By Robert Kraig
There is a coordinated effort to rewrite Wisconsin history to undermine the legitimacy of the recall of Scott Walker. The stakes could not be higher.
The transparent objective is to persuade a small but decisive group of voters that they should not recall Walker even if they disapprove of his conduct in office.
The far-right has gone as far as to claim that the original framers of Wisconsin’s recall amendment, the progressives led by “Fighting Bob”La Follette in the early decades of the 20th Century, would have opposed its use against Scott Walker. This is a stunning distortion of the historical record.
Given the high stakes of getting the history right before voters participate in this historic election, Citizen Action of Wisconsin asked one of the leading historians of Progressive Era Wisconsin, Professor John Buenker, to analyze the history of the recall. His historical essay, published on Citizen Action of Wisconsin’s website, sets the record straight.
Professor Buenker finds that the Wisconsin progressives who framed the recall amendment were seeking to create a democratic check against corporate corruption and control of Wisconsin government. They were concerned specifically with the un-democratic power of large corporations and wealthy Robber Barons (the Koch Brothers of their era).
Professor Buenker’s conclusion is that the recall is being used in 2012 as it was intended by the La Follette era progressives. The progressives who put the recall in the Wisconsin Constitution would have been appalled by a Governor who misled the public during his campaign at the behest of billionaires and corporate interests, and after taking office perpetrated a sneak attack on the rights and livelihoods of working people. They would have been shocked by a Governor who slashed public education by over a billion dollars, and tried to force nearly 65,000 people off BadgerCare, in order to bankroll more tax giveaways for the wealthy and large corporations. They would have considered Walker’s decision to conceal from voters his plan to all but abolish collective bargaining for most public employees, and his secret promise to a billionaire to use a “divide and conquer” strategy to attack the rights of private sector workers, as convincing grounds for a recall.
Above all, the La Follette progressives would have been thrilled to see the people of Wisconsin holding a Governor accountable for such gross violations of the public trust.
The progressives who laid the foundation for wider prosperity and democracy in Wisconsin early in the last century left to us a democratic mechanism for holding politicians accountable. Walker’s sneak attack on fundamental rights and public investments in economic opportunity and security, at the behest of billionaires and large corporations, are the kind of abuses the progressives wanted to give the people the power to correct.
This democratic check on such political misbehavior was a gift to us from our forbearers who made Wisconsin famous as a bastion of forward progress. It is up to us to make the most of it on June 5th.
Robert Kraig is Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. Professor John Buenker’s essay,“The Real History of Recall in Wisconsin,” is published on Citizen Action of Wisconsin’s website, www.citizenactionwi.org
