Valerie Strauss from The Washington Post has a great piece out calling out Gov. Scott Walker’s (R. WI) bull shit campaign to paint himself as the “pro-education Governor” in his tough re-election bid against Superintendent Tony Evers (D. WI):
Though the election is still a few weeks away and anything can happen, Evers has been leading in recent polls, and Walker’s efforts to recast himself as the “education governor” don’t appear to have convinced his critics. His education “reform” agenda could be coming back to bite him at a time when interest in supporting public education in Wisconsin seems to be growing among many residents at the local level. What’s more, Evers, for his part, has been a teacher, principal and superintendent and is now in his third term as Wisconsin’s superintendent of public instruction. He has called for much more funding for public schools and has been critical of the state’s voucher programs, which use public money for private and religious school funding. He is seen as a threat by supporters of the “school choice” movement.
Early in his first term, Walker launched an assault on teachers unions and slashed funding for public schools. In 2011, he signed Act 10, a law that severely cut the power of public employee unions to collectively bargain — but he exempted the unions of police, firefighters and state troopers from those changes. It was clear that Act 10, which also cut benefits of public union employees, was aimed at teachers.
Walker also slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from public school funding early in his tenure. And though he raised funding later, he never made up the difference from what had been lost. And while doing this, he expanded the state’s voucher programs.
In 2015, he secretly tried to change the mission of the long-respected University of Wisconsin System — known as the Wisconsin Idea and embedded in the state code — by removing words in a budget proposal that commanded the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.”
The effort was to de-emphasize liberal arts and focus more on workplace skills, a view championed by conservatives who see many four-year colleges and universities as politically correct institutions that graduate too many students without practical job skills — but with liberal political views.
That same year he also removed from state law tenure protections for University of Wisconsin professors, a move that educators warned would hurt the school’s ability to retain and attract talented faculty.
Here’s another issue Walker is trying to dupe voters on:
For two straight days, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has pushed the narrative that as long as he’s governor, “people with pre-existing conditions will always be covered.”
There’s just one problem — Wisconsin is actually one of 20 states that sued the federal government earlier this year to immediately overturn the Affordable Care Act, which makes it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Walker directly authorized state Attorney General Brad Schimel to join the lawsuit.
“At a minimum, the states asked [federal] Judge Reed O’Connor to strike down in their states the parts of the law that prohibit health insurance companies from refusing to cover people with pre-existing health conditions or charging them higher rates,” the Sentinel reported last month. “A preliminary injunction or final ruling declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional would affect more than the roughly 17 million people who have gained health insurance through the law and the people with health conditions.”
Evers has done an excellent job making this campaign about education and health care which is why Walker has been scared shitless about the Blue Wave:
Asked about Walker’s efforts to localize the race in an interview last night, Evers said: “This is about the only thing I agree with Scott Walker on.” The mild-mannered former high school principal has now been the state’s chief educator for a decade. He said he wants to talk about Walker’s positions on schools, roads, health care and taxes. “I’m glad he’s running on them because he’s got an awful record on them,” said Evers, 66.
The Democrat pushed back on Walker’s rosy portrait of the economy, arguing that many people he interacts with aren’t feeling the effects of what the statistics indicate. “Tell that to the 870,000 families that can’t make ends meet,” said Evers. “Tell that to the 200,000 young people who are on free and reduced price lunches in Wisconsin. Tell that to the people who want good health care and can’t afford it. Tell that to the 2.4 million people who have preexisting conditions …”
Walker believes he’s more insulated from inevitable backlash to the incumbent president than other Republicans on the ballot this year because he’s such a known commodity. It’s hard to find anyone in Wisconsin who did not already have a firm opinion about Walker before Trump even sought the presidency. “If you look at other races, oftentimes then it becomes a ballot test versus an understanding of who the personalities are and then it’s a lot more likely to go down that historical path,” Walker said. “People knowing me is not a problem that I have here. It's getting past all the false attacks that are on the airwaves. We’ve actually seen our numbers start to improve the more I was personally on TV … when I’m just looking at people, telling them what I’m gonna do.”
Walker has also been recording straight-to-camera videos from his campaign bus, including one this week in which he promises to protect people with preexisting conditions if the state’s lawsuit to kill Obamacare succeeds. “I think people are hungry to hear from me on issues like that, and plenty of others, just directly,” he explained.
Interestingly, the governor has been publicly sounding the alarm all year that a “blue wave” is coming. Walker was trying to prevent volunteers and donors who have become accustomed to winning from becoming ambivalent, especially after the GOP suffered huge upsets in special elections. “We chose to take that head on,” he said. The governor stuck with this message even as the president insisted for months that there would actually be a “red wave” in the midterms and predicted the GOP would pick up lots of seats. For his part, Trump has finally stopped talking about “a red wave” after his political team persuaded him that this rhetoric could dampen Republican turnout.
Plus, Walker doesn’t even have the support from his own party to deliver on his fake campaign promises:
Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Tony Evers have been campaigning on increasing state funding for schools, and Walker has promised a bill to protect health coverage of pre-existing conditions — but the Senate's GOP leader for a time Tuesday cast doubts on the idea of his caucus supporting either plan.
Hours later, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) reversed himself on the issue of pre-existing conditions.
At an early afternoon forum, he first told reporters that some Republican senators oppose legislation aimed at requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions because it is a mandate of health insurance providers.
But he later said the Senate would pass the legislation with his support.
Fitzgerald, though, stuck by his reservations about restoring the state's commitment to funding two-thirds of school costs — which both Walker and Tony Evers have proposed.
"You're talking about a big chunk of change," Fitzgerald said about the increase in funding required to reach the benchmark. "If we can get back there — great. But I just get nervous when we kind of talk about those things not knowing where we are financially."