MADISON, Wis. — After nearly a month of angry demonstrations and procedural maneuvering in the State Capitol here, Gov. Scott Walker won his battle on Thursday to cut bargaining rights for most government workers in Wisconsin. (buy laptop battery)
Morry Gash/Associated Press
Demonstrators protested outside the Assembly Chamber at the state Capitol on Thursday in Madison, Wis. More Photos »(CANON camera Battery)
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Peter Barca, the Democratic leader of the Wisconsin State Assembly, said: “Our democracy is out of control in Wisconsin. And you all know it — you can feel it.” More Photos »(CASIO Battery)But his victory, after the State Assembly passed the bill, also carries risks for the state’s Republicans who swept into power last November.
Democratic-leaning voters appeared energized by the battle over collective bargaining on a national stage. The fight has already spurred a list of potential recall elections for state lawmakers this spring. Protesters are planning more large demonstrations this weekend. (FUJIFILM Battery)
“From a policy perspective, this is terrible,” said Mike Tate, the leader of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
“But from a political perspective, he could not have handed us a bigger gift,” Mr. Tate said of the governor.
In the last 24 hours, he added, the state party had received $360,000 in contributions and volunteers have streamed into offices where signatures were being collected for recall bids.(Dell Inspiron 6400 Battery )
The Republican-dominated Assembly voted mainly along party lines, 53 to 42 in favor of the bill, during a tense and bitter proceeding punctuated by shouts of “No!” from angry lawmakers, cries of “Shame, shame!” from protesters in the gallery, and chants from thousands outside the locked-down chamber.
The vote had been delayed after law enforcement completely closed the Capitol for a time, when protesters filled a section near the Assembly hall and refused to leave. Some demonstrators were carried out.
Some lawmakers were locked out, and the police ignored their pleas to let them in so they could vote. They resorted to climbing in through first-floor windows. (KODAK Battery)
The tenor of the debate took an angrier edge this week because of the legislative brinkmanship that helped get the bill passed.
Republicans complained that Senate Democrats had brought state business to a halt for nearly three weeks by fleeing the state and preventing a quorum.
The Democrats fumed that the Republicans had ended the episode in less than a day, with the Democrats still out of town, by forcing a rewritten bill that needed no quorum through the Senate on Wednesday night and the Assembly on Thursday. Though the outcome of the vote was all but certain, each side made its case one more time in the final hours of debate.
On the floor of the Assembly, Jeff Fitzgerald, the Republican speaker, said the state’s finances were on a “crash course” if collective bargaining remained the status quo. “We ran on this,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “We were going to get the fiscal place in order. (Dell Inspiron 1545 Battery )This is the first piece of the puzzle. We’re broke.”
Democrats, who noted that public-sector union leaders had already agreed to pay more for their pensions and health care costs, argued that slashing collective bargaining rights was no budget-saving measure, but a way to break unions in a state with deep labor roots. (NIKON Battery)
Peter Barca, the Democrats’ Assembly leader, railed against the Republicans’ tactics. “Our democracy is out of control in Wisconsin,” Mr. Barca said. “And you all know it — you can feel it.”
Political analysts said they would watch for the fallout of the Wisconsin vote, and whether it would affect similar battles now playing out over collective bargaining issues in statehouses elsewhere, including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana.
Republicans here, including Governor Walker, contend that Wisconsin residents were seeking change in the election last fall — when the state made one of the starkest flips in the nation from blue to red — and that this was just the sort of bold move they would ultimately embrace. (Dell Studio 1735 Battery )
Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the state Republican Party, said he felt Democrats had been particularly loud in their protests to send a warning shot to the other states considering such measures.
But Democrats say the collective bargaining fight may lead to a political shakeup in the Capitol, where more than a dozen senators, Republicans and Democrats, are now the subjects of heated recall efforts. That in turn could shift political equations, since Wisconsin has long been a presidential battleground, for the 2012 election.
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