Citizen-Dave-04-13-2020
Republican leaders and conservative justices deserve about 95 percent of the blame for Wisconsin’s dangerous and embarrassing spring election mess. I took them to task in my last post.
But Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ performance during the whole process can be most charitably described as incoherent. If there was any kind of policy or political strategy to his moves over the last month or so, it’s not apparent to me or to many local officials or even some Democratic leaders.
Let’s review.
On March 12, Evers declared an official public health emergency and encouraged people to vote by absentee ballot, but he made no moves to change the date of the election. Over the following two weeks, projections for the spread of the coronavirus became more dire. So, on March 24, Evers issued a “safer at home” order that shut down all nonessential businesses.
In the two-week period between those two orders, state after state began delaying its spring elections. As of this writing the total is over a dozen and counting. On March 13, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, moved to delay that state’s March 24 primary until May. He subsequently delayed it again until June. He acted about a day after Louisiana’s Republican secretary of state moved that state’s April 4 primary to June. Then on March 16, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio acted to move his state’s primary, scheduled for the next day, to June.
You might have thought those actions by Republicans in other states would have given Evers an opening to call on the Republican Legislature here to do the same, or to take actions on his own as DeWine did in Ohio. But while he used his executive authority to shut down all nonessential services, Evers made no move to delay the election.
A few days after his safer at home order, the governor floated the idea of sending a mail-in ballot to every voter in the state while not delaying the election or eliminating in-person voting. The logistics of sending a ballot to every voter only 10 days before the election, made his proposal seem fanciful and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) jumped all over it. It was a good idea, but Evers was a day late and a dollar short. The idea went nowhere.
Also around this time the administration muddled around and lost valuable time in purchasing ventilators and protective gear for health care workers. Evers insisted he needed legislative authority for that, but even Vos said that he could act on his own, which he eventually did.
Most strong executives will act and ask for forgiveness later (or not). But Evers seems predisposed to assume that he doesn’t have powers he might well have. Perhaps the greatest blunder of all was when Evers insisted that he didn’t have the authority to delay the election on his own. “It’s not going to happen," said his spokesperson just days before it did happen. "He doesn’t want to do it and he also doesn’t have the authority to do it.”
That was at the very least an arguable point and some attorneys I’ve talked with tell me they believe he clearly does have that authority, despite what the state Supreme Court might say later. In any event, it made no sense at all to concede the argument.
Finally, on the weekend before the election, Evers called the Legislature into a special session, asking them to act. Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) brushed the governor aside with a wave of the hand. They had the session gaveled in and out in minutes.
Then on the day before the election, Evers reversed himself and acted on his own to delay the voting. The response and the result were predictable. Republicans rushed to the conservative- dominated state Supreme Court and got Evers’ order reversed in a matter of hours.
Through it all, the governor’s office looked to be out of their depth. The governor appeared to be reacting (slowly) to events and not leading the charge.
Look, you can make a good argument that no matter what Evers did, the Republicans in the Legislature — and their allies on the state Supreme Court — were going to block him. But his attempts to beat them were weak and uncoordinated. Why, when Republicans in other states delayed their elections, didn’t Evers take the opportunity to try to embarrass the Wisconsin GOP into doing the same? Why did he wait until the 11th hour to break with Republican legislative leaders and call for a delay? Why did he make it a point of saying that he didn’t have the power to delay the election on his own and then try to do just that, having handed the Republicans an easy legal and political argument?
Evers’ performance during the pandemic has been less than stellar in other ways. His overall presence has been minimal. Other governors have been a constant presence and I don’t just mean governors of big states like New York or California.
Take new Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky. To quote CNN, “Beshear's daily briefings, alongside Kentucky Public Health Commissioner Steven Stack and American Sign Language interpreter Virginia Moore, are sober and straightforward — lacking the gusto of New York's Andrew Cuomo, but similarly accomplishing the dual tasks of providing instructions to his state's residents and outlining its needs and challenges for the federal government.”
Beyond the current crisis Evers has been outmaneuvered by Vos and Fitzgerald at every turn. The tone was set in June when the Republicans passed a budget that Evers should have vetoed in its entirety. Instead, he worked around the edges with a few partial vetoes and signed it into law. The thanks he got from Republicans was an attempt to curtail his veto power.
In the fall, Evers called a special session on gun control. Just like the special session on the April 7 election, the Republicans gavelled this one in and out of order in minutes, dismissing it all with a wave of the hand and paying no political consequences.
And as for the idea that he’s up against a Legislature controlled by the other party, well, so was Tommy Thompson for nearly all of his 14 years as governor. Yet, Thompson ran circles around the Democrats and there was no question about who was in charge.
There’s no reason to expect that things will get better. Tony Evers is a fundamentally good and decent man, but it’s hard to win when you can’t get inside the heads of your opponents. The governor is going up against two ruthless, amoral political street fighters. Vos and Fitzgerald simply do not care about the health and wellbeing of any Wisconsinite who does not look and think as they do. They do not care about the long-term good of the state as a whole. They care only about their own power and feathering the nests of people just like them. They are devoid of any sense of fair play or respect for the institutions they should be stewarding.
It’s to Evers’ credit, as a person, that he just might be constitutionally unable to understand his opponents. To be their opposite is the definition of a good human being. But what’s needed right now is a smart, tough, energetic political strategist who can play their game. Someone who can inspire a healthy bit of fear in his opponents. We need a guy who knows how to throw a punch harder than the one he just took. And that will never be Tony Evers.
