Tag: Scott Walker (politician)

MADISON (WKOW) — Governor Tony Evers will lay out his priorities for the next state budget Thursday, but he’ll face several roadblocks. Republican leadership has criticized almost all of Evers’ proposals he’s released prior to his speech. The governor’s budget is due July 1st, but several lawmakers have doubts it will pass on time with the anticipation of political showdowns and pressure to reach a deal. The nonpartisan group Wisconsin Policy Forum said it’s possible the state could experience a budget stalemate, but it also wouldn’t be the first time. In 2017, former governor Scott Walker’s budget was stalled for two months over a debate on how to fund transportation. Jason Stein, Research Director for the Policy Forum, said to plan for the political environment to be “tense” the next few months. “We had two years of Democratic control and eight years of Republican control and now we’re moving into a world where the two parties have to work something out, but it’s a much more polarized environment than we’ve seen before,” said Stein. Once lawmakers review Evers’ budget, they’re likely to make changes, though the governor will have the final say. Evers can sign the bill, veto it entirely or use his powerful partial veto pen to make changes. While the Legislature could try to muster enough votes to override the governor by a two-thirds vote in the case of a veto, it’s something not successfully done in the state since 1985.

Former Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday he plans to hold a key role in President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign in Wisconsin while reiterating his interest in a potential 2022 bid for governor or U.S. Senate. “I’m going to help chair [Trump’s] and Vice President Pence’s re-election campaign here in Wisconsin,” Walker said. “I want to be a part of making sure that we keep this president, this administration intact.” Walker’s comments come just days after leaving office as one of the state’s top Republicans and position him firmly as a supporter of a figure he had staunchly opposed during the 2016 presidential primary. In November he lost a third-term re-election bid to state Superintendent Tony Evers, partly because of a public backlash against Trump. In his comments Wednesday during a Fox News interview, Walker reiterated his interest in potentially running for the seat currently held by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, “if” Johnson opts not to run again. Johnson has previously said his current six-year term would be his last. When Walker dropped out in September 2015, he urged other candidates to do the same to prevent Trump from winning the nomination. The former governor in a recent interview with The Associated Press praised the president for his judicial appointments, tax law and trade agreements, but said he has disagreed with some of Trump’s divisive social media rhetoric. He said he would not challenge Trump for the party’s nomination in 2020.

She wasn’t planning to attend the inaugural ceremony for Gov. And when Lt. Gov. “I’m not a terribly emotional person,” Holden said after the ceremony concluded. But she “finds it very moving” that the new administration “is going to try to make Wisconsin a state that will work together.” “I’m an economist,” she added. “I think good policy is not a partisan issue.” She noted that the state needs an educated workforce and that Evers, the state’s former schools superintendent, has worked in a field where “you can’t be partisan… and you have to work with everybody.” In keeping with his conciliatory tone since ousting two-term Gov. We’ve been indifferent to resentment and governing by retribution.” Walker was presumably one person Evers had in mind with this reference to the politics of resentment. That was left to Josh Kaul, who, after being sworn in as attorney general, declared that the inauguration was taking place “in atypical circumstances.” “Last month the powers of two of our state constitutional officers were diminished after the elections of those offices had been held,” Kaul said. Barnes, who is black, was sworn in after State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski and Secretary of State Doug La Follette. Godlewski, who started by noting she was a fifth-generation Wisconsinite, promised to revitalize the treasurer’s office. “It’s hard to believe we nearly lost this constitutional office but together we made our voices heard.” In April, Wisconsin voters rejected a measure to eliminate the treasurer’s office.

MADISON, WI (WSAU) -- Outgoing Governor Scott Walker will not completely leave the political realm when he hands the position over to Democrat Tony Evers next Monday. In a message on Tuesday Walker announced he will be part of several organizations including a "speakers bureau" that will provide "new and exciting opportunities." Walker said he intends to work towards "broaden our scope with an additional focus on returning power to the people in the states — from a federal government grown out-of-control," adding that is the best way to "drain the Swamp on a permanent basis." He also spoke of lowering taxes on the hard-working people of the state. Additionally, the Walkers intend to stay in Wisconsin but didn't provide details of where they would be moving once they vacate the Governors Mansion, which has been their home since they sold their house in Wauwatosa three years ago. Walker did say that he and his wife Tonette will be working to re-elect President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence in the 2020 election.

Vos, who has been speaker since 2013, is used to being at the center of Wisconsin's biggest political battles. Scott Walker leaves office, Vos is positioning himself to take over as the state's most powerful Republican and is determined to protect conservative interests in the key Midwestern swing state from Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers. It's a natural transition for Vos, a key player in Walker's 2011 battle against public unions and a partner during nearly a decade of Republican dominance in the state. Since ascending to speaker, Vos has helped build a Republican majority that reached its highest mark since 1957, with 64 members following the 2016 election. Vos maintained that Republicans won fair and square based on their record of success. He makes roughly $51,000 as speaker. I try to always look for how can we accomplish the end goal." His chief of staff runs the committee that works to get Republicans elected to the Assembly. That has increased donations to the Assembly campaign committee that his chief of staff ran and that provided financial support to Republicans running for office. "I am not going to run for governor," Vos said.

Scott Walker signed all three sweeping lame-duck bills into law in Green Bay on Friday, concluding an eleventh-hour effort by Republican legislators to roll back some of the next governor’s authority. Walker, who has faced national scrutiny and calls from Democrats and some Republicans to reject the legislative package entirely, said during the bill signing he was approving the three bills in full, without line-item vetoes. “The overwhelming executive authority that I as governor have today will remain constant with the next governor,” Walker said in front of a faulty Venn diagram trying to show how Evers and Walker would continue to have the same powers to introduce budgets and veto bills, among other powers. However, the diagram didn’t explain key changes included in the bills that limit Evers’ power over economic development, lawsuits and administrative rules. +2 Walker’s signature on the bills provides a victory to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, who championed the controversial package that will strip some powers from the governor and attorney general, and limit early voting to two weeks before an election. Vos in a statement lauded Walker’s signature on the legislation as an acknowledgment of “the importance of the legislature as a co-equal branch of government.” Evers, along with other Democrats and some Republicans, including former Gov. For example, lawmakers originally proposed to allow the Legislature to override the attorney general by appointing its own counsel in cases where state law was challenged. One of the most contentious measures in the package will take away Evers’ authority to allow the state to drop out of ongoing lawsuits and give the Republican-controlled Legislature the right to join ongoing litigation without the permission of the attorney general. Republicans have argued the measure would provide consistency in early voting statewide, because municipalities have had more freedom in choosing when to allow in-person absentee voting. The liberal group One Wisconsin Now, which has challenged previous Republican-led restrictions on early voting, is planning swift legal action to address the early voting measures in the lame-duck legislation.

In just about a month, Scott Walker’s eight years as governor will end. Political scientist Katherine Cramer explains Walker’s ascent in her 2016 book “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.” Beginning in mid-2007, Cramer attended and recorded scores of wide-ranging discussions at Wisconsin diners and truck stops. Cramer defines “rural consciousness”: love of one’s community, coupled with the belief that city-dwellers have completely different values. She summarizes: “People in small-town Wisconsin [told me] that urbanites ignore people in rural areas, take in all of their hard-earned money, and fundamentally disrespect and misunderstand the rural way of life.” Cramer’s data demonstrate that tax dollars tend to flow from big cities to smaller communities, not the reverse. In 1979, America had 19 million manufacturing jobs; today it’s about 12.7 million. What’s needed now is a strengthening of education and training in smaller communities, particularly for computer and service-related professional skills. He continued doing that for his eight years as governor. Funding for public education and our University of Wisconsin System was cut dramatically. Walker’s vote share tumbled to 48.4 percent. The phone number is for verification purposes only.

Republican legislators, in an extraordinary push before their party surrenders full control of state government, want to restrict the incoming Democratic attorney general’s and governor’s powers and the state’s timeline for early voting in a lame-duck session early next week. More than 40 proposed changes in state law on a variety of subjects were unveiled Friday at about 4:30 p.m. in five bills up for a public hearing in the Legislature’s budget-writing committee Monday. One bill would fundamentally change the role of the state attorney general, giving lawmakers broad new powers to constrain the state’s top law-enforcement official. It may bar Gov.-elect Tony Evers from taking what he said would be one of his first actions in office: ordering Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul to withdraw Wisconsin from a multi-state legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, according to Madison lawyer Lester Pines, a Democrat. The bill would allow lawmakers to appoint special counsel to effectively replace the attorney general on specific litigation if a legislative panel determines it would ensure “the interests of the state will be best represented.” Another key bill would bar early voting from starting earlier than two weeks before an election — despite a federal judge’s ruling two years ago that struck down similar restrictions as racially discriminatory. One bill would give GOP lawmakers more power over Walker’s job-creation agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., which Evers has sought to dissolve, and strip the governor of the power to appoint the agency’s CEO. “The Legislature is the most representative branch in government and we will not stop being a strong voice for our constituents,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said in a joint statement. In 2016, U.S. District Judge James Peterson struck down a host of early voting restrictions in state law, including one imposing a 10-day pre-election window in which early voting could occur. The extraordinary session is scheduled to open Monday morning. Also on the agenda is a bill that passed the Assembly last year, but stalled in the Senate, that would help people with pre-existing conditions get health coverage if the federal Obamacare law is repealed or struck down in court.

Rural Wisconsin has gotten redder. The Democratic Party’s gains have occurred almost entirely in the Milwaukee and Madison media markets. In these four areas combined, Democrats saw a net gain of nearly 130,000 votes from the 50-50 elections of 2000/2004 to the 50-50 elections of 2016/2018. It’s the equivalent of 4 percentage points or more in a major statewide race. Milwaukee County suburbs: A gain of 23,000 votes. Another way of putting it: in close statewide elections, Democrats are now winning the city of Madison by almost 40,000 votes more than they did in the early 2000s. While the biggest Democratic gains by far have come in the state’s two biggest counties (Milwaukee, Dane), the Republican gains have come in lots of small counties, especially across the northern two-thirds of the state. In 2000 and 2004, there was an average gap of 7 points between how Wisconsin’s metropolitan counties voted and how its non-metro (i.e., more rural) counties voted. The 130,000 votes that Democrats have gained in metropolitan Milwaukee and Madison have been offset by GOP gains elsewhere in the state. Their biggest percentage gains over the past two decades have come in the state’s least populous places.

Republican legislators, in an extraordinary push before their party surrenders full control of state government, want to restrict the incoming Democratic attorney general’s and governor’s powers and the state’s timeline for early voting in a lame-duck session early next week. More than 40 proposed changes in state law on a variety of subjects were unveiled Friday at about 4:30 p.m. in five bills up for a public hearing in the Legislature’s budget-writing committee Monday. One bill would fundamentally change the role of the state attorney general, giving lawmakers broad new powers to constrain the state’s top law-enforcement official. It may bar Gov.-elect Tony Evers from taking what he said would be one of his first actions in office: ordering Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul to withdraw Wisconsin from a multi-state legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, according to Madison lawyer Lester Pines, a Democrat. The bill would allow lawmakers to appoint special counsel to effectively replace the attorney general on specific litigation if a legislative panel determines it would ensure “the interests of the state will be best represented.” Another key bill would bar early voting from starting earlier than two weeks before an election — despite a federal judge’s ruling two years ago that struck down similar restrictions as racially discriminatory. One bill would give GOP lawmakers more power over Walker’s job-creation agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., which Evers has sought to dissolve, and strip the governor of the power to appoint the agency’s CEO. “The Legislature is the most representative branch in government and we will not stop being a strong voice for our constituents,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said in a joint statement. In 2016, U.S. District Judge James Peterson struck down a host of early voting restrictions in state law, including one imposing a 10-day pre-election window in which early voting could occur. The extraordinary session is scheduled to open Monday morning. Also on the agenda is a bill that passed the Assembly last year, but stalled in the Senate, that would help people with pre-existing conditions get health coverage if the federal Obamacare law is repealed or struck down in court.