Here & Now

The Urban-Suburban Split in Wisconsin

Frederica Freyberg:

Tell a politician where you live in Wisconsin and they will likely be able to predict how you vote or at least how the majority of your neighbors vote. Wisconsin may be a purple state, but when it comes to geography, we are divided into Republican and Democratic areas on the map. Now where is that more apparent than in the Wisconsin assembly. Here and Now's Zac Schultz has the story.

Zac Schultz:

Driving down Interstate 94, there are no signs that say when you’re leaving Republican territory and entering a Democratic stronghold, unless you can translate geography into politics. Then it becomes quite obvious. The divide in the state assembly is not just between Democrats and Republicans. It is between Wisconsin’s largest cities and the suburban and rural areas around them. Wisconsin’s ten largest cities contain 1.45 million people, 25% of the state’s population. Nine of those ten cities have elected Democrats to the assembly. Waukesha is the only exception. That adds up to 22 Democrats and three Republicans representing the big cities. The next ten largest cities have 400,000 people, just 7% of the population. Republicans represent seven of those ten cities, but that’s only seven Republicans and three Democrats in the legislature. That urban/suburban split may determine how you view a piece of legislation.

Robin Vos:

You want to focus on solutions that deal with finding long-term answers, hopefully that empower the individual and don’t rely so much on government.

Zac Schultz:

Assembly speaker Robin Vos is from rural Racine County.

Robin Vos:

I think liberals in many ways want government to be the change agent that has an impact on individuals. So it’s that similar divide with where people live and how they vote, but it also factors into how we make legislation.

Peter Barca:

You have people that really don’t understand urban versus suburban issues.

Zac Schultz:

Democrat Peter Barca represents Kenosha, the fourth largest city.

Peter Barca:

Republicans have passed bill after bill after bill that the leaders of the Milwaukee community have said are going to be devastating for that community, and it’s fallen on deaf ears.

Tom Barrett:

We’re talking about a wide range of issues, ranging from voting access to financing of schools, choice schools in particular, to the residency requirements, to local streets and roads.

Zac Schultz:

Milwaukee mayor, Tom Barrett, says conservatives in the suburbs are hostile toward the city.

Tom Barrett:

I think that there are some legislators who, quite honestly, think that they’re morally superior to the people who live in the city.

Brian Schimming:

So there’s pretty high sensitivity, I would say, by suburban legislators that are Republicans to issues that are happening in the cities.

Zac Schultz:

Brian Schimming is with the Republican party of Wisconsin. He says the GOP isn’t anti-Milwaukee. They just have a different approach to tackling big issues like crime, education and unemployment.

Brian Schimming:

The Republicans want to get at those issues as much as Democrats do. We don’t always necessarily believe it’s money that solves them.

Zac Schultz:

The urban/suburban split is part of a national trend. According to the blogger Dave Troy, population density is the key factor. Using the 2012 presidential election, he found that counties with the most density voted for President Obama and the counties with the least density voted for Mitt Romney. He found the cross-over point was 800 people per square mile. Above 800 there was a 66% chance you voted for Obama. Below 800, there was a 66% chance you voted for Romney. This 2010 census map shows the densest areas in Wisconsin in dark blue. When we add the 20 largest cities and their assembly districts it becomes obvious the same density metric applies to Wisconsin. So how did this urban/suburban split occur? Kathy Cramer is a UW political science professor.

Kathy Cramer:

People are selecting in the certain types of places not on the basis of politics, but on the basis of things that currently correlate with political positions.

Robin Vos:

Conservatives want to live in a broader, more open space. Liberals want to live in a space that’s more confined that's considered walkable.

Zac Schultz:

Even if it’s self-selection, the politicians are working it to their advantage.

Kathy Cramer:

Our political leaders are pretty savvy about tapping into sentiments that are going to serve their own political party.

Curt Witynski:

The current Republican majority in both the senate and assembly and in the governor’s office has intensified some of the split between urban and rural.

Zac Schultz:

Curt Witynski is a lobbyist for the League of Municipalities which represents the nearly 600 cities and villages in Wisconsin. He says in the past most legislators had held office at the local level before coming to Madison. But the recent influx of Tea Party Republicans has required more education on what cities do and need.

Curt Witynski:

It’s more difficult to, obviously, discuss what a representative from that district, typical urban issues, like mass transit.

Zac Schultz:

Funding mass transit is a great example of the divide between big cities Democrats represent and the smaller cities and rural areas represented by Republicans.

Greg Suebert:

I do fear that transit has become a partisan issue.

Zac Schultz:

Greg Suebert is the transit director for Metro Ride located in Wausau, the 17^th largest city, represented by a Democrat. We spoke to him when Governor Scott Walker’s budget pulled transit funding out of the transportation budget making it more vulnerable to cuts in the future.

Greg Suebert:

I wish we would look as the funding of public transit as part of the overall infrastructure in Wisconsin.

Robin Vos:

I view transit, in many ways, as another social program.

Zac Schultz:

Speaker Vos says transit helps get people to jobs, but it’s a small group of people.

Robin Vos:

They’re a very defined group who get a very big subsidy to operate a transit system. So I view it very much like Medicaid.

Tim Hanna:

There’s a few people who control the agenda in the assembly that don’t like the idea.

Zac Schultz:

Tim Hanna is the mayor of Appleton, the sixth largest city, represented by a Democrat.

Tim Hanna:

Valley Transit truly is a regional public transportation system.

Zac Schultz:

He says the battle over transit funding is part of a larger philosophical battle over the role of cities in general.

Tim Hanna:

If we really want to grow this state’s economy, we have to empower the cities. They’re the engines, like it or not.

Zac Schultz:

Hanna says Republican levy limits encourage growth in farm fields near the suburbs instead of redevelopment in the city.

Tim Hanna:

But redevelopment often starts with, you got to tear something down before you can build something up. So I got to climb out of a hole in terms of building new value before I get any credit under the levy laws.

Zac Schultz:

Vos says Republicans did the cities a favor by cutting their labor costs.

Robin Vos:

That’s why we gave them the tools, like under Act 10, to be able to help save money to be able to spend on other services.

Zac Schultz:

Hanna says it’s not the way to grow jobs.

Tim Hanna:

Don’t start adopting policies based on partisan politics that are counter to what you say you want to accomplish.

Zac Schultz:

Some Republicans have a sliver of a big city in their district, but it’s not where they’re from or where their voters are from. Only ten of the 60 Republicans in the assembly represent the 20 largest cities, and none of the eight Republican leaders are from those cities. Compare that to the Democrats, where 25 of 39, or 64%, represent those cities, and four of the six leaders come from the big cities.

Brian Schimming:

I don’t see it as an us versus them. I really don’t.

Zac Schultz:

Brian Schimming says Republicans understand the issues in the cities. In fact, many of them used to live there.

Brian Schimming:

All the legislators I talk to around Milwaukee, the ones that are Republicans, are folks who have worked there, grew up there.

Tom Barrett:

Or they’ve gone to Summerfest there, or they've gone to a Brewers game there. And oh, we love Milwaukee. We just vote against it, that’s all. I’m not buying it, I’m not buying it.

Zac Schultz:

Democrats bristle at the idea Republicans living in the suburbs know how to fix the cities.

Tom Barrett:

They think that they know because they’ve been here, they visited here or they may have worked here once. They don’t live here now, they don't work here now. They don’t see the challenges that we have.

Robin Vos:

When people say, I don’t want you writing legislation that is going to deal with my community. Well then perhaps you should say we don’t want any of the money my constituents pay as well, because they pay a disproportionate share to urban areas and get very little back themselves.

Kathy Cramer:

The rural, urban and suburban differences are significant enough that our lives really are different.

Zac Schultz:

Professor Cramer says all groups are resentful of someone else writing laws for them.

Kathy Cramer:

I can write legislation that will address those concerns for you, because clearly you can’t do so yourself. I think in many respects that is a sentiment that’s fueling polarization, the sense that, I don’t need to listen to you because I know the right answer already.