More On Wisconsin
More than a century ago, Wisconsin pioneered progressive politics in America.
More than a decade ago, it pioneered regressive right-wing politics.
This month, it may have signaled a sharp turn away from MAGA extremism – and lit a path out of the darkness for North Carolina Democrats.
It wouldn’t be the first time Wisconsin and North Carolina, very different states, have gone down parallel tracks.
This was pointed out to me by Ferrel Guillory (pictured), emeritus journalism professor at UNC, who has been wisely and patiently pointing out things to me for 50 years now, starting when he was a reporter and later associate editor at The News & Observer.
Ferrel emailed:
“Your blog ‘On Wisconsin’ drove me to the bookshelf to recall a critical moment in which Wisconsin influenced North Carolina. The Progressive reform movement of the early 20th Century produced The Wisconsin Idea — the notion that a public university could fuel its state government to drive a state forward. See page 22 of William Link’s biography of Frank Porter Graham:
“’Wisconsin provided an example of how a public university could partner with state government…A succession of UNC presidents…endorsed the Wisconsin Idea. No UNC leader better expressed this new ethos than Edward Kidder Graham’.”
Ferrel added, “In the collaboration between Jim Hunt and NC State University in developing Centennial Campus, you could say North Carolina out-Wisconsin-ed Wisconsin.”
He said the two states’ parallels go beyond higher education: “Do a Google search, and you’ll find examples of historians and journalists comparing and contrasting North Carolina and Wisconsin politics over the years. Now you’re on the search results, too.”
The first thing I Googled was Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin from 2011-2019 who steered the state into a hard-right turn and, briefly in 2016, was taken seriously as a presidential candidate.
His campaign flopped, but Walker’s ruthless legislative gerrymandering, voter restrictions, attacks on public-employee unions and a Republican-majority state Supreme Court reigned supreme in Wisconsin.
Until this month.
A liberal Democratic judge, Janet Protasiewicz, won a decisive, 11-point victory in a race that flipped Wisconsin’s Supreme Court from 4-3 conservative to 4-3 progressive.
As John Nichols noted in The Nation, “in a historic battleground state where four of the last six presidential elections were decided by under 25,000 votes, Protasiewicz won by more than 200,000.”
Nichols added, “The judge did all this with a campaign in which she openly and proudly discussed her progressive values. She bluntly declared that Walker’s signature accomplishment as governor—a sweeping assault on unions known as Act 10—was unconstitutional. Drawing a clear line of distinction from … conservatives, she ran as a supporter of reproductive rights, voting rights, and the replacement of gerrymandered election lines with fair maps.”
Michelle Goldberg wrote in The New York Times that, after his Tea Party-fueled election in 2010, Walker and the GOP locked in their control, “enacting shockingly lopsided electoral maps and assuring continuing Republican control of the State Legislature, as well as dominance of Wisconsin’s national congressional delegation. Nothing since, not even the election of a Democratic governor, has been able to loosen Republicans’ gerrymandered grip on the state. That grip has been used to restrict voting rights, pass an anti-union right-to-work law, cut funding to education, dismantle environmental protections and make Wisconsin one of the hardest states in the country in which to cast a ballot.”
Sound familiar?
Once again, as a century ago, North Carolina’s progressives should study Wisconsin.
You, too, can learn from Ferrel Guillory. He writes a weekly column, “Friday With Ferrel,” at EdNC, which he helped found: https://www.ednc.org/category/friday-with-ferrel/
My ‘On Wisconsin’ blog: https://talkingaboutpolitics.com/on-wisconsin/
New York Times column: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/wisconsin-supreme-court-election.html
The Nation article: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/wisconsin-election-scott-walker-legacy/
More On Wisconsin
More than a century ago, Wisconsin pioneered progressive politics in America.
More than a decade ago, it pioneered regressive right-wing politics.
This month, it may have signaled a sharp turn away from MAGA extremism – and lit a path out of the darkness for North Carolina Democrats.
It wouldn’t be the first time Wisconsin and North Carolina, very different states, have gone down parallel tracks.
This was pointed out to me by Ferrel Guillory (pictured), emeritus journalism professor at UNC, who has been wisely and patiently pointing out things to me for 50 years now, starting when he was a reporter and later associate editor at The News & Observer.
Ferrel emailed:
“Your blog ‘On Wisconsin’ drove me to the bookshelf to recall a critical moment in which Wisconsin influenced North Carolina. The Progressive reform movement of the early 20th Century produced The Wisconsin Idea — the notion that a public university could fuel its state government to drive a state forward. See page 22 of William Link’s biography of Frank Porter Graham:
“’Wisconsin provided an example of how a public university could partner with state government…A succession of UNC presidents…endorsed the Wisconsin Idea. No UNC leader better expressed this new ethos than Edward Kidder Graham’.”
Ferrel added, “In the collaboration between Jim Hunt and NC State University in developing Centennial Campus, you could say North Carolina out-Wisconsin-ed Wisconsin.”
He said the two states’ parallels go beyond higher education: “Do a Google search, and you’ll find examples of historians and journalists comparing and contrasting North Carolina and Wisconsin politics over the years. Now you’re on the search results, too.”
The first thing I Googled was Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin from 2011-2019 who steered the state into a hard-right turn and, briefly in 2016, was taken seriously as a presidential candidate.
His campaign flopped, but Walker’s ruthless legislative gerrymandering, voter restrictions, attacks on public-employee unions and a Republican-majority state Supreme Court reigned supreme in Wisconsin.
Until this month.
A liberal Democratic judge, Janet Protasiewicz, won a decisive, 11-point victory in a race that flipped Wisconsin’s Supreme Court from 4-3 conservative to 4-3 progressive.
As John Nichols noted in The Nation, “in a historic battleground state where four of the last six presidential elections were decided by under 25,000 votes, Protasiewicz won by more than 200,000.”
Nichols added, “The judge did all this with a campaign in which she openly and proudly discussed her progressive values. She bluntly declared that Walker’s signature accomplishment as governor—a sweeping assault on unions known as Act 10—was unconstitutional. Drawing a clear line of distinction from … conservatives, she ran as a supporter of reproductive rights, voting rights, and the replacement of gerrymandered election lines with fair maps.”
Michelle Goldberg wrote in The New York Times that, after his Tea Party-fueled election in 2010, Walker and the GOP locked in their control, “enacting shockingly lopsided electoral maps and assuring continuing Republican control of the State Legislature, as well as dominance of Wisconsin’s national congressional delegation. Nothing since, not even the election of a Democratic governor, has been able to loosen Republicans’ gerrymandered grip on the state. That grip has been used to restrict voting rights, pass an anti-union right-to-work law, cut funding to education, dismantle environmental protections and make Wisconsin one of the hardest states in the country in which to cast a ballot.”
Sound familiar?
Once again, as a century ago, North Carolina’s progressives should study Wisconsin.
You, too, can learn from Ferrel Guillory. He writes a weekly column, “Friday With Ferrel,” at EdNC, which he helped found: https://www.ednc.org/category/friday-with-ferrel/
My ‘On Wisconsin’ blog: https://talkingaboutpolitics.com/on-wisconsin/
New York Times column: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/wisconsin-supreme-court-election.html
The Nation article: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/wisconsin-election-scott-walker-legacy/