This article cross-posted from The Nation
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has long denied that he has a secret
strategy to destroy public-sector unions as part of a long-term plan to
make Wisconsin a "right-to-work" state where unions are dramatically weakened.
But, with the recall election that could replace Walker barely three
weeks away, a remarkable videotape of the governor describing just such
as a strategy has surfaced. In it, Walker is seen promising a billionaire campaign donor
that the attack on collective-bargaining rights for public-sector
unions -- which sparked demonstrations and the movement that has forced the
recall election -- was only "the first step" in a grand plan.
The billionaire would eventually give Walker more than $500,000 -- the largest donation in Wisconsin history -- to
help him advance his agenda. That donation made her the largest single
donor to the governor's effort to beat the June 5 recall vote.
The videotape, shot on January 18, 2011, just days after Walker was
sworn in as Wisconsin's Republican governor and several weeks before he
proposed to use a "budget repair" bill to gut union rights, was released
Thursday by the documentary filmmaker who filmed it.
The video is part of a documentary, As Goes Janesville, which will be shown this fall at film festivals and at PBS stations. (Full disclosure: filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein
filmed me several times as part of the making of the documentary. I did
not, however, know about the Walker footage until he shared it this
week with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.)
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In the video, Walker is shown meeting with Beloit billionaire Diane
Hendricks before an economic development session at a the headquarters
of a firm Hendricks owns, ABC Supply Inc., in Beloit.
After Walker kisses Henricks, she asks: "Any chance we'll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions?"
"Oh, yeah!" says Walker.
Henricks then asks: "And become a right-to-work [state]?"
Walker replies: "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. ... That
opens the door once we do that."
In a transcript of raw footage
from the conversation, Hendricks asks Walker if he has a role model.
Walker replies that he has high regard for Indiana Governor Mitch
Daniels, who early in his term used an executive order to strip
collective bargaining rights away from public employees and who, more
recently, signed right-to-work legislation. Walker described the use of
the executive order to undermine union rights as a "beautiful thing" and
bemoaned the fact that he would have to enact legislation to achieve
the same end in Wisconsin.
Like Walker, Daniels said during his election campaigns and early in
his tenure that he would not support right-to-work legislation. But he
changed course and championed the anti-union initiative after first
disempowering -- some would say "dividing and conquering" -- the
public-employee unions.
Though he has become known nationally as a militant foe of unions,
Walker has always denied that he attacked public-sector unions to
achieve a political end. He has also denied that he would seek to enact
the sort of "right to work" legislation that has been used in southern
states to prevent unionization in the private sector.
His recall opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, has said he believes that Walker has a long-term anti-union strategy
and that it is part of a broader plan to divide the state for political
purposes. In the video, there's no mistaking the fact that Walker is
engaging in a conversation about making Wisconsin a "completely red
[Republican] state" by attacking unions.
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John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
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