In the recent elections in Wisconsin, Democrats won every single statewide race. Voters chose a Democratic U.S. Senator, a Democratic Governor, a Democratic Attorney General, a Democratic Treasurer, and a Democratic Secretary of State. In addition, Democrats won 54% of votes cast statewide for the U.S. House and 54% of votes cast statewide for the Wisconsin State Assembly.
And yet, the Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker declared after the election that “We are the ones that were given a mandate to govern.”
Say what?
Indeed, due to massive gerrymandering, Democrats won only 3 of Wisconsin’s 8 U.S. House seats and won so few seats in the Wisconsin State Assembly that Republicans retained a 64% super-majority.
But Wisconsin Republicans still weren’t satisfied. This week, in a special session of the Assembly that was called solely for this purpose, Republicans told Wisconsin’s voters to go screw themselves. They rushed through a gaggle of bills – with almost no debate and allowing exactly one minute of public comment – so that they could send the bills to the desk of lame-duck Republican Gov. Walker for his signature before he gets kicked out of the office he just lost. There is so much to wade through that no one is quite sure yet what was included. However, here’s just a few highlights of what the bills do:
- Blocks the Governor’s ability to write regulations.
- Moves a majority of appointments to the economic development board from the Governor to the Assembly.
- Prevents the Governor from expanding early and absentee voting.
- Enshrines limits on collective bargaining rights in legislation.
- Prevents the Governor from banning guns in the Wisconsin capitol.
- Moves management of federal benefit programs to the Assembly.
- Blocks the state from withdrawing from a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.
- Moves management of lawsuits to the Assembly and gives them the power to hire their own lawyers to represent the state (effectively replacing the Attorney General’s office).
Let’s be clear. The Democratic candidates ran on these issues. The Democrats won. And yet, the Republican-controlled Assembly decided to negate the results of the election with a last-minute power grab.
The Wisconsin Assembly also completed a mass confirmation of 82 last-minute nominees from Gov. Walker, despite the fact that the incoming Democratic Gov. Evers had requested they stay open for another month until the transfer of power is complete. These confirmations, of course, come from the same party that wouldn’t even give a hearing to a Supreme Court nominee from a sitting President eight months before the election of his successor and ten months before the transfer of power.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
It is also anathema to long-held traditions in Wisconsin. Indeed, when Gov. Walker won election, he asked the outgoing Democratic Gov. Doyle to immediately halt his signature high-speed rail project since Walker had campaigned against it. Doyle did so. Gov. Doyle has also recently noted that his Republican predecessor was “classy” after losing his election to Doyle. Elections have consequences. Or at least they used to have consequences.
A bedrock principle of democracy is an absolute expectation of the peaceful transition of power when the will of the voters dictate a change. Otherwise, democracy dies.
Where is the shrill outrage we’d hear from Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators if Democrats were the ones trying to hold onto power after so clearly losing an election? Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson simply offered that the uproar over the massive last-minute legislation was “way overblown.” When asked his opinion about the Wisconsin power grab, outgoing Speaker of the House and Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan merely responded: “I don’t have anything for you.” Ah, leadership in action.
It would be bad enough if all of this was just a Wisconsin issue. Unfortunately, it’s not.
- In North Carolina, the Republican legislature passed laws in a lame-duck 2016 session that limited their Governor’s powers right after a Democrat won that office.
- In Michigan, after Democrats flipped the offices of Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State this year, the lame-duck Republican legislature is now considering giving themselves power to intervene in state legal proceedings that have always been controlled by the Governor and Attorney General. Michigan Republicans also just repealed a minimum wage law that they themselves passed prior to the elections. Of course, they had only passed the law to stop a similar voter-driven initiative from even appearing on the ballot. Yes, really.
- In Ohio, the Republican-controlled Senate just passed a bill that would limit the ways in which courts could interpret their statutes.
- In Utah, the Republican Governor just signed a bill to negate provisions of a medical marijuana initiative that was just approved by Utah’s voters.
We have ourselves a pattern here.
Alas, I can already hear my Republican friends screaming “Democrats do it, too!” and “Both sides are to blame!”
Bullshit.
I am so over hearing this false equivalency argument.
Sure, Democrats have gerrymandered a couple of deep blue states (notably Illinois and Maryland) where they also enjoy north of 65% of the popular vote. Republicans, however, have massively gerrymandered numerous swing states (notably Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida) to give themselves major advantages in states where the popular vote is much more evenly split.
More importantly, though, there are zero examples of Democrats using stacked districts to conduct power grabs like the ones we are currently seeing from Republicans. That’s purely a Republicans-Only game. And it sucks.
The one possible silver lining here is that voters have memories. In their zeal to protect control of their state governments, Republicans might well be handing national Democrats a major gift. By disenfranchising swing state voters at the gerrymandered district level, Republicans may well be guaranteeing a huge backlash at the state level. If Democrats win the popular vote in these states in 2020, they will win all of their Electoral College votes. The 10 Electoral votes from Wisconsin could certainly come in quite handy.
In the meantime, I guess we just have to accept that Republican politicians don’t give a damn about democracy. They just want power.