Here & Now

What's Next in the State Capitol?

Frederica Freyberg:
Now a look ahead at what promises to be a challenging transition at the state capitol. For that we welcome Wisconsin Public Radio’s Shawn Johnson. Shawn, thanks for being here.

Shawn Johnson:
Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
Long week of course. But before we get into this divided government discussion and what that might look like, you did some number crunching going back as to turnout specifically in Dane County.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah. In a way, it feels like lazy analysis to talk about Dane County turning out the Democratic vote because you could say that every election, right. But if you look at the margin that Dane County put out for Tony Evers, set aside the margin they gave Tammy Baldwin, which was even larger, but for Evers, he defeated Scott Walker in Dane County by a margin of 150,000 votes. That’s huge. If you look back at four years ago, that’s 48,000 votes more of a margin than Mary Burke had in Dane County. If you go back to Tom Barrett’s run in 2010, he had about an 81,000 vote margin. Almost doubled Tom Barrett. That just shows you the growing power of Dane County for Democrats in statewide elections. Milwaukee County had a huge margin, too. The suburban counties did not give the same margins to Walker that they usually do.

Frederica Freyberg:
So those turnouts all about enthusiasm?

Shawn Johnson:
You would presume, yeah. I mean the suburban turnout actually is maybe as indicative of that as anything. I mean Governor Walker has been able to rely on Waukesha County in particular to help him offset Dane’s numbers over the years. He would get 72% of the vote there reliably. Got about 66% last week. That’s a drop-off in his margin of about 20,000 votes. In a close election that was decided by 31,000 votes, that counted.

Frederica Freyberg:
It felt like last week, but it was just —

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, I said last week. Time is a little bit goofy.

Frederica Freyberg:
You’ve covered day to day legislators at the capitol for years. What is this divided government going to look at?

Shawn Johnson:
You remember covering Jim Doyle with the Republican legislature there. Jim Doyle, the Democratic governor, would introduce things. Sometimes knowing full well that it was not going to pass in the legislature, but he would say, you know, this is my agenda. This is what I want to see. And if they stood in the way of that, that was kind of to their peril, in a way. And the Republican legislature would send stuff to Governor’s Doyle’s desk, knowing full well Governor Doyle was going to veto it. There was a lot of that back and forth where they’d send one thing down the way knowing that it wasn’t going to become law, but that’s kind of just the way that it operated. Now, the budget’s a different story because they know they have to pass a budget. And so that kind of gives the governor a strong hand when it comes to budgets in particular.

Frederica Freyberg:
Well, and one of the big items in that is going to be transportation funding.

Shawn Johnson:
Yes. And we have a governor now, Tony Evers, who has a very different set of priorities on transportation funding than Governor Walker did. And remember, Governor Walker was at odds with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos when it came to transportation funding. Speaker Vos was open to raising revenue for roads, was open to some kind of tax increase or toll roads. He was a very outspoken proponent of that. And if you hear what Tony Evers said on the campaign trail compared to what Robin Vos has said over time, seems like maybe there’s some like-minded people there. And maybe they would reach an agreement.

Frederica Freyberg:
What about the Senate on that piece?

Shawn Johnson:
So the Senate is where there was resistance to road funding — increasing road funding in the last session. And now — and it was kind of a small group of conservative Senators who were very against it. I think you could say that that small group got a little bit larger in this last election, with the election of a Republican senator, Andre Jacque in the First Senate District. Jacque, when he would talk about transportation during the campaign, he was saying things similar to Governor Walker, that he’d only be open to some kind of a revenue increase for roads if they cut taxes somewhere else.

Frederica Freyberg:
If it was offset. Now the other big thing that Tony Evers talked about on the campaign trail was accepting the federal Medicaid money and that would have to be signed off on by the legislature through the budget process. So that also doesn’t seem likely.

Shawn Johnson:
It does not seem likely given what Republican legislators have said about this over time. Although I think you can assume that would be in Tony Evers’ budget proposal. Another healthcare thing that he talked about on the campaign with stopping Wisconsin’s participation in this federal lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act. That’s something that Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul would be able to stop. That said, the lawsuit’s going to continue because it’s a multistate suit. Just wouldn’t have Wisconsin’s participation.

Frederica Freyberg:
Right. Robin Vos is now saying in terms of this lame duck session that would introduce some legislation that one of the big things that he wants to do there is some kind of provisions for coverage of pre-existing conditions. And so all of this gets kind of mixed up between the lawsuit and the Medicaid money and pre-existing conditions. But what do you make of Robin Vos coming out and saying that they really need to codify some of these rules into law and some people are construing it as a power grab?

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah. Before Governor Walker leaves office, they want to do all these things. Before Tony Evers takes office. I guess we should all say we want to see the details, because what they’re talking about could be nibbling around the edges or it could be big. When you’re talking about a governor’s powers in Wisconsin, it’s pretty broad. There are a lot of ways they could scale that back, whether it means rule-making or who a governor puts on boards and commissions all over the state. Maybe the legislature would say, actually we would like to make those appointments ourselves and Tony Evers would not get that chance.

Frederica Freyberg:
We’ll wait and see what’s in it. Shawn Johnson, thanks a lot.

Shawn Johnson:
Thanks a lot.