Congratulations Wisconsin! Thank God FREEDOM is still popular. The democratic process at it's BEST! Let Freedom Ring! Gov. Walker wins with a 7pt margin.
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The Wall Street Journal
written by Douglas Belkin, Colleen McCain Nelson and Caroline Porter
Tuesday June 5, 2012
MADISON, Wis.—Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won a recall election Tuesday, dealing a blow to organized labor, unsettling President Barack Obama's re-election strategy and signaling to Republican lawmakers across the nation that challenging government unions could pay political and fiscal dividends.
Mr. Walker had 54% of the vote to 45% for his opponent, Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, with 89% of the state's precincts reporting. Turnout was heavy across the state.
The vote capped a contentious 15-month battle that polarized Wisconsin, long a centrist state, with union members and Democrats protesting angrily against Mr. Walker's signing in March 2011 of a law removing most collective-bargaining rights from public employees.
"Tonight we tell Wisconsin, we tell our country, and we tell people all across the world that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make the tough decisions," Mr. Walker said in a victory speech late Tuesday. "But now it is time to move on and move forward in Wisconsin."
The race drew more than $63 million in spending by the campaigns and their allies—much of that from outside Wisconsin and most of it supporting Mr. Walker—and saw nationally prominent politicians travel to the state to rally support in what was widely considered the country's second-most-important election this year after November's presidential contest.
The day's arrival was met with relief and trepidation. Residents here were deeply invested in the outcome of the vote but also exhausted by the intense polarization the state has experienced. "The election has been heart-rending," said David Gawenda, 63 years old, the Madison city treasurer. "Walker has torn the state apart."
But Nicholas Jablonski, a 21-year-old college student studying political science who recently moved to Wisconsin from Georgia, said he backs Mr. Walker "because he seems to be one of very few politicians that have fiscal discipline and does what he says."
Voter turnout was exceptionally high around the state, especially in the state capital of Madison, election officials said. Madison officials were expecting the total number of votes cast to be near or even exceed the number of registered voters ahead of the election day. Wisconsin residents are able to register to vote on Election Day by showing proof of current address like a lease, utility bill or driver's license, Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said. The ballots of voters who register this way are counted the same as those who registered earlier.
Mr. Walker insisted that limits on public-employee bargaining rights, as well as requirements in the law that most government workers pay for more of their pension and health-care benefits, were needed to help close a $3.6 billion gap in the state's budget. Unions protested that they were being scapegoated for fiscal problems they didn't create.
Both sides cast the contest in national terms. Mr. Walker said on the eve of the election that his victory would "send a powerful message…that voters are serious when they say they want elected officials to take on the tough issues."
Former President Bill Clinton said a Walker victory would fuel further moves against organized labor: "All these people who poured all that money into this contest…will say 'See, we got 'em now. We're going to break every union in America,' " he said while campaigning for Mr. Barrett last week.
The 44-year-old Mr. Walker was only the third governor in U.S. history to face voters in a recall election, and the first to prevail.
Tuesday's results are likely to reverberate in other state capitals as politicians struggle to address shrinking revenue and public-pension shortfalls without raising taxes on financially insecure citizens.
State governments owe more than $1 trillion to public pension and health-care programs, according to the Pew Research Center. Republican lawmakers from California to Maine have tried—with varying success—to close that gap by pressuring unions to take cuts to paychecks and benefits.
Membership in public-sector unions has held strong in the U.S. for decades, even as private-sector unions have been lessened. But some public-sector unions in Wisconsin have seen one-third or more of their members quit in the past year since Mr. Walker curbed the organizations' powers.
Labor fights are raging in other states. In Ohio, Republican Gov. John Kasich signed a law removing collective-bargaining rights for public employees until a union-driven referendum repealed it last November.
In Rhode Island, Gov. Lincoln Chafee, an independent, proposed bills that would allow a few financially troubled cities to reduce disability pensions for police and firefighters.
In Michigan, tea-party Republicans who pushed—so far, unsuccessfully—for right-to-work legislation, said a Walker victory could reinvigorate their cause. "This is a game changer," said Mike Shirkey, a Michigan state representative who has pushed that legislation, which would ban contracts requiring private-sector workers to be union members or pay union dues. "This is going to give us the momentum we need to get this done."
The Obama campaign has acknowledged that Wisconsin—which voted for the president in 2008 by 14 percentage points—is a potential tossup state this November. Both parties now have campaign offices open statewide, as well as eager volunteers and up-to-date call lists. With five months remaining until the general election, Wisconsin political parties have a significant head-start on assembling their campaign machinery.
Democrats cautioned against reading too much into Tuesday's results, noting that the recall centered on some Wisconsin-specific issues that may not translate to the presidential election. A Marquette University Law School poll last week showed Mr. Walker leading his opponent but also Mr. Obama leading GOP candidate Mitt Romney in November's election, suggesting that some voters support both the president and the governor.
Still, in an Obama campaign video released this week, campaign manager Jim Messina characterized Wisconsin as up-for-grabs. "We're not going to take anything for granted," said an Obama campaign official on Tuesday.
Republicans think a Walker victory could help their chances in November, by weakening a major bastion of Democratic support. Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview Tuesday that the president might struggle in November to motivate union members in Wisconsin who are disappointed that Mr. Obama didn't do more during the recall campaign.
"This was a national election," said Mr. Priebus, who previously served as chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. "This election gives us a very clear pathway of how things will be shaping up for November."
Mr. Walker, unbound by campaign-finance rules that didn't click into effect until a recall date was set, began a nationwide fundraising tour that netted him more than $30 million—three times what he raised in his 2010 bid for office, when he defeated Mr. Barrett by six percentage points.
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