What’s at stake in the Wisconsin governor’s race?

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed much of the GOP’s legislative agenda. If he loses to Tim Michels in November, will Wisconsin be the next Florida?

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In front of thousands of supporters at a rally in Green Bay, Tim Michels laid out what’s at stake in the 2022 election. The Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor said he jumped into the race because the country is on “the slippery slope towards socialism.”

“It’s being cloaked behind CRT and BLM and defund the police,” Michels said at the Sept. 18 event, referring to critical race theory and the Black Lives Matter movement. “But we know that people like George Soros and the far-left liberals, they want to tear down the America that you and I know and love. We are not going to let that happen. We are going to beat Tony Evers.”

The 60-year-old construction magnate disappeared from Wisconsin politics after losing his bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, the Democratic incumbent, in 2004. Michels was a late entry into the 2022 GOP primary race, not declaring until April, months after his rivals. But armed with a coveted endorsement from former President Donald Trump and able to spend millions of his own personal fortune blanketing the airwaves with ads, Michels quickly won over the state’s Republican base. He beat former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, once assumed to be the frontrunner, by 5 points.

What’s Michels’ pitch to the broader electorate? He identified three priorities for the Green Bay crowd: Signing “election integrity” bills spawned by unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen; creating competition in K-12 public education through “universal school choice”; and supporting law enforcement by proudly “backing the blue.” With zero irony, Michels likened himself to Trump right after promising to “uphold the rule of law.”

“I didn’t have to run for governor. Donald Trump didn’t have to run for president. But he wanted to drain the swamp. We found out it’s a really big swamp,” Michels said. “Fortunately, we have a Republican Legislature in Madison and all those things I talked about, we can and will get those done…. I want to get them done in the first 20 days. One, because that’s the kind of leader I am, I get things done quickly. And two, if they want to protest like they did for Act 10, they can do it in Madison in late January when it’s 8 degrees outside.”

Michels, through his campaign, declined to be interviewed for this article. His campaign spokesperson did provide a written statement from the candidate, casting Evers as a weak leader with a radical liberal agenda.

“Tony Evers has failed our state. Inflation is crushing families, brutal murderers are being released into our communities, and our education system is failing parents and kids. Evers had his chance and he set Wisconsin on the wrong track — shutting down successful business and letting Wisconsin cities burn. His time is up,” Michels writes. “I’m a leader who knows how to identify and solve problems. From the Army to the private sector I’ve helped lead large, diverse groups of people to do big things. I’m running to deliver a stronger economy, safer communities, and better schools — for all of Wisconsin.”

The political reality in Wisconsin’s future isn’t between red and blue. Republicans are all but certain to maintain control of the state Assembly and Senate. The choice for voters in November is either to return full control of state government to the GOP under Michels — paving the way for Republicans to enact more tax cuts, upend the state’s education system, and change how elections are administered in Wisconsin — or to elect a Democrat who will have to share power with a GOP-controlled Legislature. Michels, if victorious, will have the opportunity to advance a bold conservative agenda with few hurdles. Evers, if reelected, will have to continue to rely on his strongest political tool: the veto pen.

Wisconsin Republicans are used to being in control. The Legislature has had solid GOP majorities for the past 12 years, including eight years with a Republican executive at the helm. In his two terms starting in 2011, former Gov. Scott Walker crippled the ability of public sector workers to collectively bargain, made Wisconsin a “right to work” state, expanded the school voucher program, and ushered in “Voter ID” at the polls. Walker and his allies in the Legislature cut taxes 50 times. That reduced revenue for the state by $1.7 billion in tax year 2017 alone. According to the Wisconsin Budget Project, “the lion’s share went to Wisconsin residents with the highest incomes.” Walker’s tax reforms were accomplished by cutting aid to local governments, schools, and the UW System. In 2018, voters ousted Walker by a very slim margin. Evers didn’t crack 50 percent of total ballots cast and was elected governor by just 30,000 votes.

With Republicans in charge of the Wisconsin Legislature, Evers’ first term can be defined by what he’s stopped as much as what he’s championed. He’s vetoed more bills the last two years than any Wisconsin governor in the last century. This includes more than a dozen “election integrity” bills, many of which would make it more difficult to cast a ballot in Wisconsin. Before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization made abortions illegal in Wisconsin, Evers vetoed 11 bills designed to limit access to reproductive healthcare. He vetoed an education bill that would have lifted income caps on vouchers for private schools. The governor also struck down four GOP-backed bills making it easier to carry a concealed weapon. In 2019, Evers used his partial veto authority over the state budget to direct an additional $65 million to K-12 education.

Evers, in a phone interview with Isthmus, says he doesn’t relish his role as vetoer-in-chief.

“Yeah, it’s frustrating being the goalie. Although, I think a lot of voters appreciate it because it’s a very important role,” Evers tells Isthmus. “Lord knows what Wisconsin would look like if I didn’t have that veto pen. It has helped to contain some situations that I frankly don’t believe are in the best interests of the people in Wisconsin and aren’t consistent with Wisconsin values.”

How has Evers advanced his own legislative priorities? Republicans won’t even debate his proposals, let alone allow a vote. The governor has called eight special sessions in his first term. One asked lawmakers to modernize the state’s outdated unemployment insurance system. Another would have expanded access to BadgerCare and saved the state $600 million by accepting federal funds for affordable healthcare. Evers has tried to increase funding to education, pass law enforcement reforms, and invest in rural communities through his power to convene the Legislature. All of these special sessions lasted just seconds, gaveled in and out by the Republican leadership without comment. In September, Evers called for a special session on Oct. 4 to let voters decide whether to repeal the state’s 1849 abortion ban via a constitutional amendment. Again, Republicans ended the session without taking action.

The vast majority of bills from Democrats in the Legislature have been given similar treatment by GOP lawmakers. Only 2 percent of Democratic bills in the Assembly have been given a hearing in the last two years.

Besides what he’s been able to block, Evers cites “fixing the damn roads” as an accomplishment and fulfillment of one of his 2018 campaign promises. The governor also boasts he’s directed more than $1 billion to small businesses and family farms. This includes the governor’s “Main Street Bounceback Program,” aimed at helping downtowns across the state. The program, funded with federal dollars, has provided grants of up to $10,000 to thousands of small businesses in all 72 counties that have opened or expanded in vacant storefronts.

It was millions less than what he proposed in his executive budgets, but Evers was also able to achieve two-thirds state funding of public schools — which was the norm in the 1990s and early 2000s. Republicans essentially held school funding flat in the last state budget. But because of billions in federal pandemic aid for schools, Evers is able to say he achieved the two-thirds funding level for the first time in 18 years. But that federal money won’t be available in the future.

Evers is quick to add that he has signed more bills than he’s vetoed. And the governor has received bipartisan support on some issues, like expanding broadband access to more than 350,000 households. But he says keeping the Legislature in check should be an important consideration for voters heading to the polls.

“We are going to have a Republican Legislature. There’s 120 bills that I vetoed and I believe every single one of them will be brought back and passed if I’m not there to play goalie,” says Evers. “Michels’ belief system is in line with the Legislature so there won’t be vetoes from him. I’m that balance point.”

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Burlington) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) did not respond to multiple requests for comment. However, Rep. Tyler August (R-Lake Geneva), the GOP speaker pro tempore, agreed to a phone interview with Isthmus. He blames Evers for the lack of cooperation between the governor’s office and the Legislature.

“I’m looking forward to getting back to a situation where we actually have a working relationship with the governor. That’s just something we haven’t had with Tony Evers and I think the state is much worse off for it,” says August. “He blames us because we won’t let him put forward his extreme liberal agenda. He clearly doesn’t care about getting things done. We need a governor that’s interested in actually moving things forward instead of just playing politics all the time.”

According to his campaign website, Michels would work to reduce corporate and individual income taxes “to attract and retain more talent in Wisconsin.” He supports increasing investments in vocational technical training and wants to “increase opportunities” for K-12 students to enroll in youth apprenticeships and hands-on internships. Michels also wants to create new mandatory minimum penalties for felons who possess guns. The GOP candidate has also pledged to replace the Green Bay Correctional Institution with a more modern and larger facility.

When asked about his agenda, Evers says he wants to be realistic about what he can pass with GOP lawmakers still in control of the state Assembly and Senate.

“I’d love to be able to pass some bills that get us out of this conundrum with abortion rights. But, obviously, that’s not going to happen,” says Evers, “[Voters] want good infrastructure, they want good roads, they want a good education system, whether you’re Republican, Democrat, independent…so that’s what I have focused on in the past and will continue to focus on.”

Evers says if re-elected, he does believe he can convince enough Republicans to support legalizing marijuana — which Michels told Green Bay’s WTAQ-AM (1360) he opposes.

“Now, that might not be the most important bill around or issue. But there’s lots of people in the state of Wisconsin who believe that having the opportunity to use marijuana in a medicinal way is important to them,” says Evers, who supports a bill for recreational use, too. “And there’s really no reason why we can’t get that done.”

Of all the races for governor this year, Wisconsin’s is shaping up to be one of the most expensive in the country. According to AdImpact, as of late September, Evers and his Democratic allies had spent nearly $38 million dollars and Michels and his allies had spent $16 million. The Wisconsin gubernatorial race also appears to be in a dead heat. September polls from Emerson, Siena College, Civiqs and the Marquette Law School show Evers leading by a point or two.

On the issues, Evers is more in line with voters than Michels — at least according to polling. Sixty-five percent of registered voters surveyed by Marquette Law School in September are very or somewhat confident in the results of the 2020 presidential election. Michels doesn’t outright say the 2020 election was stolen, but he’s not countering the messaging out of Mar-a-Lago, either.

“I get really fired up about this. We are not some third world country. We are not some banana republic. This is the United States of America,” Michels said at the Green Bay rally. “Votes are sacred. Your ballot is sacred. And we will have election integrity here in Wisconsin.”

Largely through lawsuits, Republicans have already made it harder to vote in Wisconsin and spent more than 1 million taxpayer dollars on an investigation that failed to produce any evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020. The findings of the 2022 edition of the ‘Cost’ of Voting Index, a nonpartisan academic study highlighted by The New York Times, found only Arkansas, Mississippi and New Hampshire have stricter access to the polls than Wisconsin.

Michels claims public schools “aren’t working” and he’s “going to stop the CRT [critical race theory] and get back to the ABCs.” Yet, 61 percent of voters say they are satisfied with the public schools in their community and 51 percent support increasing spending on K-12 education over reducing property taxes. Evers has called for investing $2 billion of the state’s record $5 billion projected surplus into public schools. Michels has said he wants to put the surplus “back in your pocket.”

“The call from Tony Evers and DPI is always: not enough, we need more, always more. More, more, more,” states Michels on his campaign website. “It’s a mindset that must be challenged.”

Michels believes competition is the answer and supports expanding “school choice” to the entire state, which is popular with voters. An April 2022 poll from the Marquette Law School found 58 percent of voters support “allowing all students statewide to use publicly funded vouchers to attend private or religious schools if they wish to do so.” Evers opposed expansion of the state’s school choice program when he was state superintendent of public instruction and has vetoed school choice bills as governor.

Both on the stump and in his ads, Michels is accusing Evers of “coddling criminals.” An ad from the Republican Governors Association accuses Evers of releasing “some of the worst killers in Wisconsin history.” Voters are worried about crime. In the Marquette Law School poll released in September, 88 percent responded they were very or somewhat concerned about crime. But, paradoxically, 76 percent also feel safe in their daily activities. Michels frequently talks about firing “catch-and-release district attorneys,” singling out Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm. He also supports a bill vetoed by Evers that would reduce aid to local governments that “defund the police.”

There has been more than one ad accusing Evers of supporting the “defund the police” movement. But are cities actually cutting police budgets? A 2021 report from the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum found that police department funding now takes up a greater share of local budgets than it has historically and is usually a municipality’s largest expense. But before Evers was in charge, according to the report, “all but 10 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties had at least one municipality that decreased its police budget in 2019.”

“Wisconsin municipalities have been operating under strict property tax limits for more than a decade and intergovernmental revenue — primarily aid from the state — has also declined as a share of overall municipal revenue over that period,” states the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s “Some Cuts to Police Predate Calls for Defunding” report. “Even in good economic times, we find that hundreds of town, village, and city governments throughout Wisconsin decreased their police and fire department spending in the year preceding the George Floyd incident and police reform protests. That suggests these actions may be less about a deliberate attempt to ‘defund police’ and more about confronting challenging fiscal realities.”

In addition to ignoring Evers’s cry to increase shared revenue aid to local governments, the GOP-controlled Legislature has stymied the governor’s efforts to reduce gun violence. The first special session called by Evers was in 2019 and it urged lawmakers to pass universal background check legislation and a “red flag” bill that gives judges power to take away guns from people deemed a threat to themselves or others. Both measures enjoy substantial popular support — 80 percent by some polls. Republicans shut down the special session without taking any action. In June, Michels dodged questions about whether he supports these gun control measures.

Michels isn’t talking about abortion, either. But that has been a frequent line of attack from Evers and his Democratic allies. Only 30 percent of Wisconsin voters support the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade which arguably put the state’s abortion ban, passed in 1849, back into effect. For decades, Michels supported a total ban with no exceptions and said in August that his position “mirrors” the state’s 173-year-old abortion law. A month later, Michels said he changed his mind on exceptions for rape, incest, and the health of the mother. He told conservative talk show host Dan O’Donnell that, if elected, he’d sign a Republican bill banning abortions with those exceptions.

“I am pro-life and make no apologies for that,” Michels said on iHeart’s The Dan O’Donnell Show on Sept. 23. “But I also understand that this is a representative democracy.”

Unless, that is, he’s talking about the 2020 presidential election. Michels “won’t rule out” decertifying Wisconsin’s results from that election — which is legislatively impossible and unconstitutional. Just ask Republican Assembly Speaker Vos.

GOP lawmakers have not only refused to consider most proposals from Evers, the Wisconsin Senate has been deliberately slow in confirming dozens of Evers’ cabinet secretaries and appointees to state boards. Evers’ secretaries have been able to carry out their duties as secretaries-designees without official confirmation, but that lets the Senate effectively fire cabinet members whenever they see fit. That’s what happened to Brad Pfaff in 2019 when he was the secretary-designee of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP).

The Senate’s refusal to confirm Evers’ picks for important state boards has actively diminished his ability to influence policy. Evers’ six appointees to the UW Board of Regents have been able to serve without receiving confirmation from the Senate. But that hasn’t been the case for the Natural Resources Board or the Technical College System Board. Even though their terms have expired, three Walker appointees have refused to step down from the Technical College System Board and one Walker appointee has refused to leave the Natural Resources Board. This loophole was ruled legal by conservative justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Despite these facts, August still holds Evers responsible for the hostile partisanship frequently on display at the Capitol.

“When we had a united Republican government for eight years, we didn’t have anywhere near the division within the state. That’s been created under Tony Evers. People were appreciative of the fiscal responsibility that we were putting in place. We really put people in charge of their own pocketbooks,” says August. “If voters want more of that, then Michels is the choice for them. If they want someone who’s just going to continue to fight with the Legislature every step of the way and stand in the way of things that are good for the people of the state, Tony Evers is their guy.”

Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) uses stronger language than Evers when talking about the opposition. She refers to Wisconsin Republicans as “MAGA fascists.”

“Full-force fascism will be in place without Gov. Evers’ veto. The governor and the Democrats in the state Assembly and the state Senate are the last three lines of defense,” says Hong, who is helping Democratic assembly candidates around the state in hopes of preventing the GOP from winning veto-proof majorities. “Republicans are no longer the party of small government or fiscal responsibility. If we don’t elect Tony Evers the freedom to love and marry who you want is at stake. Freedom to have autonomy over your own body is at stake. Democracy itself is at stake.”

Hong is further to the left on the issues than Evers, represents Madison’s isthmus, and is three decades younger than the governor. She says Michels’ attempt to paint Evers as a political extremist “assumes voters are stupid.”

“Evers is a former teacher. He’s a grandfather who loves pickleball. He’s no radical, but he does want everyone to be able to live their life the way they want to and he loves this state,” says Hong. “What’s radical is Michels parachuting in from one of his East Coast mansions and spewing a bunch of MAGA fascist talking points.”