VAN DYNE, Wis. — Republican Gov. Scott Walker is under investigation, and he is reviled by the largest political force in his state. But you’d never guess that by watching him amble through the stalls at a central Wisconsin dairy farm.
Walker converses with a casual ease rare among politicians. He strolls with a light step through a massive cow barn at Ruedinger Farms on Wednesday. The only thing hanging over his head is the mechanical hawk that chases away the pigeons.
You wouldn’t guess from his demeanor how hated he is. County prosecutors are still investigating him. And the government employee unions — which failed to block his legislation, failed to recall him, and failed to take back the state legislature — still have it in for him.
“Walker speaks with a forked tongue,” Fernando Stokes tells me. Stokes was a state prison guard for 32 years and is now retired. Waiting for his takeout order at Milwaukee’s Water Street Brewery, Stokes couldn’t even name Walker’s opponent. That she was running against Walker was enough for him.
Ron, a bartender at Buck Bradley’s in Milwaukee for more than 20 years, is backing Walker again. He understands the unions’ anger: “If someone yanked away your gravy train, would you be happy?” Ron asks with a laugh.
One state employee, a female parole officer, denied that the free health care and generous pension was a gravy train — state workers had taken lower pay in the past in exchange for those benefits. The benefits drew her into the state workforce when she was in her 40s. “I saw the health care was free, and I thought that was a pretty sweet deal,” the woman tells me at the Capital Tap Haus in Madison. “I had been in the private sector and I felt like half my paycheck was going to insurance.”
That’s exactly what grates on many Wisconsin voters, and it’s why Walker’s support has remained strong in a state that has backed Democrats for U.S. Senate and president in 15 of 16 races going back to 1988.
“They don’t like their safety blanket being taken away,” Chuck Hounsell says of the state employees. Hounsell drives a truck, delivering diesel to farms — including Ruedinger — in the Fond du Lac area. “It’s a safety blanket the rest of us don’t have. We’re out there slogging it out on our own.”
While the anger of the state employees’ union isn’t fading, Walker’s worries are. The two recent polls that have shown Burke leading the race come from the least reliable firms polling the state. We Ask America showed Burke leading 48 percent to 44 percent a month ago, but that was an automated poll, which significantly reduces its reliability. Burke also led 50 to 45 in a Gravis Marketing poll released Sept. 30. That poll hit 908 voters, but it didn’t screen for likely voters — it was a poll of registered voters. Polls of registered voters are less predictive, and they generally tilt toward Democrats.*
Weed out the weaker polls, and here’s the picture: Mary Burke had a tiny lead, within the margin of error, in late August. Since the campaign season began in earnest, she has hovered around 45 percent. Walker, meanwhile, has steadily climbed, hitting the crucial 50 percent mark in the latest Marquette University poll of 585 likely voters conducted Sept. 25 through 28.
Marquette’s poll has become the gold standard of Wisconsin polling, outperforming others in the 2012 recall and general elections. Follow the trend of the Marquette poll and it points to a Walker win. In Marquette’s five polls of registered voters, Burke climbed from 45 percent to 49 percent in late August but she dropped in each of the last two polls and now she’s back down to 45 percent. Walker, meanwhile, has climbed steadily from 46 percent in mid-July to 50 percent in late September.
Here’s another trend to follow: Walker’s ballot box successes keep growing. Walker won the 2010 election by 5.8 points. In the 2012 recall, he won by 6.8 points. In the 2012 state legislative races, Walker’s party took back the state Senate and expanded its majority in the state House of Representatives.
Walker’s people downplay his big recall win, pointing out that many people who weren’t necessarily Walker fans voted for him in 2012 because they were put off by the impetuousness of a midterm recall effort.
But the trend lines point in one direction: Barring a serious misstep, Walker won’t merely win in November, he will win bigger than he has won before.
Hounsell smiles when I tell him my analysis. He tells me he plans to rub it in to his son, a state prison guard. “He says he’d never vote for Walker,” Hounsell says, “unless he runs for president. He tells me, ‘Then I’d vote for Walker to get him the hell out of Wisconsin.’ ”
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*UPDATE, 10/10, at 1:45 pm. An alert reader pointed out to me that Gravis has acknowledged this poll was flawed, as it oversampled Milwaukee. Gravis’s updated poll shows Walker up 50 to 46.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
