In stop with Eric Holder, Evers hits Walker on avoiding prisons
Appearing with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Tony Evers criticized Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday for refusing to visit prisons and pledged to tour the state’s problem-wracked teen prison if he wins in November.
“The buck has to stop with the governor and I would argue for the last eight years the governor has worked very hard to be sure that the buck stops anyplace but (with) him,” said Evers, the state schools superintendent.
The Democratic candidate for governor made his comments at Coffee Makes You Black in Milwaukee alongside Holder, who served as President Barack Obama’s first attorney general and now oversees the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
Holder’s group in the past year has been spending in races in Wisconsin and around the country. Walker has said he could face difficulties this fall because of spending by groups like Holder’s.
Holder dismissed Walker’s claims that Walker had to fight off special interests given that conservative groups have spent heavily for him.
“I don’t know how familiar you are with this term, but I’m from New York — that is chutzpah on steroids — really — the notion that Scott Walker would ever say anything about outside interests coming in to affect an election,” Holder said. “But for those outside interests, he would not be the governor of this great state.”
Walker spokesman Austin Altenburg said Holder’s visit showed Walker could face an onslaught of ads against him.
“Holder and other outside special interests have already spent millions to distort Walker’s record of reform — and take us backward with far-left policies that would lead to higher taxes and more dangerous communities,” he said in a statement.
Walker has called Evers’ prison plans dangerous because Evers wants to ultimately halve the state’s prison population of about 23,500. Walker has said that will mean dangerous criminals will be put back on the streets, while Evers has said he won’t allow the early release of those who are violent.
At his appearance in Milwaukee, Evers zeroed in on Walker’s decision not to visit any of the prisons he oversees as governor.
Evers said during his first week in office he would tour Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls north of Wausau. Walker and lawmakers this spring agreed to close the prison campus by 2021 amid a raft of problems and an ongoing criminal investigation into prisoner abuse and child neglect.
Evers said he planned to talk to officers and inmates to get a better understanding of issues facing the state’s prisons.
He noted former Gov. Tommy Thompson recently said he regretted succumbing to “hysteria” about crimes in the 1990s and wished he could briefly serve as governor to reform the prison system.
“He said he’d like to have a do-over,” Evers said. “Well, we’re going to do it over for him.”
Specifically, he said he would end “crimeless revocations,” in which those on probation or parole are put back behind bars when they violate the rules of their supervision but don’t commit new crimes.
Holder urged people not to believe that criminal justice reform will put people at risk.
“Don’t let the other side scare you,” Holder said. “We can save money, and we can keep people safe at the same time.”
In an interview posted online Monday, Walker told Jerry Bader of the conservative website Media Trackers that he visited “just about every one in the past,” when he was in the Assembly in the 1990s.
But as governor he doesn’t visit “every single state agency in terms of all their different offices” across the state, Walker said.
“What I do is put people in position as cabinet secretaries and try to hold them accountable to be effective and efficient and accountable to the taxpayers and that’s what we’re doing here,” Walker said.