthy lifestyle. A montage follows — a series of clips in which a smiling Walker backslaps a diverse group of white people. He’s also seen standing at a podium with House Speaker Paul Ryan and in a meeting about his controversial Foxconn deal.

Meanwhile, in a reflective tone, Walker’s voice enumerates his accomplishments. Some of them are cherry-picked truths, but many of them stretch, confound or defy the facts.

At the end of the ad, as he’s seen riding his Harley down a rural road, Walker turns his head toward the camera and asks, “Are you with me?”

Not with him — for now

A poll released about a week after Walker’s commercial debuted suggests the current answer to his closing question is no. Conducted by Public Policy Polling, the survey showed Walker losing to a generic Democratic candidate, 43 to 48 percent.

The release of the poll was followed quickly with an internet ad thanking the governor “for keeping his promises.” Paid for by the Koch brothers-backed group American for Prosperity, the ad buy was small. But it was a reminder that the Koch clan’s massive misinformation spin team is always at the ready.

Democratic strategists were heartened by the poll, which did not come as a shock. Walker has polled poorly, sometimes terribly, since his brief run for the presidency in 2015 showed voters that his heart and his attention are not focused on his current job.

“When you’re polling in the low 40s, you’ve got a serious mountain to climb with the electorate,” said Democratic strategist Thad Nation. “Voters know you already. They know who you are, what you do and what you stand for. If seven years in, you’re in the low 40s, that’s a serious impediment to re-election.”

History is also against Walker. He’s a Republican seeking a third term in a midterm election. Only Tommy Thompson has been able to pull off such a victory, because Thompson had bipartisan support. Walker does not.

Historically, midterm elections are won by the party that does not hold the White House. Republican Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office as of this writing.

But Democrats are wary. “Scott Walker is able to do one thing well: campaign in the state of Wisconsin,” Scot Ross begrudgingly acknowledges. As director of the progressive group One Wisconsin Now, Ross is one of the state’s most vocal Walker critics.

Walker’s formidable assets

In some important ways, Walker is a formidable candidate. He has great skill at retail politics. Outgoing and friendly in person, he seems born to shake hands, kiss babies and remember names.

He also apparently has a Teflon coating when it comes to voters holding him accountable. The most obvious example is his promise to create 250,000 jobs during his first term as governor. He’s now more than halfway through his second term, and the state has added only 170,000 jobs. In fact, Wisconsin has trailed the national rate of job creation since Walker took office, and last year, Wisconsin actually lost manufacturing jobs.

On the stump in 2010, Walker repeatedly challenged the electorate to hold him accountable for his jobs promise. But when he failed, Walker, with the aid of right-leaning media, was able to pivot his failure into a plus. The narrative became: Voters are right to elect leaders who think big and reach high.

He won two more elections.

The golden key to Walker’s electoral success is money. He has access to seemingly unlimited cash from right-wing corporate groups and the super-wealthy.

Their devotion to Walker is regarded by observers across the political spectrum as payback for agendas accomplished.

For instance, Walker has turned Wisconsin into the nation’s laboratory for testing laws and policies developed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is backed by the Kochs and other wealthy individuals.

As the earliest adopter of some of ALEC’s most controversial legislation, Walker has pushed through the elimination of public unions and fair wage laws, as well as the enactment of strict photo ID policies for voters.

Walker is arguably ALEC’s standard-bearer.

The ALEC-inspired photo ID rules will be particularly important in 2018. They were designed to prevent largely Democratic constituencies such as African Americans and college students from voting — and those votes are essential in midterm election races. The Republican Party is known for its disproportionately high turnout in midterms, and Democrats will be seriously hobbled by restrictions that disenfranchise their voters.

WEDC, jobs and other Walker vulnerabilities

In addition to his strengths, though, Walker has many vulnerabilities. He has a poor record in the areas of most importance to voters — education, infrastructure, healthcare and economic expansion, for starters.

Take jobs.

The truth about the state’s job problem is not that a lot of people are out of work — Walker’s commercial brags about the “record” number who are working — but the fact that many people are working several poorly paying jobs at a time just to make ends meet. The kind of jobs that Wisconsin has created under Walker do not provide health insurance or retirement accounts.

During Wisconsin’s good old days, workers had unions to negotiate on their behalf — an essential part of building the American middle class. Walker and his ilk have all but destroyed unions, which is one of the reasons Wisconsin has the nation’s highest income inequality and fastest-shrinking middle class.

Businesses in the state actually are desperate to fill good jobs for which there are no qualified applicants. Walker created the problem by slashing education funding and failing to create adequate training programs to prepare Wisconsin workers for the jobs that companies want to fill now and in the future, several Democrats told WiG.

Then there’s the WEDC — Walker’s Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.

In its first few years alone, WEDC made more than two dozen awards worth more than $124 million to companies without first conducting a formal review of their credit worthiness, their history or the financial viability of their proposals. Some of those receiving the grants were Walker supporters.

WEDC did not keep records of millions of dollars it gave away, and the state didn’t track how many jobs were created. WEDC never even tried collecting on many defaulted loans.

Walker’s also been involved in other shenanigans that would previously have brought down an elected official. But with the help of state Republican leaders, he got rid of the inconvenient laws that he was breaking — some of them retroactively. For good measure, he and his GOP acolytes also eliminated the state watchdog and legal groups charged with ferreting out and prosecuting political transgressions.

In the face of such waste, fraud and mismanagement of the state’s money and natural resources, a massive political divide has emerged between citizens who are aware of the reality and those who aren’t. Unfortunately, there are more of the latter than the former — but that could change in the course of a well-run Democratic campaign.

The strategy

Despite Walker’s liabilities, the Democrats who hope to square off against him next November are the underdogs. Incumbency has its privilege.

Still, Ross said he’s glad to have Democrats crisscrossing the state and talking to people in so many areas.

“The last time there was a robust democratic primary for governor, the Republican was ousted,” Ross said. “When you have a number of candidates out there talking about … their strong Democratic values, it’s going to resonate with people all over the state.”

It also gets candidates into fighting shape and turns local news cameras on Democrats, for a change.

“Because of the large conservative majority in the state Legislature, a lot of local media rely on local Republican officials (as news sources),” Ross said. In other words, with all the campaign activity, voters in rural areas will be exposed to Democratic ideas and viewpoints more than has been the case.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair Martha Laning said Democratic candidates will have the chance to bring up problems that escape the attention of voters in solid GOP areas. They might not know, for instance, that “we have the highest poverty rate Wisconsin’s had in the last 50 years,” Laning said. Or that “our roads are the fourth worst in the nation, and Wisconsin is third worst for broadband speed.”

These are all ways in which Walker and his Republican cohorts have failed the state, and its citizens should hold them accountable, Laning said.

She also wants voters to understand that Walker’s economic-development model of giving tax breaks to the wealthy has never succeeded at creating significant job growth. That’s something that Democratic candidates need to emphasize, she said.

“If I would say, ‘I’ll give you $10,000 in tax credits,’ then are you going to go hire somebody you don’t need?” Laning asked, laughing.

None of the eight candidates currently in the race has the backing of the Democratic Party.

“The party is staying out of it,” Laning said. “The party is there to support all candidates who hold our values.”

The wildcards: Trump and Foxconn

Walker also is running on the claim that he’s balanced the budget. What he never says is there’s a state law requiring a balanced budget.

“Anyone can balance a budget — a kid can do it,” Laning said. “You just adjust the numbers until they add up. What they’re doing is hacking a budget. They’re not doing anything to raise revenues.”

Laning said Democrats must spotlight the things Walker has cut from the budget so that he could balance it, while at the same time giving tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy.

One casualty of Walker’s hacking is the state’s inability to come up with necessary transportation funding in the 2017–19 biennial budget. The conundrum created a rift among Republicans that delayed the budget for two and a half months.

At issue was Walker’s refusal to raise any taxes or fees to cover the road building that’s already underway. He wanted to create a budget that would allow him to say that he never raised taxes, so completion of the Zoo Interchange and other major projects had to go.

Republicans apparently never even considered looking at public transportation needs, a problem that is driving many young people out of the state.

Despite all of the blatant missteps Walker has made, it could be that he’ll lose due to two factors outside his control.

“The best chance the Democrats have to beat Walker is if one of two things happens,” said Matt Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign: “Trump continues to self-destruct, which would help, since Walker has lashed himself to Trump, or Foxconn blows up in Walker’s face.”

“Many people — including Independents and Republicans — outside of Racine, Kenosha, and Milwaukee see Foxconn as a boondoggle that they’re paying for and won’t benefit from,” Rothschild said.

Perhaps in 2018, Walker’s decisions will catch up with him and voters will finally hold him accountable.

The Democrats

Following are the current Democratic candidates, along with their plusses and minuses. Strategists say they represent a variety of professional backgrounds, geographies and points of view. But many Democrats complain privately that the field is, on the whole, too old, too white and insufficiently inspirational.

• Tony Evers has the most name recognition in the Democratic race, having won three statewide elections as State Superintendent of Public Instruction. He also has the backing of former U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl. He’s comfortable on a podium and, of course, strong on education.
• Andy Gronik is a political novice who presents his business acumen as something the state badly needs. He’s the founder and president of GroBiz, a consulting firm, as well as Stage W, a nonprofit group to overcome political divisiveness. Gronik’s primary liability is a series of damning reports by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigative journalist Daniel Bice about his past business dealings. He has a commanding presence and has been traveling the state, meeting and listening to voters, for over six months.
• Rep. Dana Wachs, D-Eau Claire, is a trial attorney who’s won two unopposed Assembly elections. Attorneys always run the risk of being slammed over the cases they’ve handled, but Wachs also has a trial attorney’s ability to think on his feet and articulate his ideas in a passionate manner. Several reports suggest that he also has money to loan his campaign. Wachs has the support of former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey.
• Jefferson County District Attorney Susan Happ in 2014 lost the race for attorney general to Republican Brad Schimel by 4 percentage points. But she won the Democratic primary in a three-way race and gained name recognition statewide.
• State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, placed third in 2012 when she ran in the Democratic primary for governor in Walker’s recall race. Smart, articulate and funny, Vinehout faces what could prove an insurmountable problem: In the past, she’s angered progressive donors who were promised that she would not vote against choice. She reneged on that promise, saying that she had to represent the views of her constituents. 
• Former Democratic Party chairman Matt Flynn is a Milwaukee attorney who’s run unsuccessfully for Congress in the past. He’s been highly criticized for his aggressive representation of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in cases brought by victims of clerical child abusers. (Editor’s note: WiG CEO Leonard Sobczak was a plaintiff in one of the suits against the archdiocese.)
• Mike McCabe is a nonpartisan, progressive, good-government activist. After 15 years as executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, he founded Blue Jeans Nation, a group “working to promote the transformation of democratic institutions that are failing America.” He has potential appeal to Bernie Sanders voters.
• Bob Harlow is a 25-year-old Stanford University graduate who lost a Democratic primary bid for Congress in California. He’s not considered a serious candidate

[Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct a previous error. Former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey supports state Rep. Dana Wachs. The prior version incorrectly stated that Obey is backing Tony Evers.]

Poll: Anybody but him for governor

In the race for Wisconsin governor, any generic Democrat leads Republican Scott Walker in his bid for re-election, according to a late October survey from Public Policy Polling.

But then, on this anniversary of the 2016 presidential surprise, does anyone have faith in polls?

PPP’s survey of voters in Wisconsin finds Walker trailing a generic Democratic opponent 48-43.

“Scott Walker’s been a political survivor in the past,” said Dean Debnam, PPP president. “But 2018 is shaping up to be a completely different political landscape for Republicans from either 2010 or 2014 and he’s had sustained low approval numbers the last few years.”

Of course, PPP said, “generic Democrats sometimes poll stronger than who the nominee actually ends up being and it remains to be seen who from the crowded Democratic field emerges — but the race at the least looks like it should be a toss up.”

The PPP survey, released Oct. 26, showed 43 percent of voters approve of the job Walker’s doing and 49 percent disapprove.

There is a sentiment among voters that Wisconsin has not improved under Walker’s leadership. Just 17 percent think the quality of public schools has gotten better during his tenure and only 20 percent think the quality of roads and highways has gotten better.

Additionally, about 44 percent of voters think Walker is too supportive of Donald Trump, whose approval rating in the state is 40 percent.

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s approval rating is at 35 percent and his disapproval is at 51 percent. About 44 percent of voters think Ryan also is too supportive of Trump.

“Paul Ryan’s seen his national approval numbers crater over the course of this year and Wisconsin is no different,” said Debnam. “There’s virtually no esteem for him from the Democratic base and he’s antagonized a lot of Republicans who like Trump better than him as well.”

In terms of the state Legislature, now controlled by Republicans in both chambers, Democrats lead a generic legislative ballot 44-41, which led PPP to ask voters about gerrymandering.

About 44 percent of voters think the state’s legislative district lines are not fairly drawn. And about 63 percent of voters think districts should be decided by an independent, nonpartisan commission instead of the legislature and governor.

On some other issues:

• About 28 percent of voters say they support congressional Republicans’ tax proposal. About 51 percent say the plan will mostly just help wealthy families.

• 59 percent of voters support expanding Medicaid in the state.

• 79 percent support allowing borrowers to refinance their student loans.

— Lisa Neff