Winners and losers: Vos and Fitzgerald get what they want, plus a public outcry, in lame-duck session
The New Year is still weeks away, but the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker are already setting off fireworks in Madison.
Working through the night, lawmakers gave their approval on Wednesday morning to a bill aimed at curbing the power of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. Walker, who narrowly lost to state schools Superintendent Tony Evers, has indicated he supports the actions of his colleagues in the Assembly and Senate.
With something this controversial, there will always be winners and losers. Here's our scorecard for who benefited and who didn't as a result of the lame-duck session:
Winners
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. Vos told me a couple of years ago that he had no interest in ever running for governor. Why would you want to go through that campaign grind when you can simply shift many executive functions to you and your top colleague in the Senate?
Under the GOP bill, Vos and Fitzgerald would gain full control of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.; the Legislature could block the new governor’s ability to write regulations; and lawmakers could also hire their own attorneys to file litigation for the state.
Today's civic lesson: The governor proposes, and the Legislature does pretty much what it wants.
Losers
Vos and Fitzgerald. Is this really how you want to pass legislation? Lame-duck session. Closed-door negotiations. Little public input. Hurried committee meetings. All-night floor sessions. Party-line votes.
And then throw in the hypocrisy that many Republican lawmakers whined when Democratic legislators held their own — albeit completely unsuccessful — lame-duck session in 2010.
There is a saying that the two things you don't want to see made are law and sausage. But what the GOP leaders in the Assembly and Senate just produced in Madison reeks like nothing being cooked up by Usinger's.
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Winners
Lawyers. The governor has yet to sign the controversial legislation, and Democrats are already talking about going to court. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Evers, One Wisconsin Now, incoming state Attorney General Josh Kaul — they all sound like they are chomping at the bit to challenge the grab bag of GOP goodies.
"This is virtually certain to end up in litigation — probably there will be multiple litigation that result from this maybe in multiple courts," Kaul said.
Just what everybody wants after a legislative session: Courtrooms filled with suits, many of whom are billing the taxpayers by the hour.
Loser
Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. It's now apparent to everyone that Republicans are sorely afraid that Kelly, a Walker appointee with no previous judicial experience, is incredibly vulnerable.
GOP legislative leaders talked openly about moving the 2020 presidential primary to help Kelly, whose election coincides with it. The thinking was that Democrats could see a surge in turnout as they decide who will challenge President Donald Trump and that could sink Kelly’s chances of winning a full 10-year term on the court. So why not rig the election for the justice by moving the presidential primary?
But in the end, the Legislature did nothing. Which actually ended up saying a whole lot.
Winner
Milwaukee businessman Sheldon Lubar. The Milwaukee businessman and longtime Republican had a strong opinion about what was going on in Madison and he didn't mind sharing it. In an email to Walker, Lubar asked the Republican governor, who is also the son of a Baptist minister, what would Jesus do.
"You can have a long successful career ahead. Don’t stain it by this pointless, poor-loser action. Ask yourself, what would my father say, what would the greatest man who ever lived, Jesus Christ, say," wrote Lubar, who is Jewish.
For the record, Lubar may have openly supported Walker in the past, but he donated $10,000 to failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Flynn in this campaign. Rarely has the Milwaukee money man made such a bad investment.
Losers
Evers and Kaul. They may have stayed above the fray for most of the lame-duck session. But the fact is that the pair will enter office with diminished powers if Walker signs the legislation.
"Wisconsin has never seen anything like this," Evers said Wednesday. "Power-hungry politicians rushed through sweeping changes to our laws to expand their own power and override the will of the people of Wisconsin who asked for change on November 6th."
But no matter how strong his rhetoric, Evers has no veto power — what really matters — until Jan. 7.
Loser
Kimberly-Clark. The ostensible reason for holding the lame-duck session was to consider a bill offering a state subsidy to preserve nearly 400 Kimberly-Clark manufacturing jobs in the Fox Cities.
But as the session wore on, that bill faded from view. No vote was taken on the measure.
So much for jobs, jobs, jobs.
Undecided
Walker. Nobody likes a sore loser, and that's how the two-term governor will look if he signs off on most of the GOP bill. He has already defended Vos and Fitzgerald, despite criticizing Democrats over their lame-duck session in 2010.
But we have to wait to see what he does when he puts pen to paper.
Walker has already lost out on one big issue. He and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch promised voters that they would protect those with pre-existing conditions like Kleefisch, a cancer survivor. They accused Evers of peddling a "big lie" by suggesting otherwise.
"The truth?" Kleefisch said. "Gov. Walker has always promised to protect people like me and require insurance companies to do the same as well."
But the Senate voted down a measure to do just that. Republicans split over a proposal to create a high risk-sharing insurance pool, which some thought sounded too much like Obamacare.
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.