Unintimidated

by Scott Walker

  I was also keenly aware of the impact losing this race would have on Wisconsin—and the country. The election had gotten a lot bigger than who the governor of Wisconsin would be for the next two years. Paul Ryan had said it best in his speech at the Wisconsin Republican convention: “Courage is on the ballot on June 5th.”

  Paul was right. If we prevailed, it would send a powerful message not only in Madison but also in state houses across the country—and ultimately through the halls of Congress—that if political leaders tackle tough issues, they will have people standing with them. If we prevailed, it would tell every elected official in America that if they are bold, if they do the right thing, their courage and boldness will be rewarded.

  If we lost, however, I was convinced it would set the cause of courage in politics back a decade, if not a generation. The opponents of reform were trying to send a message across the country that if you take on the unions, you lose your job. The consequence of defeat would have been disastrous not just for Wisconsin but also for the nation. That is why we had to win. We could not lose.

  The Barrett campaign understood the stakes as well—and they were throwing everything possible at us to see what would stick. Mayor Barrett had stopped talking about Act 10 altogether. It was ironic—collective bargaining had supposedly been the reason for the recall, but my opponent was not even running on what he claimed this election was all about.

  Instead, Barrett portrayed me as a conservative “rock star” (a line of attack that did not work much better for Barrett than it did when John McCain tried it on Barack Obama in the 2008 election). He said I wanted to turn Wisconsin into a “prototype for the tea party.” He accused me of starting a “civil war.”1

  The one thing Mayor Barrett never did was offer a positive vision of his own to move Wisconsin forward.

  He got some traction when he attacked us on jobs. A string of monthly jobs reports suggested that Wisconsin had lost 33,900 jobs in 2011. Barrett put up ads declaring that under my administration Wisconsin was dead last in the country in job creation. He accused me of having taken my eye off the ball on what should have been our number one priority in order to pursue an “ideological agenda”2 (later, voters would learn that our opponent had the facts wrong).

  It was a powerful attack, and it was starting to work. But then Mayor Barrett made a strategic error. He suddenly stopped talking about jobs and started running multiple ads attacking me over a “John Doe” investigation into misconduct by some of my former aides in Milwaukee County. I pointed out that Tom Nardelli, my chief of staff at the county, had (per my approval) initiated the investigation because of concerns we had about an individual who volunteered with the county. Then I reminded the voters that as an Eagle Scout, “I live by the standards of integrity I got from my parents.”

  It was my belief that Barrett was focusing on the John Doe investigation out of desperation because he could not talk about Act 10. “They keep moving to anything else except what this recall is supposedly about, because our reforms are working,” I said. At one of our debates, I stated: “So everybody’s clear, the mayor doesn’t have a plan. All he’s got is attacking me.”

  Mayor Barrett didn’t get any traction with his “John Doe” attacks. And the following year, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office announced that it was were closing the three-year-long investigation. I was cleared. After the DA announced his decision, a Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesman was so incensed he went on Twitter and compared me to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.3

  “What do @GovWalker and Jeffrey Dahmer have in common?” he tweeted.

  He then answered himself. “@GovWalker had better lawyers than Jeffrey Dahmer in beating the rap. Clear that he committed crimes.”

  It just showed the depth of their bitterness. They so wanted it to be true that they nearly lost it when the truth contradicted their attacks.

  As Mayor Barrett’s “John Doe” attacks fizzled during the campaign, we turned the jobs issue around on him. In April, we pointed out that nearly all the net job losses in the state the previous month had come from one place: Mayor Barrett’s Milwaukee. Wisconsin was reported to have lost forty-five hundred in March 2012, and forty-four hundred of those were in Milwaukee.4

  “The City of Milwaukee, under Mayor Barrett’s failed policies, is an anchor weighing on Wisconsin’s ability to create jobs,” we declared in a statement.

  We also knew the jobs statistics Barrett had been citing, which purported to show that Wisconsin had lost jobs during my first year in office, were not accurate. The monthly jobs reports were based on survey data taken from a small statistical sampling of Wisconsin businesses (about 3.5 percent). But every quarter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in Washington puts out more precise jobs numbers based on comprehensive census data from each state. Unfortunately, the final BLS report for 2011 that would have undermined Barrett’s charges was not scheduled to come out until three weeks after the recall election.

  The Obama Labor Department was not going to speed up the release to help us out. But there was nothing in the law that prevented us from releasing the census data the state of Wisconsin had provided to the federal government. So we released the data, which showed that, after losing 134,000 jobs in the three years before I was elected, the state had actually added 23,000 jobs in 2011. The unemployment rate in Wisconsin had dropped to 6.7 percent (compared to 8.2 percent nationally and the peak of 9.2 percent before I took office).

  In May, we ran an ad touting the new jobs numbers. I looked into the camera and said:

  I’ve got some bad news for Tom Barrett but good news for Wisconsin. The government just released the final jobs numbers and as it turns out, Wisconsin actually gained, that’s right, gained more than 20,000 new jobs during my first year in office. Add the jobs created this year, and the total goes to over 30,000. Mayor Barrett, you said this election’s about jobs; I couldn’t agree more. Our reforms are working and we’re moving Wisconsin forward.

  That effectively took jobs off the table.

  Barrett tried to make the election about the past. We made the election about the future. We defined the race as a choice between going forward or backward. Our message was: We made tough decisions to close a $3.6 billion budget deficit—and did it without raising taxes, without massive layoffs, and without harming education or public services. Now thanks to those choices, Wisconsin had turned a corner. We were moving in the right direction, but we were not done yet—we needed more time.

  In the end, I felt confident that the negative attack ads from our opponents could not overcome the power of positive results. As I’ve often said, good policy is good politics, and I believed our election would prove it.

  In the end, we raised some $37 million (more than 70 percent of our donors gave us $50 or less). We made some 4.5 million voter contacts during the campaign—using traditional and electronic messaging. We had a strong ground game, a strong record, and a strong, positive, optimistic message. I was confident we would prevail.

  But on Election Day, it was still too close to call. After Tonette and I went to cast our ballots, I asked R. J. Johnson, our chief strategist and my friend for more than twenty years, how he felt.

  “It could go either way,” he said. “I just can’t predict.”

  Despite the uncertainty, I felt at peace. We had done everything we could to make our case. I was ready for whatever God had planned for me.

  —

  On Election Day, I headed to Jefferson Elementary School in Wauwatosa to cast my ballot. In most of my previous races, I had just walked into the polling station and voted, but when I arrived that morning there was a long line that went out the door and down the street. As I took my place in line, it seemed like every TV outlet in the world was there to capture the moment. I apologized to the poor guy in front of me who now had what seemed like a hundred cameras bearing down on him. Fortunately, he did not mi
nd—he was a supporter.

  After voting, Tonette and I took a last barnstorming tour of the state, and then went to the Waukesha County Expo Center with a group of our personal friends—the Genals, Harmons, Langes, Pankratzes, and Meidels—five families we had known since our kids were in junior kindergarten together. With them and the members of my security detail, who had become like family, we settled in to await the results.

  As the polls closed, the tension was intense. Voter turnout had been large. In places like Madison and Milwaukee, that typically spells bad news for a Republican. Yet we had also heard that there had been long lines in small towns throughout the state. We hoped that was a good sign.

  Suddenly a roar went up. NBC had called the election. I was in shock, as it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet and we’d been expecting a long night, possibly even a recount fight. My campaign staff pulled me out into the hall. My good friend Reince Priebus, our national party chairman (and former Wisconsin party chairman), gave me a big hug, then handed me his iPhone. Mitt Romney was on the line with his congratulations.

  Moments later, I was whisked into our “war room,” where the campaign team was monitoring election results from across the state. A huge cheer erupted as I entered the room. It was less than an hour after the polls closed and I was still in shock. It was surreal that the race should be over so soon. I looked for R.J. Normally, he’s the last to celebrate a victory because he is still nervously examining the last election returns. When he gave me a smile and a hug, I knew it was true: We had won.

  Not only had we won, we had made history. No other governor had ever won a recall election.

  I searched for Tonette. She was in a holding room with our friends. I burst in and said we had won and now needed to get ready to give a victory speech. In disbelief she kept saying, “It can’t be. It’s too early. Are you sure?” So I took her over to see R.J.

  “Is it real? Did we win?” she asked.

  “You got it,” he said.

  She threw her arms around him and sobbed. All the pressure of the past eighteen months came spilling out. Then R.J. started crying too. Soon there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

  After enduring one hundred thousand or more protesters, tens of millions of dollars in ads, and massive attacks from the left, we had won—and by an even bigger margin than the first time.

  I was enormously gratified, but I also knew that the election was way bigger than me. It was all about whether big-government special interests or the hardworking taxpayers were in charge of the state. That day, the hardworking taxpayers won.

  As I took in our victory, I thought about Dan Kapanke. Dan had to face the voters in August 2011, just a few weeks before the new school year began and a few months before property tax bills arrived showing the first reductions in over a decade. If only he had been on the ballot today, after it was clear that our reforms had worked, he might have held on to that senate seat.

  Tonette, standing with Matt and Alex, introduced me to the huge Wisconsin crowd and to all of the others from across the nation (and around the globe) who were watching our victory party. My family had endured so much over the past year and a half—personal attacks, protests in front of our house, and round-the-clock security. My only doubt about this job was the toll it had taken from my family.

  Through God’s grace, instead of splitting us apart adversity had drawn us closer. As I walked out onto the stage that night, I thanked God—and hugged my family as if the moment would last forever. I didn’t want to ever let them go. Turning to the crowd, I couldn’t believe how many people were there, filling not only the Waukesha County Expo Center but the overflow areas outside the arena.

  Hovering over a sea of supporters, I saw a sign: “You can’t recall courage!” I knew that despite this historic victory, I would need a lot more of it in the difficult days to come.

  No one actually believed we would follow through on our promises of reform when I was first elected in 2010. Surely, they thought, the pressure to cave in to the status quo would be so intense that we would crumble, like so many other politicians before us. The same pundits also predicted we’d lose the recall, just as every other governor subjected to the challenge had in American history.

  I knew that if our children were to inherit a Wisconsin and a nation as great as the one I grew up in, the reforms we had begun had to be kept intact. We could not fail. With the help of so many great Americans, I was deeply thankful that we were able to get the truth out to the voters of Wisconsin, and prevail against the odds.

  In the end, our opponents had spent millions on what amounted to a “do over” of the 2010 election. We won this time by seven points, a bigger margin than in the 2010 election. We won sixty of the state’s seventy-two counties, one more than in the 2010. And we won 205,509 more votes in the recall election that we had in 2010.

  And that was in a June election.

  My running mate, Rebecca Kleefisch, became the first lieutenant governor in American history to face a recall election, and thus the first to win such an election. Republicans held on to three senate seats but lost one: Van Wanggaard. His defeat meant that the Democrats temporarily regained control of the state senate, but it was a symbolic victory. The legislature was out of session until after the November election, and the GOP took back control five months later, regaining the majority with two seats to spare.

  In exit polls, 52 percent of voters in the recall said they supported our handling of collective bargaining reform. Far from plummeting, as some expected, my support among union households actually grew slightly, from 37 percent in 2010 to 38 percent in 2012.

  When the recall effort started the previous November, it had the support of 58 percent of voters.5 By the time the race was over, exit polls also showed that 60 percent of Wisconsin voters disapproved of the recall, saying it should be reserved only for politicians guilty of official misconduct. A majority of our citizens believed it never should have happened—even some who voted against me.

  In his concession speech, Tom Barrett was met by jeers from the crowd when he said he had called to congratulate me and pledged to work together on the challenges facing our state. A woman actually came up and slapped him in the face for conceding.

  I appreciated his gesture, and he and I would later team up on a bipartisan initiative to stimulate entrepreneurship and business growth in Milwaukee.6

  In the war room just before my speech, Tonette had pulled me aside. She told me I should walk out on that stage, look out at the crowd, and say: “This is what Democracy looks like!”

  I smiled. It was a really great line. After hearing tens of thousands of people chanting that very phrase outside my window for months, it would have been enormously satisfying to deliver it. The crowd would have gone wild, and it would have led the news. Perhaps, after all we had been through, I could have indulged myself for one small moment. But then I remembered that devotional reading after the prank call on “the power of humility.” I wanted to use my speech as a chance to end the acrimony, and unite our state once again. I decided not to say it.

  Instead, I reached out to the Democrats and told them, “We are no longer opponents. We are one as Wisconsinites.” And I announced that I was inviting all the members of the state legislature, Republican and Democrat alike, to a cookout at the governor’s mansion (it was Tonette’s great idea).7 Nothing brings Wisconsinites of all political stripes together like beer and brats. I invited not just the lawmakers and their spouses, but their staffs as well. People had stopped talking to each other in the capitol, and I felt it was important for everyone to start rebuilding the personal relationships that had been frayed by the recall fight.

  A week later, nearly four hundred people—lawmakers from both parties, with their families and staff—attended what became known as the “Beer and Brats Summit.” It was a beautiful June day in Wisconsin overlooking a great lake. Sprecher Brewery, a Milwaukee
company, made a root beer with a special label that said “Governor Walker’s Beer and Brat Summit,” and people asked me to sign their bottles for them. I donned an apron and took charge of the grill. Representative Peter Barca, the Democrats’ assembly leader whose jaw had nearly dropped on that cold February day when I explained our plans on collective bargaining, came over with his wife. We had a good talk as I flipped the links. He has Italian roots like Tonette’s, so we joked about how well I was cooking the Italian sausages. After the event, he told reporters that he thought the summit was a success. “I do think it was a positive step, no question about it,” he said.8

  I was gratified that many of the senate Democrats who had fled the state during the fight over Act 10 were there as well. It was a sign of better things to come.

  Some people just could not let go, however. A small contingent of protesters showed up outside the gates to protest. “Healing begins with indictment,” read one sign.

  Among the crowd was none other than AFSCME chief Marty Beil. When a reporter asked him why he was protesting a bipartisan picnic, he answered: “I want people to see that we’re not gone. I want punks like [Representative Scott] Suder over here to see so he knows that we’re here for when he runs in the fall for reelection. These guys need to know that we’re watching them every second of the day and we’ll continue to do that.”

  It was sad. Beil’s intransigence, his belligerence, and his attempt to ram union contracts through the lame-duck legislature had set the stage for the fight that ensued. And now, almost two years later, here he was still at it—threatening legislators and calling them “punks.”

  He had learned absolutely nothing.

  People in our state were exhausted by the partisanship and bickering and just wanted it all to end. Right after Election Day, the Wisconsin State Journal had run a helpful article titled “After the recall, how to remove your bumper sticker.” (“Nail polish remover, rubbing alcohol or lighter fluid will loosen a bumper sticker,” they recommended.)9