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With a sitting Democratic governor in Jim Doyle, the stage looks set for the party to dominate state politics.
But whether Democrats can accomplish anything of significance is anyone’s guess. They face a massive budget shortfall, haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with Doyle and won’t have Republicans to blame for stalemates.
“If we as American citizens think there’s a mess in Washington, we as Wisconsin citizens know we’re in a worse mess in state government,” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political scientist Mordecai Lee said Wednesday. “The next budget is going to be a killer because Jim Doyle has drawn the lines so brightly that he will not support a general tax increase.”
Republicans have controlled the 99-seat Assembly since 1994. But their edge eroded to just five seats in 2006, when voters fed up with the Iraq war took out their frustrations on GOP incumbents. And earlier this year, Republican Rep. Jeff Wood of Bloomer left the party to run for re-election as an independent, shrinking the cushion to four.
Smelling blood, Democrats focused on the economic meltdown on the campaign trail, touting themselves as the best choice for restoring Wisconsin to prosperity. Republicans pushed back, saying they’d keep holding the line on taxes.
According to unofficial returns, Democrats knocked off three GOP incumbents — Frank Lasee of Bellevue, Terry Moulton of Chippewa Falls and J.A. “Doc” Hines of Oxford — and took two open seats that had been held by Republicans. A late count in Milwaukee showed Republican Rep. Jim Ott beat Democrat Rene Settle-Robinson.
The final tally gave Democrats a 52-46 majority in the Assembly.
In the Senate, Democrats went into Election Day with a 17-14 majority with two open seats. All the Democratic incumbents facing re-election won, and Democrat Jim Holperin of Conover defeated Republican Tom Tiffany of Hazelhurst in a fight for an open seat.
Republican Sen. Alberta Darling defeated Democratic state Rep. Sheldon Wasserman in another close race, leaving Democrats with an 18-15 majority.
Legislative races are intensely local affairs, but both sides cited a trickle-down effect from the presidential race, which saw Democrat Barack Obama defeat Republican John McCain to become the nation’s first black president. Voters were angry with Republicans for everything from the war in Iraq to the nation’s economic meltdown, they said.
“Last night, Barack Obama had become the personification of that need for change,” said Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem. “I would take a look at the top of the ticket and realize that in bucking a trend, you can only go so far.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Katherine Cramer Walsh put it a bit more bluntly:
“It’s more of an anti-incumbent thing than a pro-Democratic Party thing. Such a huge part of that was just (a mentality of) throwing the bums out,” she said.
Assembly Assistant Minority Leader Jon Richards, a Milwaukee Democrat and a candidate for speaker, wouldn’t go into detail about what his caucus might do but promised to focus first on economic reforms. Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, issued a statement praising Holperin for his win, but didn’t return a message seeking comment on what comes next.
State Democratic Party Chairman Joe Wineke said the party’s agenda could include more environmental regulation, a statewide smoking ban, repealing teacher salary caps and a universal health care package.
But overshadowing everything is the state’s fiscal mess. Job losses in the economic downturn mean less tax revenue, and state budget officials already have projected a $3 billion hole in the 2009-2011 budget that could grow even larger. The governor has ordered state agencies to propose 10 percent cuts to their budgets.
Republicans say Democrats will have to raise taxes to pay for their pet projects. Wineke said Democrats will have to come up with less-expensive plans. Richards said Democrats plan to have a “discussion” with the state about how to best solve the budget crisis.
Doyle and Decker haven’t always been on the same page. Doyle, for example, didn’t get behind Senate Democrats’ failed attempt to pass a $15 billion universal health care plan in the last budget.
Whatever Democrats do, they’ll have to find money in ways that don’t hurt people, UW-Madison’s Cramer Walsh said.
“The trick,” she said, “is for Democrats to not gloat and realize that controlling the governor’s office and both houses of the Legislature is a huge privilege and not misuse all that power.”
