Wisconsin Republicans approve bill to weaken incoming Democratic governor
Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled state senate voted just before sunrise on Wednesday, following an all-night session, to pass a sweeping bill in a lame-duck session designed to weaken the incoming Democratic governor, Tony Evers, who ousted the Republican Scott Walker last month.
Republicans pushed on through protests, internal disagreement and Democratic opposition to the measures designed to reduce the powers of Evers and the incoming attorney general, Josh Kaul, also a Democrat replacing a Republican. Critics have called the move a threat to democracy. The Wisconsin battle is one of several going on around the country where bitter bipartisan wrangling continues a month after the midterm elections.
Evers and Kaul urged Republicans not to pass the bill early on Wednesday, warning that lawsuits would bring more gridlock to Wisconsin when the new administration, and the first divided state government in Wisconsin in 10 years, takes over early in 2019.
But Republicans forged ahead regardless. The assembly was expected to pass the bill later on Wednesday, sending it on to Walker for his consideration in the waning weeks of his controversial governorship. Walker is in his final five weeks as governor after losing a bid for a third term to Evers, the state schools superintendent.
“This is a heck of a way to run a railroad,” the Democratic senate minority leader, Jennifer Shilling, said as debate resumed at 5am. “This is embarrassing we’re even here.”
Evers said he planned to make a personal appeal to Walker to veto the legislation. “The will of the people has officially been ignored by the legislature,” Evers said, adding that the lawmakers’ actions “take us back to November 6”, before the election was finalized. “Wisconsin should be embarrassed by this.”
In one concession, Republicans backed away from giving the legislature the power to sidestep the attorney general and appoint their own attorney when state laws are challenged in court. An amendment to do away with that provision was part of a Republican rewrite of the bill, made public around 4.30am after all-night negotiations.
Walker was booed and heckled during an afternoon Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the capitol rotunda.
Despite the victories by Evers, Kaul and every other Democrat running for statewide office, Republicans maintained majority control in the legislature for the next two years. Democrats blamed partisan gerrymandering by Republicans for stacking the electoral map against them.
But faced with a Democratic governor for the first time in eight years, legislative Republicans came up with a package of lame-duck bills to protect their priorities and make it harder for Evers to enact his.
“Why are we here today?” the Democratic assembly minority leader, Gordon Hintz, said as the debate of more than nine hours began late on Tuesday night. “What are we doing? Nothing we’re doing here is about helping the people of Wisconsin. It’s about helping politicians. It’s about power and self-interest.”
The assembly speaker, Robin Vos, countered that the bills will ensure a balance of power between the legislature and the executive branch.
The proposals come after North Carolina lawmakers took similar steps two years ago.
In Michigan, meanwhile, Republicans voted Wednesday to advance a measure that strips campaign-finance oversight power from the Democratic secretary of state-elect, and they moved to give lawmakers authority to stand up for GOP-backed laws if they think the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general are not adequately defending the state’s interests.
A state senate panel passed legislation that would create a commission to enforce the campaign-finance law rather than the secretary of state-elect, Jocelyn Benson, who ran in part on a pledge to advocate for election transparency.
Democrats called the bill, which could clear the full senate on Thursday, a blatant power grab that would fly in the face of voters. Republicans defended the legislation, saying the sixmember panel of three Democrats and three Republicans would initially be appointed by the Democratic governorelect, Gretchen Whitmer. The Republican governor, Rick Snyder, has not taken a position on the measure or others.
Protesters have come and gone in the Wisconsin capitol the past two days as lawmakers rushed to pass the bills. The tumult was reminiscent of much larger demonstrations in the opening weeks of Walker’s time as governor in 2011, when he effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers.
“The first thing Scott Walker did when he walked through the door of the capitol was to create chaos,” the Democratic senator Jon Erpenbach said. “The last thing he is doing is creating chaos.”