Unintimidated

by Scott Walker

  I sensed my staff was nervous, so to lighten the mood I pulled out my phone and asked if they had seen the Daily Caller’s new list of “top ten ways to tell if you might be a member of a public-sector union.” It read (with apologies to David Letterman):

  10. You take a week off to protest in Wisconsin and your office runs better.

  9. On a snow day when they say “nonessential” people should stay home you know who they mean.

  8. You get paid twice as much as a private sector person doing the same job but make up the difference by doing half as much work.

  7. It takes longer to fire you than the average killer spends on death row.

  6. The worse you do your job, the more your boss avoids you.

  5. You think the French are working themselves to death.

  4. You know by having a copy of the Holy Koran on your desk your job is 100% safe.

  3. You spend more time at protest marches than at church.

  2. You have a Democratic congressman’s lips permanently attached to your butt.

  1. You pay more in union dues than you do for your healthcare insurance.2

  It did the trick, putting them at ease again.

  As the security situation at the capitol worsened, time was running out to close the budget deficit. I had warned that if the senators did not return and let us pass our bill, we would have no choice but to send layoff notices to fifteen hundred state workers. The unions dismissed this as a scare tactic. It wasn’t. There were only a few months left in the fiscal year. We faced an immediate $137 million budget deficit (left over from the remaining Doyle budget that ran through June 30). Absent legislation that authorized other cost savings, there was no other way to close it. On Friday, March 4, I announced the layoff notices were going out.

  Then, on Saturday, March 5, something happened that changed the course of the debate. For weeks, Senator Fitzgerald had had protesters parked outside his home who screamed at him and his family as his wife tried to go to work and his kids tried to go to school. For the most part, they stayed outside by the gate. At 6:45 a.m. that Saturday morning, a group of protesters came onto his property and began pounding on the door and windows of his rural house.

  For Scott, that was the last straw.

  That night, I attended a Lincoln Day dinner in Columbia County, where I was greeted by hundreds of protesters chanting and hurling epithets. On the car ride home, I called Scott and told him about it, and he told me about the protesters who had come onto his property that morning.

  I said, “You know, Scott, if you just broke apart the bill and passed it, it would all be over.”

  He told me, “Okay, I’ll take it back to the other senators.”

  He was tired of the abuse and delays and was ready to act.

  We agreed to make one last try with Cullen and Jauch. On Sunday morning, March 6, I sent Keith and Eric to South Beloit, just over the Illinois state line, for one more meeting with the two Democrats. If they made progress, we would keep talking. If not, we were pulling the plug.

  They met in the dining room of a hotel right next to a Beefaroo. Cullen had figured out that state troopers were not going to haul him back to Madison, so he was actually living at home in Beloit, just inside the Wisconsin border. Ironically, Keith and Eric actually passed his exit in Wisconsin on the way to negotiate with him in Illinois.

  After a three-hour meeting with the senators, they called me on the way home and suggested we get together with Scott and Jeff Fitzgerald at the Executive Residence to formulate our best and final offer. Later that day, Eric sent an e-mail to Cullen and Jauch that laid out a number of concessions and proposed changes to the bill:

  We agreed to their request to remove the Consumer Price Index cap on any wage increases in negotiations.

  We agreed to remove the requirement that any wage increases above inflation be approved in referendum.

  We agreed that unions could collectively bargain on certain economic issues beyond base wages, including mandatory overtime, performance bonuses, hazardous duty pay, and classroom size.

  We agreed that unions could collectively bargain on issues relating to workplace safety and physical health.

  We agreed that collective bargaining agreements would be good for two years instead of one.

  We agreed that the unions would have to hold recertification votes every three years instead of every year.

  We agreed to allow the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority to continue collective bargaining.

  It was a good faith offer that substantially altered the bill. Cullen and Jauch were encouraged and agreed to take it back to their caucus. We waited to hear back.

  Then, on Monday, March 7, Senator Miller sent me a public letter that seemed intended to blow up the discussions.3 Despite the fact that my aides had met with him just a few days before, and had been meeting with and negotiating with Senators Cullen and Jauch, he accused us of keeping “lines of communication closed.” He declared that Democrats would not come back unless we agreed to “modifications that restore collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin workers.” He even attached a memorandum signed by the missing Democrats that declared that “Wisconsin is not ‘broke,’ as you claim.”4

  The missive came from across the border in Illinois, but it might as well have come from another planet. When Scott Fitzgerald saw the letter, he said, “Screw this. I’m not doing this anymore. They’re never coming back.”

  We had kept the details of our talks quiet, but now that Miller had publicly accused us of bad faith we held a press conference to tell the people of Wisconsin about the past week’s negotiations. Miller called Keith just before the press conference. Keith told him, “Mark, it’s over. You had your chance and you blew it. We’re done negotiating.”

  Standing with Scott and Jeff, I informed voters about the three negotiating sessions, the exchanges of e-mails, and the progress we had made with Cullen and Jauch toward a compromise. I held up Miller’s letter and said, “For the last several weeks, both Senator Fitzgerald and my administration have been reaching out to reasonable senators—many of whom are very interested and willing to come back to the state of Wisconsin. And time and time again, the person standing in the way of making that possible is Senator Mark Miller.”

  Cullen and Jauch would have kept talking, but it was clear that the rest of their caucus wasn’t interested in compromise. We kept getting hoodwinked into believing that they could convince at least some of the other Democrats to return.

  During the press conference, I had intentionally mentioned the exchange of e-mails, and afterward we encouraged reporters to file an open records request, which we quickly accommodated. The documents showed that we were in fact negotiating and had been willing to compromise.

  Now the negotiations were over; it was time to split the bill. Scott called me and said he needed my help selling his caucus. So on Wednesday, March 9, I came over at 11:20 a.m. and explained our plan of action. The meeting was a little testy. Some of the senators were gung ho (Alberta Darling, who would soon face a recall, said, “Governor, we’re with you. We’re ready to go”), but others were still hesitant. I explained that if they didn’t want to do this, then they had only two choices: raise taxes or gut schools.

  No one wanted to pick either of those two options.

  “You can’t live like this forever,” I said. “We have to end this. And once we do, every day that goes forward we will be better off because people will see the positive results.”

  We laid out a carefully planned strategy, a choreographed process where we would announce the hearing, make our case, and explain to voters what we were doing, then a day later take a vote in the conference committee and then take the bill to the floor. I left to do a hangar tour across the state. But after listening to the exchange in that caucus meeting, Scott decided he might not have these vote
s for very long. He turned to his brother, Jeff, and senate president Mike Ellis, and said, “I think we should do this today.” There were a lot of senators who were just scared and wanted to get it done and over with.

  Scott asked the chief clerk, Rob Marchant, how much notice was required for a conference committee meeting. Marchant told him there was no requirement other than posting notification on the bulletin board. He asked how long it would take to get the bill ready. Marchant told him a couple of hours. So Scott posted a notice that the committee would meet at 6:00 p.m.

  At the appointed hour, the committee met for precisely four minutes, split the bill, and passed it amid fierce objections from Democrats that the meeting violated the state’s open meetings law. The senate then passed it by a vote of 18-1 (Senator Dale Schultz was the only “no” vote), as thousands of protesters flooded the capitol.

  When we learned about what they had done, we were incredibly upset with the senate leaders. Their quick push gave opponents the pretext to file lawsuits charging the senate had violated the state’s open meetings law—though they were very careful to do everything by the book, and the lawsuits ultimately failed.

  But in retrospect, senate leaders were probably smart to get the vote out of the way. If they had waited a day after announcing the committee meeting, it would have given the unions more time to rally people and the protests could have been even worse. As for complaints about the process, the senators had been through three weeks of delay and disruption as Democrats used arcane rules to obstruct the bill. Now Republicans were using those same rules to legitimately overcome that obstruction.

  The next morning, when the assembly gathered to take up the revised bill, tactical SWAT teams from the attorney general’s office were guarding members of the assembly and my staff. It showed how bad things had gotten that we had to call in tactical units to protect the state legislature. I ordered my staff to stay home. I flew around the state, holding rallies to make the case for our reforms while the assembly passed the bill 53-42.

  Representative Cory Mason stood on the assembly floor and compared his Republican colleagues to white supremacists, declaring, “Martin Luther King was assassinated while fighting for the rights you’re trying to take away.”5

  On Friday, March 11, I signed Act 10 into law, and the following Saturday the Democratic senators returned to Madison. At a rally outside the capitol, they were greeted like astronauts returning from outer space—which is actually a pretty apt comparison. Senator Fred Risser promised the crowd “the war is not over.”6

  While the unions and protesters hailed the fourteen senators and talked of war, I traveled to northern Wisconsin for a Lincoln Day dinner at the Steak Pit, a supper club in Washburn. We were greeted by thousands of protesters outside. We came around the back, where we saw a sea of cars parked for the protest. I was amazed at how many of them had Minnesota and Illinois license plates.

  The crowd outside was large and agitated, but the crowd inside was even bigger and they were fired up. Folks were thrilled to be with us to celebrate the occasion.

  I was introduced by Congressman Sean Duffy. He presented me with a gift that neatly summarized our battles—a bumper sticker designed just for the occasion.

  It read: “1 Walker Beats 14 Runners.”

  The fight to pass Act 10 was over. But the battle over Act 10 had just begun.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Proxy Fight Begins

  Supreme court races in Wisconsin are rarely controversial affairs, and it had been pretty much assumed that Justice David Prosser would coast to reelection. In February, before the fight over Act 10 heated up, Prosser won a multicandidate primary with 58 percent of the vote. His closest rival, former assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg, came in a distant second with just 25 percent. He would face her in the general election in April, but it seemed to everyone that the race would be a nonevent.

  Then, between February and April, all hell broke loose in Madison, and suddenly an obscure state supreme court election became a multimillion-dollar battle royale—and the future of our reforms hung in the balance.

  The normal practice after the governor signs a law is for the secretary of state to publish it the next day in the Wisconsin State Journal. Separately, the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau also publishes the law, thus putting it into effect. But Secretary of State Doug La Follette, a Democrat, technically had ten days to publish it. He withheld publication for the full ten days, and told the Legislative Reference Bureau to do the same, giving Democrats time to seek a judicial restraining order to stop the bill.

  On March 16, the Democratic Dane County district attorney—acting on the complaint filed by the assembly Democrats—filed a court challenge to Act 10. His complaint alleged that the law was invalid because the senate had not given forty-eight hours’ notice for the conference committee under the state’s open meetings law. Dane County circuit court judge Maryann Sumi heard the complaint, and two days later found that the DA was likely to prevail in court. She issued a temporary restraining order blocking La Follette from publishing the law.

  We were confident that her order would be overturned. There was supreme court precedent that Judge Sumi had no authority to enjoin publication of the law. Moreover, while she had enjoined the secretary of state from publishing the law in the Wisconsin State Journal, her order did not mention the Legislative Reference Bureau.

  So Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald told the Reference Bureau that they had a legal responsibility to go ahead and publish Act 10 within the ten-day period required by law. After examining the statutes, they agreed, and published the law on March 25. Once they did so, Secretary of Administration Mike Huebsch announced that the law was in effect and ordered all state agencies to start collecting higher health insurance premiums and pension contributions. Judge Sumi followed up with another ruling declaring the law “not in effect.”

  The case would go to the state supreme court, where conservatives had a 4-3 majority. That meant that suddenly the fate of Act 10 hung on the result of the Prosser race. If Prosser lost, it would flip the majority on the court and give Democrats and their union allies the votes to uphold Judge Sumi’s order and invalidate the law.

  The Democrats and the unions were transparent in their objectives. Having failed to stop our reforms in the legislature, they were determined to undo them by judicial fiat. The American Federation of Teachers sent a letter to its members declaring “a Kloppenburg victory would swing the balance [of the Court] to our side. A vote for Prosser is a vote for Walker.”1 For her part, Kloppenburg hinted broadly that she would vote on the bench to strike down Act 10, declaring that “the events of the last few weeks have put into sharp relief how important the Supreme Court is as a check on overreach in the other branches of government.”2

  The union-backed Greater Wisconsin Committee spent almost $1.36 million3 to defeat Justice Prosser—an unprecedented amount for a state supreme court election. And seven days out, our internal polls showed Prosser was losing by five to six points.

  What was killing Prosser was not opposition to Act 10 but an ad aired by Kloppenburg’s allies that had nothing to do with the fight over collective bargaining. They alleged that as a district attorney many years earlier, Prosser had protected a pedophile priest. The ad declared:

  A priest sexually abuses children for thirty years across Wisconsin. A mother tells DA David Prosser her two young sons were sexually assaulted. What does Prosser do? Prosser refuses to prosecute. Doesn’t even ask the police to investigate. Instead, Prosser meets with the bishop. To avoid scandal, they send the priest to another community and the assaults continue. Tell David Prosser judges should protect our children, not sex offenders.

  It was an explosive allegation, but there was one problem: One of the victims, Troy Merryfield, said the charges in the ad were “offensive, inaccurate, and out of context.”

  Merryfield
was living in Virginia, and when he found out about the ad, he was outraged that the unions were using his story to tear down Prosser. He issued a statement explaining that Prosser had decided not to file charges back in 1979, when the abuses were first discovered, in order to protect him from “the emotional toll that a jury trial would have on my brother and me due to our young age at the time.” Merryfield said that later, in 2002, when he and his brother were adults and “more comfortable being able to publicly testify about some very sensitive information,” and “were able to remember more detailed information about the abuse that was not made known to the police and prosecutor back in 1979,” the priest was tried and convicted. By then, Prosser had left the DA’s office, but Merryfield said that he was consulted and had “encouraged the prosecution.”4

  Merryfield asked Kloppenburg to tell her supporters to take down the ad and to “stop portraying this case inaccurately and out of context.” Amazingly, she refused. During her debate with Prosser, Kloppenburg refused even to condemn the ad, declaring, “Like it or not, third parties have a First Amendment right to run ads of their own choosing.”5 By refusing to criticize the ad or demand it be taken off the air, she took ownership of it in the eyes of voters.

  With days to go before the election, Merryfield cut an ad for Prosser. In it, Merryfield looked into the camera and said:

  In 1978, my brother and I were abused by someone our family trusted. With the help of David Prosser and law enforcement, we brought our abuser to justice. Now, we’re being victimized again. This time, Joanne Kloppenburg’s allies want to use our pain for their own gain. I asked Joanne Kloppenburg to try and stop these false ads. Joanne Kloppenburg refused. It’s just wrong.

  After the Merryfield ad, Kloppenburg was finished—though we did not know it at first.