Check out the website: https://lenspoliticalnotes.com Look at the recent Political Notes and Len’s Letters on the website. Political Note #347 The Financial State of the States, Political Note #358 Laura Kelly Kansas Governor, Political Note #361 Jill Underly Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction
Political Note #366 Tony Evers Wisconsin Governor
2022 General Election.
Once upon a time education issues were apolitical. Education leaders were apolitical, too.
Not always, of course. When I started teaching in Massachusetts, the law demanded a politically controversial teachers’ loyalty oath. Here’s the oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the position of teacher.”
Tony Evers https://tonyevers.com was 16 in 1967 when Massachusetts abolished the loyalty oath. Joe McCarthy was no longer Wisconsin’s Senator and, as best I can tell, Wisconsin had no loyalty oath for teachers. There was an enormous protest against Dow Chemical on campus, at the University of Wisconsin, in 1967. Dow’s chemicals were used in Vietnam. The protest became a riot. The president of the University has expressed regret that he called in the Madison police.
Tony Evers, who grew up two hours northeast of Madison, applied to the University Wisconsin anyhow, enrolled, and graduated in 1974 after training to be a teacher. He took a job in the Tomah School district two hours northwest of Madison. In 1978, he earned a Master’s Degree from the University of Wisconsin. The following year he became principal of Tomah’s elementary school. In 1980, he became principal of their high school. In 1984, when he was 33 years old, he became Superintendent of the Oakfield school district. He was superintendent for four years and moved on to another superintendency for four more years.
Tony Evers found a home as the head of the forty-school district Cooperative Education Service Agency housed in Oshkosh. He stayed for nearly ten years. Throughout the country, intermediate service agencies have become important for special education, for support with educational licensure, for professional support for school districts – for their teachers and their superintendents. These intermediate agencies have become powerful and prosperous. In New York State the legislature decided to limit the pay of the superintendents of their intermediate agencies called BOCES.
In 1993, Tony Evers explored his next step. He ran for election and lost. He lost again in 2001. In Wisconsin, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the job Tony Evers ran for, is an elected office. Wisconsin has done what it could to make this elective office apolitical. Elections are in April, not November. The primary is non-partisan. The political affiliation of candidates is not listed on the primary or the general election ballot.
Wisconsin held to the apolitical character of Superintendent of Public Instruction for a long time. In 2001, after Tony Evers came in third in the primary election for Superintendent, the winner, Elizabeth Burmaster, appointed him Deputy Superintendent. Elizabeth Burmaster has had a controversial career. Her leadership style has been challenged. Her political views have not. Critical articles about her do not mention whether she was a Democrat or a Republican.
Tony Evers was elected Wisconsin’s Superintendent of Public Instruction in the spring of 2009. Scott Walker was elected Wisconsin’s Governor in November of 2010. Walker made public education a political issue in Wisconsin. He attacked teacher unions and got the legislature to reduce their power to bargain collectively. He reduced state support for public education by “hundreds of millions of dollars” according to the Washington Post. He attacked higher education, too – attempting to shift the University of Wisconsin’s broad education focus toward a more vocational approach.
The conflict between Tony Evers and Scott Walker culminated in the election of November, 2018. Tony Evers had to become a partisan politician to protect his work in education. He could point to his having won reelection in 2013 and 2017, the latter year gaining more than 70% of the vote. He defeated the incumbent governor – 49.5 to 48.4 percent of the vote. That was a win by 29,277 votes.
Tony Evers’ struggle didn’t end when he was elected Governor. The lame-duck, overwhelmingly Republican Wisconsin legislature went to work after the election to limit the governors’ powers. They also changed the voting laws to make election of Democrats less likely. The voting changes were struck down in the federal courts.
During the lame duck period, Scott Walker made numerous appointments. Tony Evers replaced 82 of those late appointments with appointments of his own after a state court ruled that the confirmation of Walker’s appointments had violated the state constitution.
Tony Evers found his initiatives as governor blocked by the gerrymandered legislature. For instance, his proposals to decriminalize the use of marijuana and to support the use of medical marijuana were rejected. Where he could act on his own, he did. He withdrew the Wisconsin National Guard from an assignment guarding the US-Mexican border.
Events have overtaken Wisconsin politics. Tony Evers acted quickly in response to Covid-19. He declared a public health emergency on March 12, 2020. He closed down schools, banned public gatherings of more than 10 people, modified plans for the April presidential primary. He earned good marks in public polling for these actions, though some were struck down in courts.
In August, 2020 Tony Evers was faced with public gatherings of more than 10 people and a new use for the Wisconsin National Guard. In Kenosha, protests that included violence against property followed the shooting of a 29 year-old Black man. He was shot and seriously injured by police who thought he was armed with a knife. No charges were brought against the police. Charges were dropped against the now paralyzed victim of the police shooting.
Two hundred members of the National Guard were called out to keep order. Two protesters were shot and killed by a young man who came from out of state on his own thinking he could help keep order. He has been charged, has claimed self-defense, and has been set free on bail.
Tony Evers’ campaign website doesn’t refer to either Covid-19 or August, 2020. It shows a picture of him with his Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes. It speaks of the middle-class tax cut he signed, an executive order protecting LGBTQ folks, and Wisconsin’s future. News stories from mid-March 2021 report about small business owners supporting Tony Evers’ proposed budget, his acceleration of vaccinations against Covid-19, his plan for increased availability of child care, and his long-term plans to make Wisconsin’s energy creation carbon free.
Wisconsin is in safer and surer hands under tony Evers’ leadership than it was when Scott Walker was Governor. Not everyone in Wisconsin agrees. So far, one Republican businessman has declared his candidacy. Other candidates will follow. Pundits rate the race between Toss up and Lean Democrat. Tony Evers https://tonyevers.com needs your help now so that he can fund a political structure early, so that he will be hard to defeat. Wisconsin is a battleground. Biden defeated Trump by .63%, 20,000+ votes.
The Cook Report projects the following Democratic governors as Likely, or Leaning Democrat for 2022 rather than as Solidly Democratic.
Kansas Laura Kelly (Lean D) https://www.laurakellyforkansas.com
Maine Janet Mills (Likely D) https://www.janetmills.com/
Michigan Gretchen Whitmer (Lean D) https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com
Minnesota Tim Walz (Likely D) https://walzflanagan.org
Nevada Steve Sisolak (Likely D) https://stevesisolak.com
Wisconsin Tony Evers (Lean D) https://tonyevers.com
Cook thinks Pennsylvania is a Toss up. The Democratic governor is term limited.
Cook thinks Virginia, where the election is in November, 2021 is Likely D. The Virginia governor is also term limited. The June primary is packed with Democratic candidates.
Organizations to support
The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) https://democraticgovernors.org/about/ …the only organization dedicated to electing Democratic governors and candidates for governor
The Democratic National Committee (DNC). https://democrats.org The official organization of the Democratic Party
