Wisconsin hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since it helped give Ronald Reagan a second term in 1984, but the state’s triumphant Gov. Scott Walker, fresh from his win in Tuesday’s historic recall election, told CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer Sunday that his state would be in play in November.
Walker is confident that presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney has a better shot than other Republican presidential candidates since Reagan.
“Gov. Romney has a shot if the ‘R’ doesn’t stand for Republican, but reformer,” Walker said. “Well, I think it’s up in the air. It’s definitely in play. Six months ago, I think the White House had it firmly in their column.”
But his landslide victory in a race that the left thought it has a strong chance to win proves that Republicans can win in Wisconsin and that swing voters will be the key to the election.
“It’s up in the air but really very much left up not just to Republicans or conservatives, but to the swing voters who elected me,” Walker said.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who appeared alongside Walker sought to downplay the significance of Walker’s having become the first sitting governor to defeat a recall attempt in American history.
“It was defeat for the people [that] got hurt the working people on the ground in that state. It’s true that the people in Wisconsin didn’t recall Gov. Walker, but he spent over $50 million on this, he has lost control of the state Senate so his agenda is stopped dead in its tracks, the worst job creating record of all the states that are out there right now,” Trumka said. “And people are looking at that.”
Trumka claimed that Walker’s win was “dangerous to democracy” because it showcased the impact of money pushing ideas he dislikes.
“Money was a big part of this thing. And money edge is really dangerous to democracy,” Trumka said.
The AFL-CIO chief also asserted that the Wisconsin fight has only served to motivate union activists.
“The Wisconsin fight really did provide a spark for the labor movement in Wisconsin because we were organizing more than we have been,” he said. “The day after that Wisconsin election happened, we were back out on the streets, we were talking to workers, we were educating them, we were mobilizing.”
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, struck a similar line of attack, by trying to recast Walker’s win as a partial victory for Democrats because the state Senate now is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats (Democrats claim they now control the chamber.), which he believes could make the governor’s job more difficult.
“They did put the brakes on his hard right wing agenda by putting Democrats in charge of the state Senate,” O’Malley said. “And for all his talk about making tough decisions they aren’t the tough decisions that actually create jobs, he had the worst rate of job creation in business Wisconsin of any state in the nation so he overcame that with billionaire help to put on eight and made up new set of numbers.”
