I’ve written several times about the major fight in Wisconsin to control excessive compensation for government bureaucrats. Governor Walker basically won the first battle in that important and necessary campaign, but Yogi Berra sagely explained that “the opera ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.”
In this case, the proverbial fat lady is yesterday’s election for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. Leftists control three of the seven seats on the Court and were hoping to use the fight over bureaucrat compensation as a trigger to pick up a critical fourth vote. Here’s how today’s Milwaukee Journal describes what was at stake.
Interest groups on both sides had portrayed the election as a referendum on Gov. Scott Walker’s agenda and particularly on the collective bargaining law. Conservatives backed Prosser, and liberals supported Kloppenburg, even though the candidates themselves insisted they were politically neutral.
The election is critical, not just in terms of whether the Wisconsin reforms could be blocked by an ideologically motivated state Supreme Court, but also because the election has been closely watched by political activists in other states.
Simply stated, the winning side will gain lots of momentum. Unions poured lots of money and muscle into the race. They want to send a signal to lawmakers around the nation that any effort to control compensation costs will result in a political backlash.
At this stage, you’re probably saying, “enough blather, Dan, tell us who won!” Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question. Here’s the screen capture of the latest results from the Milwaukee newspaper. As of this moment, the union-backed candidate is trailing by a very tiny margin.
We’ll find out later today (hopefully!) who won the race, but I feel much better than I did last night. When I went to sleep, Kloppenburg had a lead of 18,000 votes and it appeared things were trending in her direction.
P.S. This election comes very close to debunking my cranky post from last year saying that voting was theoretically a waste of time since no single vote would ever decide an election.
Let’s vote on whether unions represent the working class. Wisconsin has a referendum. Let the people decide and not one man who never ran on this issue in the first place. Are you guys afraid of something?
The unions vs the taxpayers. Quite an important battle in the most important philosophical war of our time.
Unions learned from FDR that stacking the court is the best way to undermine the republican form of governance.
Interesting stuff indeed.
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