The Daily - Watering Down Democrats’ Power in Wisconsin

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

Across the country, Democratic candidates for governor and attorney general won seats that had long been held by Republicans. But Republican-controlled legislatures in some states are resisting that transfer of power. Guest: Mitch Smith, who covers the Midwest for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Across the country last month, Democratic candidates for governor and attorney general won seats that were long held by Republicans. Now, Republican-controlled legislatures in those states are resisting that transfer of power.

It's Thursday, December 6th. Good morning, everyone. It's Tuesday, November 6th, Election Day. We're about to get the first results in a key governor's race in Wisconsin. Wisconsin was a battleground state in the 2016 election, helping deliver the presidency to Donald Trump. It is a battleground this year as well, with close races for governor and senator. Wisconsin's a pretty purple state, but in recent years, Republicans have amassed quite a bit of power. In the final moments here, Governor Scott Walker tells us that this is the tightest race of his life. Governor Scott Walker

has become a national conservative figure during his two terms. The legislature, Republicans have controlled both chambers of that for some time. Election day in Wisconsin this year, Democrats got a foothold back. Mitch Smith covers the Midwest for The Times. Democrats won all the big statewide races. They didn't just win the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin. They reclaimed some power. They won all the state stuff.

Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Attorney General. And the most closely watched state-level race in Wisconsin was the governor's race. Scott Walker was seeking a third term. He was facing Tony Evers, the state school superintendent, the Democrat, who is much less of a known quantity in this state. But we do have a major projection here. CNN projects that the winner in that hard fought Wisconsin race is the Democrat. Mr. Evers, he won by about 30,000 votes. Wisconsin's closest governor's race in half a century. Scott Walker conceded. One question is whether the Democrats

are coming back in Wisconsin. So this was going to be a turning point. Maybe it's going to change how politics in Wisconsin were played out. It was going to be a check on the Republican power in recent years. And Democrats were pretty excited. But then the transition of power at the Capitol already hitting bumps in the road. Within a day or two, you started seeing in the local press word that Republicans may be considering different measures to curb the new governor's power. After Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Voss said he would be interested in limiting the incoming governor's power. So we keep hearing these rumors. They kind of circulate for days

and they get fleshed out in the local press a bit, but we're not really sure what the Republicans have planned. And then comes Friday. And what happens on Friday? I see on my phone that the Republicans have introduced several bills and are going to meet at the Capitol less than 72 hours later for a committee hearing.

And I was in Wisconsin on different stories. So I remember when I saw that on my phone, like, oh, this may, this may be a story too. These aren't just any old bills. This is not just end-of-term housekeeping. These are bills that, if enacted, would go directly to the heart of the powers of the governor and the attorney general of Wisconsin. And what would they actually do? Well, they're kind of a grab bag of topics. Republicans have bills to shorten early voting to two weeks. Other bills being proposed would also take control of the state's job creation agency from the governor and give it to the Republican-controlled legislature. It's, for instance, not having the majority of appointments

on a keyboard. It's not being able to ban guns in the Capitol without permission. To take away Evers' ability to approve major actions by the incoming Democratic attorney general. And strip power from the newly elected governor, Tony Evers, and Attorney General Josh Call, who have pledged to withdraw Wisconsin from a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act. It's changes to how he can deal with federal programs and waivers for those. And collectively, they really get to the heart of his job and the power he could expect to have. So take the example of the governor's appointees. If they are rejected by the state Senate under current law, he could have backdoored it and got them in or renominated them.

Under these laws, they're done. They're out. They cannot serve. So it's things like that that the current governor didn't face that the new Democratic governor is very likely to. So what happened after these bills were drawn up and released? So lawmakers introduced these bills right about close of business on Friday. And come Monday, it was time for the legislative hearing.

And so I head up to Madison and before noon, you have people lining up with signs and people who are going to testify. And all told, I've been told over a thousand people registered and to testify and several hundred actually did. and to testify. And several hundred actually did. Greetings. My name is Jan Friesweik. And I'm speaking mainly to the Republicans here because I believe there is something

you don't understand. And that is that you lost, you lost, you lost. It comes pretty clear this is a scene of really great political passion. I'm in this little hearing room behind a pole. There's not nearly enough seats in this thing. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. You had some real Midwestern politeness. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to be here. I disagree. And you also have people who are yelling. We do not consent to kneecapping our governor before he even takes office.

We do not consent to leashing the attorney general, preventing him from protecting the citizens of the state. But more so than that, what was notable was just how deeply this is being felt by some people in Wisconsin. There is no clapping. There is no booing. There is no flipping people off, as I've seen in this room today. OK, show some respect and respect will be shown back to you. All right? That's kind of what I thought. All right.

I'm going to—sir, you're up, and then I'll call another cue. I just wanted to state that this isn't a bill. This is a coup. You heard words like coup. And rule by the minority is not a democracy. And maybe you don't care about democracy. That's a problem. And you heard things like undemocratic that even in the tensest of American political debates are not words that come up a great deal. So for the most part,

it sounds like these were opponents of these bills. Almost to a person, yes. So who are the Republicans who are in the majority of the state legislature in Wisconsin and who are on this committee? Well, the legislative Republicans in Wisconsin have really pushed a lot of the conservative changes to the state in recent years. And even as the state Republican Party had a rough night, an election night last month, they did pretty well. They already had majorities in both chambers of the legislature, and they kept those even as the statewide races swung to the Democrats. And so many of the Republicans who were in this extraordinary session this week are the very Republicans who will be tasked with working with the new governor when everybody takes a new oath of office in a few weeks. So in a sense, this is proposed legislation that would restructure Wisconsin's government

just in time for them to reap the benefits. Absolutely. This is a way for Republicans to shore up their power, to take some power away from Democrats in the last chance they have to do it. And Republicans mostly did not express a lot of qualms about this, at least not in public. And most of the proposed legislation cleared that committee.

And it was scheduled to go to the full legislature on Tuesday morning. So how did this session get started on Tuesday? Slowly would be the word. We were expecting them in late morning, early afternoon. And for hours at a time time you had these delays. And as it became clear that there was not a lot of immediate legislating to be happening, I stepped out and... Pleasure and honor to introduce to you the governor of the state of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Governor Walker had previously scheduled the Capitol Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the

middle of the Capitol in the midst of all this. So you have this podium set up and the high school choirs in town and the state dairy beauty pageant winner was there and gave a speech talking about the cheese and cow themed ornaments on the tree this year. Merry Christmas. It is great to be with you today. Caitlin did an excellent job talking about the importance of America's spirit. All these protests, people who did not come for the Christmas tree lighting

start booing. And these poor kids, this high school choir, they start singing these Christmas carols. And this group of singing protesters grounds them out from the floor above, bellowing these kind of anti-Walker tunes of their own. Democratic and pragmatic, once again the state we love. Kind of that was how it went. It was overshadowed and playing out kind of uncomfortably in the midst of all this partisanship and all this rancor.

Carpenter. Coles. After quite a few hours of just waiting around, the lawmakers come in and... Roth. Here. Schockner. The clerk with the suspense with calling the roll of quorum is present. The crowd had filled up. The balcony was full in this room. And lawmakers started kind of working through this. And Republicans did not say much. But Democrats,

as you might expect, had a lot to say. As we were updated on the changes that you're doing, it continues to follow this path of handcuffing the incoming administration. And they basically accused their counterparts of a naked power grab. I've been around here a while. In fact, I have served with 12 different governors and 11 of them have been very active and successful. But let's face it, let's face it, the Republicans this year are very poor losers. Within half an hour of really getting underway, things got tense pretty quick. The Republicans had the Capitol Police clear the gallery, had people escorted out after there'd been a few minor outbursts. That led to a significant delay. Eventually, they were let back in.

And as Tuesday became Wednesday, you'd have a little bit of legislating and then a lot of waiting. Mr. President, I would ask that we recess for the purposes of a partisan caucus. You had a lot of closed-door meetings, Republicans especially. You see lawmakers ordering pizza to the Capitol. I was always too scared to do that for myself,

but I regret that now. Why were you scared? I thought as soon as I went down to get the pizza that the vote would happen and I'd miss it and have to tell my editor that I'd been eating pepperoni on the Capitol floor when that happened. So I went hungry and thirsty all night. But alas, others were more well nourished. So the debate continued. You'd have half hour breaks that lasted four hours. And it just kind of kept going and going. And it became clear this was not going to end soon. During all of this, are Republicans making a case for this legislation?

Are they publicly explaining themselves? The legislature is the most representative part of our entire democracy. A few. In the Wisconsin Assembly, the Speaker, Robin Voss, spoke really passionately in favor of these bills. If you read the Constitution, if you go back and actually think about the way that the founders put the document together, they always intended for the legislature to be the most important part of our democracy. He called it a rebalancing of power. If you look at the way that our government operates today,

we have allowed far too much authority to flow to the executive. He called it a way to ensure that there were co-equal branches of government. The situation that we are sitting in right now, if we do not pass these proposals, is that we are going to have a very liberal governor who is going to enact policies that are in direct contrast to what many of us believe in. And Republicans defended these measures and said it was good governance, codifying things that they'd been doing and setting the stage to make sure that they continued to have a say

in how the state was run under the new governor. And what was the Democrats' response to this argument that this was good governance? Democrats weren't buying it, not even a little bit. Never, ever, ever, ever has there been a lame duck session used to go after newly elected officials. There's never been a lame duck session to actually consolidate power in the Speaker's office and the Majority Leader's office like this. consolidate power in the Speaker's office and the Majority Leader's office like this. What they are planning for the Republican Party of Wisconsin will malign its integrity and lead to its downfall. Worse, it will damage Wisconsin as it ignores the will of the majority of Wisconsin voters. So how does this debate end?

So Tuesday becomes Wednesday, and midnight becomes 2 a.m., and 2 a.m. becomes 4 a.m., and there's just not a lot going on in the Capitol. And then not long before sunrise, here come the Republicans. And it was a really empty chamber aside from the press and the legislators, the huge crowds that had been there, what, 13 hours before at that point?

They had gone home. And so this was literally happening in the dark. The Christmas tree lights had been turned off. This was the middle of the night. And we're debating these huge bills. And it passes. December 2018 Extraordinary Session stand adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, December 5th. Without objection, the December 20th extraordinary session is adjourned.

The bills that ended up passing the Wisconsin legislature were slightly watered down from the ones that were introduced. There were provisions that Democrats were really upset about last Friday that ended up not being in the final version. But still, if signed into law, they would end up with a weaker Democratic governor of Wisconsin, a weaker Democratic attorney general of Wisconsin, and a much stronger Republican legislature of Wisconsin.

And Mitch, how much longer is the Republican governor, Scott Walker, going to be governor? And is he anticipated to sign these bills? So Scott Walker's term runs through next month, a point he's made repeatedly in recent days, that he has the authority to sign these bills. And while he hasn't said explicitly that he will, all signs point to him signing most or all of this into law. Mitch, is what we're seeing right now in Wisconsin unusual? Well, a few years ago, it would have been really unthinkable in many places. But in 2016,

in North Carolina, a situation that kind of mirrors this played out where a Democrat won the governor's election and Republicans came in in a lame duck session and limited the powers of the governorship. And so this is obviously happening right now in Wisconsin, but then right next door in Michigan, another Midwestern state where the governorship flipped the Democrats last month. You see bills being considered. We don't know exactly where they'll land at this point, but that would limit the powers of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general out there. It seems that over the past few years, there has been a progression in these attempts to hold on to power, mostly by Republicans in these state legislatures. Efforts at voter ID laws,

efforts in some cases at voter suppression, gerrymandering. And as problematic as those attempts were, they were sort of preventative in their design. They were ways to stop the other side from winning power or make it harder for them to win power. What you're describing here in Wisconsin and in North Carolina and perhaps in Michigan is different. It looks like an attempt, once the other side has achieved power, once they've cleared all those previous hurdles to win elections, to then weaken the power of the offices that these Democrats have just won. Absolutely. That's how Democrats see it.

And they see it as an escalation of things that have gone on in recent years in which Democrats have sometimes performed quite well at the polls and then still found themselves without much influence in capitals. And look at Wisconsin, where Democratic legislative candidates won statewide majorities, but yet find themselves continuing to be in the minority in both chambers. And there's a level of anger from that. You hear gerrymandering come up quite a bit in the Wisconsin Capitol, accusations that Democratic votes are being diluted, and a sense that there's this effort now to really blatantly go after some core functions of those

offices that Democrats are about to inhabit. And Mitch, is this all legal? Well, certainly it's within the realm of the legislature to pass laws. They're still in office. Whether these laws are constitutional, whether they'll hold up, I think that's an open question. I think certain provisions of these, Democrats are very eager to challenge in court. Some things in this kind of cocktail of bills have already been challenged in court in previous iterations. And ultimately, that'll be for judges to decide.

It could be a very long time before we have finality to that question. It could be very, very well into Tony Evers' four-year term as governor of Wisconsin. And is that the case in North Carolina as well? Has this been legally challenged? It has. The restrictions there have been heavily litigated,

and in some forms, that continues to this day. In the end, Mitch, I wonder if this is going to feel short-sighted, because Democrats now hold control of the governor's office and the attorney general's office in Wisconsin. But I have to assume that Republicans will take those offices back. And someday, who knows how long from now, Democrats will control the legislature in Wisconsin. And in that case, haven't Republicans just weakened the offices that they will inherit

and empowered the Democrats to do the same thing to them? So Republicans in Wisconsin are really going to benefit from these provisions for the next few years. Looking longer, it's less clear who ends up being the winner here. Wisconsin's a state where politicians from both parties win. You had Donald Trump carry the state in 2016, and two years later, you had Scott Walker, once a real Republican star, lose. And so it's certainly very conceivable that in the end, there's a Republican governor sometime in the future,

maybe four years, maybe 16 years from now. And this could backfire on them. And Republicans could very well one day wish they had not pushed through these bills. Mitch, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers in Michigan voted to advance legislation that strips oversight of campaign finance from the state's newly elected Secretary

of State, a Democrat, and adopted another bill that would weaken the ability of the state's governor-elect, also a Democrat, to fulfill her campaign promise of shutting down a controversial oil pipeline. The same lawmakers are considering a bill that would hamper another Democrat, the same lawmakers are considering a bill that would hamper another Democrat, Michigan's incoming Attorney General, by diluting her power to represent the state in lawsuits. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered,

accept our prayers on behalf of your servant George and grant him an entrance into the land of light and joy. During an elaborate funeral on Wednesday at the Washington National Cathedral, the late President George H.W. Bush was eulogized by his son, President George W. Bush, who recalled him as a soldier,

husband, president, and father. We tested his patience. I know I did. But he always responded with the great gift of unconditional love. Last Friday, when I was told he had minutes to live, I called him. The guy answered the phone, said, I think he can hear you, but he hadn't said anything for most of the day. I said, Dad, I love you, and you've been a wonderful father. And the last words he would ever say on Earth were,

I love you, too. Every other living president, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, attended the funeral, sitting together in the front row, just feet from Bush's flag-draped coffin. When the history books are written, they will say that George H.W. Bush was a great president of the United States,

a diplomat of unmasked skill, a commander-in-chief of formidable accomplishment, and a gentleman who executed the duties of his office with dignity and honor. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.