Democracy dies in darkness because Republicans wait until after dark to kill it.<\/b>
\nDemocracy dies in darkness because Republicans wait until after dark to kill it.
That\u2019s what happened last night, and before sunrise this morning, in Wisconsin. The state\u2019s GOP-run state legislature used an extraordinary session to strip powers from the newly elected Democratic governor and attorney general and roll back voting rights.
When they unveiled the bills, Wisconsin\u2019s Republican legislative chiefs \u2014 Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald \u2014 wrote in a statement that \u201cThe legislature is the most representative branch in government,\u201d as though the bills were a defense of democracy.
The truth is, Wisconsin\u2019s GOP power grab took place precisely because the state GOP is afraid of democracy. That fear is etched all over the bills \u2014 dubbed the \u201cWisconsin power grab\u201d \u2014 that lawmakers just rammed through the statehouse.
First, some critical context: in Wisconsin, the legislature is not, in fact, the most representative branch. It\u2019s the least. In terms of vote totals, they\u2019re the losers of the 2018 elections. Republican State Assembly candidates only racked up 46 percent of the vote, compared to 54 percent for Democrats. But because of extreme gerrymandering, they wound up with 64 percent of the State Assembly seats. In fact, there\u2019s a chance that the gerrymandered map will be thrown out by the Supreme Court next year.
But gerrymandering can\u2019t stop Democrats from winning statewide races. Perhaps that\u2019s why Wisconsin Republicans just moved to stomp out early voting. Wisconsin counties set their own early voting rules, and the biggest cities \u2014 Milwaukee and Madison \u2014 allowed early voting for six weeks. Republican lawmakers claimed that this rankled their (often rural) constituents. But rather than expanding early voting to all parts of the state, they decided to limit the early vote everywhere to two weeks, in an obvious move to prevent heavily Democratic areas from repeating the high turnout that just torpedoed Republican governor Scott Walker\u2019s bid for a third term.
Preventing future votes is one thing. But the GOP also moved to nullify the effects of votes already cast \u2014 by stripping away authority from newly elected Democratic Governor Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul.
The new rules block the governor and attorney general from fulfilling one of their signature campaign promises: to withdraw Wisconsin from the multistate lawsuit to torpedo the Affordable Care Act and eliminate protections for people with preexisting conditions.
In fact, the Republicans\u2019 new laws would require the Republican-controlled state legislature\u2019s permission before the attorney general can get involved in any litigation challenging a federal law. And when a state law is challenged, it would give the state legislature the right to usurp the attorney general\u2019s authority, letting state lawmakers hire private attorneys at taxpayer expense to try the case their way. Meanwhile, the governor would be stripped of his normal powers as the state\u2019s negotiating partner with the federal government. Going forward, anytime Wisconsin seeks a modification, waiver, or tweak on its implementation of a federal law, Governor Evers will need the state legislature\u2019s permission.
It\u2019s nothing short of a legislative coup.
As the votes neared, legislative leaders began to let the mask slip about the true intention of their legislation.
If these bills don\u2019t pass, Assembly leader Robin Vos warned his colleagues near midnight on Tuesday, \u201cwe 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.\u201d
\u201cWe don\u2019t trust Tony Evers,\u201d Republican Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald told reporters on Monday.
They might not believe in Tony Evers\u2019s policies. They might not trust him. But, as former House candidate Randy Bryce testified to a legislative committee later that night, \u201cVoters do.\u201d
Fitzgerald, who won 49,051 votes in 2018, and Vos, who received 16,775 votes this year, do not have a small-d democratic mandate to overrule Tony Evers, who was elected with majority support and 1.33 million votes. But for the moment, they have the power to do so \u2014 so they are.
The Republicans do not have the moral high ground here, and they know it. More than likely, that\u2019s why they chose a strategy of secrecy and haste in order to ram their bills through the legislature.
The bills were kept secret until the afternoon of Friday, November 30. The lone hearing on the bills took place on Monday \u2014 and the bill\u2019s author, Robin Vos, refused to so much as testify in favor of them. (In fact, according to staff on the Joint Finance Committee, of the 1,426 constituents who registered to testify, six spoke for informational purposes only, 1,420 spoke against \u2014 and zero spoke in favor.) Then, amidst thunderous protests from constituents and from Democratic colleagues, Republicans amended and passed their bills through committee late at night, once television newscasts were over. They repeated this pattern the following night on the Senate and Assembly floor. After all-night vote-wrangling sessions, the bills cleared the State Senate on Wednesday at 6:04 am and the State Assembly at 8:20 am.
It was a shocking result. But hope survives. Because although Wisconsin\u2019s Republican leaders may be afraid of democracy, democracy is not afraid of them.
Even in this final moment of total Republican control of Wisconsin\u2019s government, one of the GOP\u2019s most ridiculous proposals fell apart due to public outcry. Republicans had planned to move the date of the 2020 presidential primary, at cost of nearly $7 million, from April to March, in order to prevent it from taking place on the same day as the April 7 State Supreme Court race. The goal: keep the Court\u2019s 5-4 Republican majority by saving the seat of hard-right Supreme Court Justice David Kelly. As Republican Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald explained, \u201cJustice Kelly would have a better chance if there\u2019s not really this competitive Democrat primary for president.\u201d Nearly every County Clerk in Wisconsin came out against the proposal, calls flooded state legislative lines \u2014 and that idea died in committee.
Other proposals passed. But the power grab is temporary. These laws will be laws challenged in court. Even if they survive, they will one day be repealed. After the 2020 census, Republicans won\u2019t have the trifecta control of Wisconsin that they\u2019d need to keep their gerrymander in place \u2014 because Tony Evers will still be governor. Which means that, from 2022 through 2030, Wisconsin legislative races will be fought on fair terrain once again.
And in the meantime, even though Tony Evers and Josh Kaul won\u2019t have all the powers that Wisconsinites believed they were voting for them to obtain, the new governor and attorney general will still have the power to make a difference. To become law, bills will still need the governor\u2019s signature. The budget will still come from the administration. The Wisconsin power grab may be anti-democratic, but at the end of the day, it represents the death rattle of anti-democratic Republican rule.
The most powerful position in the state will now be in the hands of the person who, as vote counts demonstrate, is actually the most representative of the people of Wisconsin: Tony Evers.
Ben Wikler is the Washington director for MoveOn.org, where he helps ensure that the views and voices of MoveOn’s 8 million members are impossible to ignore in the nation’s capitol. An award-winning campaigner, strategist, communicator and digital organizer, he previously held senior leadership roles at Avaaz.org and Change.org, the world’s two largest online organizing networks. He also hosted the podcast „The Good Fight,“ which reached #1 on iTunes, and worked as Al Franken’s writing partner on two bestselling books and as a producer of his national radio show. Wikler appears regularly on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, has been quoted in most major US media outlets and serves on the board of Vote.org. A native of Madison, Wisconsin, where he became a contributor to The Onion while in high school, Wikler holds an undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard.
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