2 large, corporate owned newspapers are available throughout Wisconsin, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and The Wisconsin State Journal. Both endorsed Scott Walker both in 2010 and during the recall. Today, The Wisconsin State Journal endorsed Mary Burke.
Their first paragraph is a slam on Walker:
State politics is far too divisive under Gov. Scott Walker. Wisconsin lags on jobs and faces its third largest budget shortfall in two decades.
and continues, after some biographical information with this:
Burke has shown strong leadership beyond her business accomplishments. As president of the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, she hired a dynamic leader and oversaw plans and funding for a large community center. Her strong support for a Madison charter school forced the city’s liberal power structure to acknowledge it was failing far too many black and Latino students.
Burke has succeeded at too many things – school, business, community leadership and fundraising – to be ineffective as governor.
(bolding is mine)
and then they take on their past endorsement of Walker and why they've changed:
The State Journal endorsed Walker four years ago to foster private-sector job growth and balance the state budget. Walker’s signature jobs agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. (WEDC), has been sloppy and disappointing. State exports slipped last year, and job growth has been slow — less than half what the governor promised.
Walker’s first term was bogged down by his repeal of collective bargaining for most public workers. The GOP governor showed courage in fighting to give local governments more control over their budgets and personnel. We supported those actions. But he could have achieved many of the same results — without two years of tumult — by suspending collective bargaining, rather than ending it.
They conclude with:
Burke promises to “solve problems, not pick fights.” And that pledge applies to much of Act 10, Walker’s union restrictions. Burke said: “I’m not going to hold up everything” with ultimatums demanding reversal. She will keep in place higher insurance and retirement contributions by public employees.
...
Our editorial board met with both candidates for governor, and we’ve closely followed their public lives and careers. Our endorsement of Burke isn’t a prediction of who will win. It’s who we believe is best to lead Wisconsin forward.
Mary Burke is that candidate.
Yowsa! They've made the correct choice this time, but it took enormous fail and state-crushing actions from Scott Walker to make it happen.
Wisconsin's newspaper with the largest circulation hasn't endorsed. They've said a few elections ago that they weren't going to endorse candidates anymore, yet in the 2012 recall, they endorsed Walker. Maybe they'll keep their promise this time.
Today, in their Sunday edition they've posted 2 pro-Burke and 2 pro-Walker editorials from guest writers. One of them is incredibly brilliant. Join me below the cheese curl for tidbits.
John Gurda, historian and host of local programs on Wisconsin's PBS stations, has written a blistering editorial on Scott Walker entitled "As divider-in-chief, Gov. Scott Walker is a roaring success". He has seriously nailed Walker.
Just a sample:
What's fascinating about our governor is the specific use he's made of the warrior narrative. Walker is not a spell-binding orator — the eyes are a little too sleepy, the voice a bit too nasal — but he's a gifted rhetorician. He is our own Governor Glib, whose thoughts go from his brain to his lips through a natural spin filter, coming out as bite-sized morsels that deflect criticism, assign blame and offer a distinctive take on reality. In the process, Walker has completely inverted the traditional understanding of the fighter's role. When La Follette and Hoan attacked "the interests," everyone knew they were taking on the fat cats and plutocrats, the unbridled capitalists and grasping utility magnates.
Walker has used similarly cartoonish rhetoric to attack ... public schoolteachers. During the Act 10 firestorm, he railed against the "thuggery" of "union bosses" who were, in his view, trying to rob the public blind. Voters always have resented what they consider undue privilege. Perhaps Walker's most remarkable achievement has been turning the public's traditional enmity from tycoons to teachers, from those bent on private gain to those working for the public good.
Yup. Nailed it!
He goes on:
It's not just the warrior tradition that Walker has inverted. His administration has wallowed in a Newspeak that verges on the Orwellian. Reductions became "reforms." Caps on taxation were rebranded as "tools for local governments." The stalled voter ID law was declared vital to safeguard "the sanctity of the ballot"; I'm sure it never occurred to Walker that it might keep low-income voters away from the polls. He has spoken repeatedly of "taking back the government," when his real goal has been taking out the government.
Sheer genius.
And then, there's this:
It is at this point that the governor crosses the line from fearless to reckless and proceeds directly to clueless. In practicing his scorched-earth politics, Walker has turned his back on the traditional Wisconsin approach to governing. Gone is any conception of democracy as a balancing of interests, a massaging of differences. Now it's total war until one side is totally dominant, a condition that many would consider, well, totalitarian. With the lines so vividly drawn, is it any wonder we're at each other's throats?
That, in the end, is the most damning thing of all about Scott Walker: He has openly and endlessly practiced the politics of division. He has made it permissible to take an extreme position and pursue it with no regard for either the opposition or for long-term consequences. In so doing, he has set loose a flood tide of belligerence that would have been unthinkable in normal times. (If you have any doubt that we're drowning in venom, check the online responses to this column.)
The entire editorial is well worth a visit (it's the beginning of the month, so the 20 articles "free read" on JS online has just started for all non-subscribers). But, please, don't visit the comments section - it's godawful.
Mary Burke is the best choice. I'm glad one major newspaper in Wisconsin recognizes that fact.
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