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It has been 25 years since Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker sought the student body presidency of a large private university. Just days before what could become only the third successful gubernatorial recall in U.S. history, UW Election Eye wondered whether polarizing perceptions of Walker were as prevalent back then as they are now.

MILWAUKEE — Polite. Dishonest. Respectful. Conniving.

Only three men have a chance to wake up next Wednesday as governor of Wisconsin. One is Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. The others are the two personalities of Scott Kevin Walker.

Marquette Professor Emeritus Janet Boles archived every assignment score of every student she taught between 1980 and 2009. (Photo by Thor Tolo/ UW Election Eye)

Depending on whom you ask, the embattled Tea Party hero fighting for his political life was either an average, well-intentioned student at Marquette University — or a disillusioned, narcissistic buffoon devoid of any moral compass as he walked over friend and foe alike in repeated failed efforts to become student body president.

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Bill Brewer first drove a Milwaukee shuttle bus in 2009 as a hobby, but now drives to make ends meet. (Photo by Thor Tolo/UW Election Eye)

It didn’t take long after landing at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell Airport for passionate opinions to be shared with our UWEE team traveling all over a divided Wisconsin ahead of this Tuesday’s explosive governor recall election.

MILWAUKEE — No sooner had I stepped aboard Bill Brewer’s shuttle bus than the friendly driver with the warm smile asked where I’d flown into Milwaukee from and whether I thought it was time for Gov. Scott Walker to “go home.”

Caught off guard by a welcome other than “Hey, how you doing?,” I collected my thoughts and asked if Walker had a chance to survive the June 5 recall election.

“I sure hope not. If he does, God help us,” said Brewer, a longtime Local 200 food worker so thoroughly disgusted with Wisconsin’s embattled governor that he never utters Walker’s name. “What he’s doing to this state and our unions will take years to fix.”

About to ask how adversely his life had been turned upside down, Brewer was bursting at the seams to tell me without even waiting for my question.

“I started driving this [bus] because I love it. I enjoy meeting folks,” he said. “Now I do it because I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring.”

There’s no time to wait for the next election, he said less softly. “Not with all these jobs [at stake] and all these people hurting.”

HUDSON, Wisc. – In this town of 12,000 on the sleepy banks of the St. Croix River, Republican Gov. Scott Walker stood on a metal chair, flanked by flags as he spoke to a packed house. With just days before a June 5 recall election, his local campaign office was lined with volunteers eager to meet Walker in person.

Gov. Scott Walker stumps on a chair on Saturday, May 26, 2012, in Hudson, Wisc. His faith doesn't come out too openly, but also he's not shy about discussing his Christian faith. (Photo by Thor Tolo / UW Election Eye)

He was talking economics. But religion was there for those who had ears to hear.

“Do any of you remember ‘this little light of mine’?” he asked, holding up a hand. Several children shouted yes. Their moms and dads nodded and smiled. Walker, the son of a Baptist preacher, said no more, leaving the words to speak on their own. A few minutes later, Walker told them to remind their friends at church on Sunday morning to vote, because “we’ve got the truth.”

For those who have watched Walker in action, these kind of subtle references to faith are usually the extent of his nod to the religious convictions of many of his supporters, and to the conservative Christian heritage that’s present throughout the Midwest.

But as Walker stepped down from the chair that day, Tony Nasvik, the president of the Wisconsin chapter of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a faith-based advocacy organization founded by Ralph Reed and allied with Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council, approached Walker, and handed him a note.

The note said that Walker had been selected to receive Nasvik’s group’s “Courage in Leadership” award, which honors individuals who have exemplified faith-based engagement in the public sphere.

They’ve liked what they’ve been hearing.

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The UW Election Eye team of Kirsten Johnson, Will Mari and Thor Tolo blanketed the Memorial Day parade in Beloit, Wisconsin. We found a few avid supporters of Gov. Scott Walker amidst a sea of blue Tom Barrett signs and stickers along the parade route.

Lifelong Beloit resident Rick Rath welcomed the challenge of feeding his granddaughter, Zoey, and articulating his support for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker during the Memorial Day parade in Beloit. (Photo by Thor Tolo/UW Election Eye)

BELOIT, Wisc. – No sooner had Gov. Walker’s recall challenger, Tom Barrett, turned the corner onto Grand Avenue for the homestretch of today’s annual parade than a heckler hollered, “Go back to ruining Milwaukee!”

You might say Milwaukee’s mayor was forced to just grin and Barrett.

Not far from one of the few Barrett hecklers stood Rick Rath, who has lived every one of his 62 years in this southern Wisconsin border town of 36,000.

“Look, what Walker has done for Wisconsin is control spending, build up a surplus of over $120 million, and do everything he promised he was going to do during the campaign,” said Rath, whose year-old granddaughter was reaching for another orange otter pop. “But the biggest reason I support Governor Walker is because he was duly elected the first time.”

Rath rattled off all the fiscal and social issues that matter most to him. “What I care about most is erasing the deficit, supporting pro-life, and understanding marriage as between one man and one woman, period,” he said. “Walker is not your typical politician. He refused to compromise any of his promises after he got elected. It’s not courageous to do what you say.”

One of Molly Leonard's four sisters, Brianna, entertained her nephew, Jaxen, and niece, Brecken, while their parents shared their support for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker this morning in Beloit. (Photo by Thor Tolo/UW Election Eye)

Directly across the parade route near the corner of Grand Avenue and Pleasant Street was a vintage Midwestern combination of conservative husband, moderately conservative wife, and two cute babies.

“All Walker is trying to do in not raising our taxes is keep this state out of debt, which is great by me,” said Chris Leonard, whose wife Molly is a proud member of the Wisconsin Realtors Association. “That’s our number one thing. We support [Walker] because he’s keeping his promises.”

UW Election Eye is on the road for three weeks, covering politics in the heartland of America. One of our points of focus is Wisconsin’s historic gubernatorial recall election, set for June 5. For some, this election is particularly personal. One union organizer in Elkhorn, Wis., isn’t shy about putting forward her views — on the lawn in front of her own home.

ELKHORN, Wis. — Mary Burpee answered the door on a sunny Thursday morning, still dressed in her robe, talking into a headset.

She didn’t seem overly surprised to see a group of four student journalists standing on her stoop. Over the barking of her dogs, we explained through her screen door: We saw your yard signs, could we talk to you?

She laughed. “Oh, you saw my ‘non-confrontational’ signs?” she responded.

One was impossible to miss. It’s a homemade, painted wood sign resting against an old oak tree. It’s pretty confrontational, all right: “If you stand by Walker, you will fall for anything.”

It turns out that Burpee is a local organizer with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). She’s lived in her home in Elkhorn for more than 20 years, and said that the area is mostly conservative. She doesn’t know her neighbors well, but her signs frequently draw a vibrant response from supporters of Governor Scott Walker and his challenger for the June 5 recall election, Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee.

“They don’t have any Barrett signs. Well, I guess I don’t blame them,” said a woman who walked by Burpee’s collection of anti-Walker signs.

Comments like that don’t faze Burpee, who said that union workers feel as though they’ve been slighted by the Act 10 budget repair bill, which was proposed by Governor Scott Walker and passed by the Wisconsin Legislature last March. Among other things, Act 10 cut down collective bargaining for most public, unionized workers and was met with fierce protests at the State Capitol. Act 10 is one of the hot-button issues in the recall election.

For some Act 10 is deeply personal. For Burpee, it hits home: she comes from a union family.

Her father was a carpenter who moved to the United States from Germany. The unions, she said, helped her family “build [their] own home and a middle class existence.”

“The changes that I see that are really harmful to people are the loss of a collective baragaining agreement and a contract to negotiate for your rights,” Burpee said. “They feel as though their voice on the job has been taken away.”

There is no such loss of voice in Burpee’s yard.

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Tom Barrett (D) will go toe to toe in upcoming recall election on June 5, 2012 (Photo courtesy of http://www.scottwalker.org/ and www.barrettforwisconsin.com/).

Walker Caught on Tape
Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) is against Tom Barrett (D) — Milwaukee Mayor who handily won the Democratic primary last week — for his June 5 recall election. The recall has received heavy national attention and national funds — approximately 2/3 of Walker’s $25 million have come from outside of Wisconsin. UW Election Eye has reported on the election before and will be in Wisconsin leading up to the election.

Recently discovered video footage of Walker has him stating a “divide and conquer” strategy against unions. In the video, Walker is speaking with billionaire Diane Hendricks in January 2011, right before he proposed a bill that curtailed unions’ collective bargaining rights. Hendricks asked: “Any chance we’ll get to be a completely red state, and work on these unions, and become a right-to-work — what can we do to help you?” Walker replied, “Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is, we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer.”

Walker has said repeatedly that he is not trying to make Wisconsin a right-to-work state, however, some have noted that his response to Hendricks suggests the beginning stages of a plan toward that end. When asked about the video, Walker has replied in Alberto Gonzales fashion, commenting, “I don’t remember the particulars of that discussion.”

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Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Tom Barrett (D) may go toe to toe in upcoming recall election on June 5, 2012 (Photo courtesy of http://www.scottwalker.org/ and www.barrettforwisconsin.com/).

May 8 = Decision Day
Tomorrow, May 8, voters in Wisconsin and North Carolina will take to the polls.

In Wisconsin, the ballot will include the next round of recall elections for four Republican state Senate seats and the gubernatorial Democratic primary. The recall elections stem from a larger campaign to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) and six Republican state Senate seats that began in 2011 over Gov. Walker’s efforts to curtail union’s collective bargaining rights. In 2011, two of the six Republican Senate seats were recalled, leaving the four up for tomorrow’s election.
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When UW Election Eye was invited to the residence of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, we discovered a remarkable number of similarities between Pennsylvania’s political climate and that of Washington State.

HARRISBURG, Penn. — Gov. Tom Corbett was glued to his son’s big-screen TV on Sunday, April 22, settling in to his rec room’s easy chair for a Stanley Cup playoff game between his two largest constituent cities: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. That’s just about the time our UW Election Eye team got waved past the plain-clothed state patrolman on the mansion’s front steps and greeted by the Commonwealth’s First Lady, Susan Corbett.

Mellon Parlor is around the corner from the site of our exclusive interview with Gov. Corbett on April 22, 2012. It was completed in December 1968. (Photo by Derek Walker/UW Election Eye)

“Call me Sue,” she said, reaching for our jackets and hanging them up in the closet of the Grand Hall entrance. The tone was set for our afternoon.

Minutes later, Gov. Corbett strolled across the wooden floor into a spacious, brightly lit Erie Room — wearing a light blue shirt and holding a soft drink in his left hand. If he is losing sleep over his current 39% approval rating, he sure doesn’t look like it. Even Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s approval rating is higher than Corbett’s, despite Walker facing a rare recall election in early June.

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Theater sign in Madison, Wisc., on March 12, 2011 (Photo courtesy of Flickr member Render Engine)

Wisconsin voters had their say in the presidential nomination process on Tuesday. OK, did that. Now it’s on to much bigger stuff: a recall election for the governor.

Wisconsin officials announced on Friday that citizens had turned in enough signatures — actually, hundreds of thousands more than necessary — to mandate a recall election of Gov. Scott Walker. If he loses, he would be only the third governor to be recalled in U.S. history, and his fate will tell us much about the political winds of 2012.

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Theater sign in Madison, Wisc., on March 12, 2011 (Photo courtesy of Flickr member Render Engine)

Wisconsin voters had their say in the presidential nomination process on Tuesday. OK, did that. Now it’s on to much bigger stuff: a recall election for the governor.

Wisconsin officials announced on Friday that citizens had turned in enough signatures — actually, hundreds of thousands more than necessary — to mandate a recall election of Gov. Scott Walker. If he loses, he would be only the third governor to be recalled in U.S. history, and his fate will tell us much about the political winds of 2012.

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