Both Ohio and Wisconsin have Republican governors who were elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Both governors tried in their first year in office to damage public employee unions. Walker with his attacks on the ability of all unions to organize except for public safety unions and Kasich with the infamous Senate Bill 5. Walker was successful, while Kasich was not. Why? Is it because Ohio is more progressive than Wisconsin? That's certainly not, or at least it wasn't, Ohio's reputation. No, the reason is that Ohio's constitution allows Ohio's voters to subject laws to a referendum while Wisconsin's does not according to the University of Southern California Initiative and Referendum Institute. More on the second page.
Not only does Ohio's constitution contain provisions for initiative and referendums, but it also allows for voters to bring amendments to the Ohio Constitution by petition for a vote as opposed to Wisconsin's constitution. The Wisconsin constitution only allows amendments to the constitution to be submitted to Wisconsin's voters by the Wisconsin legislature.
So in 2011 Ohio's voters were able to force Senate Bill 5 to a popular vote, which resulted in an embarrassing defeat for Kasich and his Republican allies in the legislature. Wisconsin, on the other hand, was faced with only using a recall to try and remove Walker which wouldn't have necessarily involved getting rid of the anti-union legislation since the Wisconsin legislature would still have been controlled by Republicans.
Further since the defeat of Senate Bill 5 Kasich hasn't been keen on legislation that would make Ohio an right to work state. While such legislation has been introduced, it has not been a priority for either Kasich or the leadership of the Ohio General Assembly. In Wisconsin, on the other hand, we have seen the Wisconsin legislature pass, and Walker sign, right to work, better described as right to free load, legislation.
This lack of an ability to submit legislation to a referendum or to amend the state constitution by submitting constitutional amendments to voters by petition is why Walker was able to successfully hurt unions in Wisconsin while Kasich was not able to do so in Ohio.
The sad thing is that in 1914 there were constitutional amendments submitted to Wisconsin's voters that would have allowed both referendums and initiatives, but they were defeated. If Wisconsin voters would have had the right to subject Walker's legislation on public employee unions to a referendum the outcome might have been dramatically different.
According to the University of Southern California's Institute on Initiatives and Referendums only 23 states allow for referendums and only 16 states allow for constitutional amendments by initiative or petition. It should be a long term mission of progressives in Wisconsin and other states to change those numbers.
I am not saying that voters don't sometimes makes mistakes using these processes or that progressives will always like the results. In 2008 Ohio's voters adopted a state constitutional amendment that prohibits gay marriages and in 2010 they adopted a state constitutional amendment that arguably prohibits Ohio from setting up state run exchange to implement the Affordable Care Act. Populism doesn't always translate into progressive actions, sometimes populism can lead to regressive actions. But all in all voters in states like Ohio are less at the mercy of oligarchs like the Koch brothers than voters in states like Wisconsin which means that unions are also less at their mercy. That's good, because when it comes to unions, the oligarchs don't have or show any mercy.