On Election Day this April, Wisconsin Assembly Republican Speaker Robin Vos told reporters they were “incredibly safe to go out.” Sporting a pin that read “election observer,” he spoke with conviction, yet his surgical mask, rubber gloves, and protective smock rendered his assurances a bit ironic. The disconnect between Vos’ calm demeanor and his dystopian outfit mirrors the two-faced politics of his home state, where a rich history of bipartisanship has given way to partisan sniping.
This spring, the state’s troubling new trend was in full view. As confirmed coronavirus cases began to rise, Democratic Governor Tony Evers moved to follow other states’ lead by delaying Wisconsin’s presidential primary and a concurrent state Supreme Court election. However, the Republican-dominated state legislature refused to move the election and appealed to the state Supreme Court, who overturned Evers’ executive order pushing the vote to June. On April 7, thousands of masked voters trekked to polling locations that were so understaffed Evers had to call in National Guard members to serve as poll workers. It was a thoroughly bizarre election cycle.
Like many festering problems in American society, Wisconsin’s political dysfunction is not a symptom of the pandemic but rather a chronic condition of the state’s government. Though other state governments, such as Michigan’s, have been mired in similar disputes, the Badger State sticks out for its remarkable political vitriol. Likewise, partisan standoffs in Wisconsin carry especially high stakes because of the state’s bona fide purple state status: Republican President Donald Trump won by 23,000 votes in 2016 while Democratic challenger Joe Biden currently leads in 2020 polls.
The state’s toxic political environment reflects larger threats to American democracy, as the politicization of the judiciary and the erosion of institutional norms seen in Wisconsin have both shaped and been shaped by similar trends at the national level. Wisconsin’s politics offer a cautionary lesson for the rest of the country on how political partisanship can infect key institutions, but also provide a potential blueprint to purge the infection from government.
Wisconsin Under Walker
Wisconsin has long been known for two exports: dairy and good government. Since the days of “Fighting Bob” La Follette, a progressive Republican governor in the early 20th century, the state has prized its unique brand of Midwestern progressivism. By implementing primary elections and workers’ compensation, La Follette began a hallowed tradition of integrity in the state’s government. Jay Heck, the director of the pro-democracy watchdog Common Cause Wisconsin, told the HPR, “Wisconsin has always wanted bipartisanship; it has always prized ethical, good government as opposed to the machine-type politics that we would see in Illinois, for example.” Heck also fondly recalled Wisconsin’s clean elections: “Elections were open and competitive and we made it relatively simple and easy for people to vote. And as a result, Wisconsin…. led the country regularly in voter turnout.”
In 2010, Scott Walker, a former Republican Milwaukee County executive, swept into power as governor with a strong red majority in the state assembly and senate. The next year, Walker introduced Act 10, which thoroughly gutted public sector unions, amid a moment of bipartisan euphoria: the Green Bay Packers’ Super Bowl win. That year, Walker cut public financing for political candidates and overhauled the state’s Government Accountability Board. Soon, “Wisconsin was the canary in the coal mine,” Heck said. “Republicans realized that if you could bring conservative change to Wisconsin, the state that had always been very progressive, then you could certainly accomplish it almost anywhere in the country.”
Walker earned pushback for his offensives, including an unsuccessful recall election in 2012. Still, he battled his way to reelection in 2014 before narrowly losing to Evers in 2018. In that election, the electoral reforms that he presided over in 2011 helped preserve the GOP’s majority: In part due to partisan gerrymandering and a strict voter ID law that he approved, Democrats garnered 200,000 more votes for the state assembly and only gained one seat.
Marcus Knoke, a Madison native and incoming first-year at Harvard, told the HPR that the 2018 election was a catalyst for his involvement in politics. Still, he added, “I think that [Madison’s] youth feel very disillusioned; they feel kind of lied to considering that not much has really changed because of the legislature that pretty much refuses to budge.” Feeding into this disillusionment, a series of laws that Walker signed during his last days of office curtailed Evers’ ability to craft rules without the legislature’s approval.
The Republican-led legislature largely stymied Evers’ agenda in 2019, rejecting his proposals to spend more on schools and expand Medicaid. In May, Evers’ extension to a statewide stay-at-home order was overturned by the state Supreme Court at the behest of a Republican majority eager to jumpstart the economy. During Walker’s terms, the court upheld divisive legislation such as Act 10 and, since his defeat, has often sided with the legislature over Evers. Consequently, the court has faced accusations of political meddling that some suggest merit further investigation and/or legislative changes.
A Troubled Arbiter
Despite structural objectivity, Wisconsin’s judicial elections have become just as rancorous as other races, turning the high court into a political football. The state is one of 13 to hold nonpartisan elections for state Supreme Courts seats. Though these contests aim to limit the interest-group spending that partisan elections attract, numerous judicial candidates over the last decade have relied on such spending to win. With hot-button issues like redistricting looming, the court will continue to shape the state’s political landscape, even as it is shaped by political forces itself.
The first in a string of expensive state Supreme Court campaigns came in 2008, when conservative candidate Michael Gableman thwarted liberal incumbent Louis Butler. Gableman’s victory created a 4-3 conservative majority, one that would persist throughout the Walker era. As outside political groups and state political parties began to endorse and bankroll candidates, each successive contest grew in acrimony. One incumbent justice faced the airing of sordid details from her personal life. Toxicity on the campaign trail extended into the courthouse: In 2011, an argument between two ideologically opposed justices turned physical.
Wisconsin’s judiciary might not have stumbled so deeply into partisanship without national political figures who fanned the flames. In 2018, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts fiercely defended judicial independence by stating that there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” Biden’s and Trump’s dueling endorsements in the April court race seem to challenge this statement. A 2018 paper published in the New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy also diagnosed numerous examples of politicization in the judiciary process, including politically polarized Supreme Court confirmation votes and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s criticism of Trump in 2016. These examples suggest a broader failure of federal government leadership when it comes to judicial nonpartisanship and furthered politicization through state court endorsements.
Such actions make the judiciary, an institution that is ostensibly above the fray of party politics, resemble inherently political bodies. Both in Wisconsin and federally, gaining control of the courts is of paramount importance to both parties. The Wisconsin Democratic Party chipped in $1.3 million to support the liberal candidate in April’s court race, which seems to validate the strategy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s, R-Ky., who told Politico that court picks “are the way you have the longest lasting impact on the country.” In 2016, McConnell acted on this philosophy by ignoring Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court. This decision, which flew in the face of a century and a half of precedent, reflects a troubling erasure of the unwritten rules that underpin democratic governments and have withered in Madison.
Rewriting the Unwritten Rules
After the Garland snafu, two Harvard University professors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, wrote “How Democracies Die,” a treatise on how democracies unravel from within. Levitsky and Ziblatt identified two essential norms in American democracy: “mutual toleration,” meaning that political parties accept their opposition, and “institutional forbearance,” meaning that the opposition exercises restraint in using checks and balances. When toleration and forbearance are abandoned, Levitsky and Ziblatt write, the result is “constitutional hardball.” This term reflects behavior that is technically legal, but undermines the spirit of the law; McConnell’s Garland gambit is a prime example.
This anything-goes political style was normalized in American politics by Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who rejected mutual toleration by attacking his opponents’ patriotism and eschewing compromise. These tactics reached the Wisconsin State Assembly in the late 90s under speaker Scott Jensen, who Heck said, “was a disciple of Gingrich and was of the opinion that Republicans should adopt a more hardball policy against Democrats.” Jensen’s hardball politics weaponized patriotism and were matched by Democrats in the assembly, signifying that Gingrich’s “politics as warfare” mantra had taken hold.
Gingrich and Jensen show that national politicians take cues on style and strategy from state politicians and vice versa. In the early 20th century, La Follette’s progressive reforms were imitated in statehouses around the country, and his emphasis on government corruption changed the national discourse. Gingrich created an aggressive style of politics in the U.S. House of Representatives that trickled down to the states, including Wisconsin. Scott Walker may have failed to take his small-government conservatism nationwide, but he still transformed Wisconsin, said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, to the HPR. In Wikler’s words, Walker “took a sledgehammer to the norms and basic structures of democracy in Wisconsin.”
The sledgehammer fell in late 2018, when Walker ignored institutional forbearance and deliberately strengthened the legislature to weaken the incoming governor, foreshadowing the obstructionist style Republicans would adopt after he left office. The special legislative session that Evers called before April’s election, which Vos adjourned after 17 seconds, stood out for the fact that Republicans showed up at all; GOP legislators stood the governor up last year at sessions on homelessness and gun violence. The unwillingness of Wisconsin’s Republicans to engage in debate demonstrates that institutional forbearance can still fail under an executive who tries to foster bipartisanship in the wake of one-party dominance.
Evers’ experience could exemplify potential pitfalls for national Democrats if Trump loses in November but Republicans hold their Senate majority. The president has resorted to norm-breaking by subverting Congress’s power of the purse to build a wall on the southern border and firing inspector generals who have raised concerns with his administration. Biden’s government ethics plan suggests that he might embrace norms, but Democrats deserve to be viewed skeptically as well in light of recent history. Even if a Biden victory does represent a change of course, Evers’ experience in Wisconsin demonstrates that in order to truly revitalize norms, voters must seek accountability in each branch of government. In Wisconsin, frustration with the system may be pushing voters to do so.
The Next Battle
In Wisconsin’s next election, it seems that voters may reach their breaking point with politicians who disregard democratic norms. In the April court race, robust turnout fueled a surprise victory for liberal Jill Karofsy. Still, many in-person voters were disgruntled; Jennifer Taff told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel she was disgusted that she had to risk both her and her dying father’s life to exercise her right to vote. Others, including Marcus Knoke’s roommate, waited for absentee ballots that never came.
This November, the Wisconsin Election Commission will send absentee ballots applications to most registered voters, but voting barriers, including an overwhelmed postal service, remain. The 2011 voter ID law depresses turnout among minorities and college students, two demographics that lean blue, while gerrymandering makes a Democratic majority in the assembly historically improbable. Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center, told the HPR that there is a chance Evers and the state legislature reach a compromise regarding redistricting, but the tenor of the debate makes that outcome seem unlikely. This type of fighting costs voters dearly. Since 2018, taxpayers have been left on the hook for $6 million in attorney fees stemming from partisan court fights.
If Karofsky’s win is any indication, Wisconsin Republicans could soon weather a large backlash. If Trump’s approval ratings continue to sink and drag down Senate Republicans by association, Republicans on Capitol Hill will be in the hot seat as well. In a 2019 op-ed, Levitsky and Ziblatt claimed that an electoral thrashing might force the GOP to rethink its reliance on old white voters and voter suppression. In both Wisconsin and around the country, this strategy is running its course as young people and people of color reject a system too embroiled in partisan bickering to serve them. That trend may put Robin Vos in an awkward position. If voters truly are “incredibly safe to go out,” the future of his party’s obstructionist agenda seems anything but safe.
Image Credit: “Scott Walker” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0