The Wisconsin Mulligan

On June 5 Wisconsin voters will go to the polls to take a mulligan on the 2010 gubernatorial election, a choice between the incumbent Gov. Scott Walker and his 2010 opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. The outcome isn’t predetermined but, judging by the results of the primaries, Walker has a good chance of retaining his seat.

There are two numbers that stand out in the primaries. The first is 626,538, the number of votes cast for Scott Walker in the non-competitive Republican primary. That’s roughly equal to the number of Democratic primary votes cast in toto and significantly more than the number of votes that Tom Barrett received. If Republicans can turn out all of their primary voters to vote for Walker and Democrats can turn out all of their primary voters for Barrett, Barrett wins. If Walker primary voters turn out for Walker and only Barrett primary voters turn out for Barrett in the general election, Barrett loses.

The second number is 900,000. That’s the number of petition signatures collected by recall organizers to force the recall election. Presumably, Walker primary voters don’t account for much of that total. Why the discrepancy between turnout in the primaries and recall petition signatures? Several possibilities come to mind:

• Having somebody standing on your front stoop and shoving a petition under your nose or buttonholing you as you go into the grocery store is one thing, showing up at the polls is another.
• The heat of the moment has passed.
• There may have been a substantial number of non-Wisconsin voters who signed those petitions.

None of those bodes particularly well for Tom Barrett. What amazes me about this whole sideshow is how little there is to gain in the recall and how much to lose. Regardless of who sits in the governor’s chair in July 2012 Wisconsin’s state government will have all of the same problems it has now and restraining the growth in total public employee compensation will be part of any effective solution whether there’s a D or an R after the name of the governor. When the Massachusetts votes, as it did, to restrict collective bargaining rights on the part of public employees, it’s reasonable to argue necessity but a lot less reasonable to argue that it’s an ideologically-driven radical Republican move.

I’ve already made my views on this clear. Given the federal government’s refusal to control the healthcare monster that it created nearly a half century ago, state and local governments have little recourse but to limit the compensation paid to their employees. Healthcare reform could have taken a lot of pressure off state and local governments.

However, imagine if Walker prevails. The Wisconsin public employees will have done their worst and proven unable to remove him. Now that’s a mandate.

I think that this entire debacle is part and parcel of what James Carville is warning about on the national level which can be summarized in just three words: don’t get cocky.