Tag: mary burke
Scott Walker Wins Re-Election In Wisconsin

Scott Walker Wins Re-Election In Wisconsin

Republican Scott Walker has won a second term as governor of Wisconsin, according to multiple media reports.

Walker’s win over Democrat Mary Burke marks his third electoral victory in four years.

This breaking news story will be updated.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Still Fighting For Insurance Coverage In Wisconsin

Still Fighting For Insurance Coverage In Wisconsin

In the Wisconsin gubernatorial election, Medicaid coverage for 120,000 people hangs in the balance. Read the other state-by-state analyses in this series here.

In the upcoming Wisconsin governor’s election, which may very well turn on women’s votes, Governor Scott Walker (R) and Mary Burke (D) are vying to show women that they have their best interests in mind. Recent polls show the candidates tied statewide, but with women favoring Burke by as many as 14 points and Walker favored by men by as many as 28 points. The two candidates stand in stark contrast on a number of issues vital to women and families.

Where do women in Wisconsin stand?

• The poverty rate among women in Wisconsin is 14.4 percent, but rates among women of color are dramatically higher: 41 percent for African-American women and 31.4 percent for Hispanic women.

• One in five Wisconsin women work in low-wage jobs, and women are over twice as likely as men to hold a low-wage job.

• Women in Wisconsin on average earn only 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, 2 cents less than the national average.

• Many women and poor families with children that are eligible are not receiving state support such as food stamps and, as in most states, childcare options are few and expensive.

• Over 1 in 10 women (11 percent) in Wisconsin are uninsured, with 18 percent of African-American women and 29 percent of Hispanic women lacking coverage.

• The state has no paid sick leave or family leave policies.

Where do the candidates stand?

Affordable Care Act

Under Governor Walker’s leadership, Wisconsin set up a state-based exchange but has not participated in Medicaid expansion, leaving over 500,000 low-income individuals without health coverage. If those individuals lived in any of the four neighboring states they would be covered under Medicaid. In 2013 he made changes to Wisconsin’s existing Medicaid structure that resulted in more than 60,000 people getting kicked out of the program. Technically, many of those individuals qualified for subsidies to purchase private insurance through the exchange, but it appears that the majority (61 percent, or about 38,000 people) did not do so, though they could have purchased a plan not on sold on the exchange, obtained employer-sponsored coverage, or gotten on a spouse’s plan. According to a recent report by The White House Council of Economic Advisers, Medicaid expansion in Wisconsin would mean coverage for an additional 120,000 people by 2016. The majority of Wisconsin’s voters (59 percent) say they’d like the state to accept federal funding to support Medicaid expansion.

Burke says one of the first three pieces of legislation she would prioritize in her first 100 days in office would be accepting federal funding for Medicaid expansion.

Reproductive Health

Walker identifies as “100 percent pro-life” and has received a zero rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America. In 2013 he signed a law that would require women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds and require abortion providers to have admitting privileges as a hospital within 30 miles (though the law is currently blocked). In 2012, he indicated support for a complete ban on abortion and the adoption of a personhood amendment in the state constitution, and in 2010 he stated his complete opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. From 2011 to 2013 Walker cut more than $1 million in funding for Planned Parenthood, leading to the closure of five clinics. In 2011, Walker attempted, unsuccessfully, to repeal the state’s Contraceptive Equity Law, which requires insurance companies to cover birth control. Walker also eliminated the state’s comprehensive sex education program and replaced it with an abstinence-based curriculum.

Burke is endorsed by Planned Parenthood. She “strongly supports a woman’s freedom to make her own health care decisions in consultation with her doctor and in accordance with her faith.”  She believes the restrictions supported by Walker are simply a “roadblock” that prevent women from making their own health care decisions, and that “women should have the ability to make their own decision when it comes to decisions that concern their own bodies.” She has promised to veto a 20-week abortion ban if one arrived on her desk.

Fair and equal pay

Wisconsin law requires the minimum wage to be a living wage, defined as one that is “sufficient” and enables workers to have “reasonable comfort, reasonable physical well-being, decency, and moral well-being.” Labor groups in the state have argued that the current wage – $7.25 an hour – does not meet that standard, and one group recently announced that it is suing Governor Walker to demand an increase. Sixty-one percent of likely Wisconsin voters favor increasing the minimum wage, a move that would increase the incomes of 333,000 women in the state.

In 2012, Walker supported the repeal of a law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to take their cases to court. He is against increasing the minimum wage and recently accused those who are in support of it as being “involved in a ‘political grandstanding stunt’ to make ‘a cheap headline.’” He has said that he wants to focus on creating new jobs that pay better, not raising the wage of current jobs. In 2011, Walker received national attention for his support of a bill that dismantled the rights of public sector unions, a move that was a key motivator of the recall election he successfully fought off in 2012.

Burke is in favor of gradually raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour over the next three years. “People working full-time should be able to support themselves without having to rely on government assistance. At $7.25 an hour, that’s just unrealistic.” Burke also says one of the first three pieces of legislation she would introduce and make a priority in the first 100 days in office is raising the minimum wage. She has also come out in opposition to Walker’s attack on unions, saying it was more than an attempt to address budget concerns, and was really “about undercutting our unions and taking away what I believe should be their right to collectively bargain.” In addition to her stance on the minimum wage, Burke was applauded by First Lady Michelle Obama, who recently campaigned for her in the state, for being a leader who would fight for pay equity.

Social Safety Net

Walker believes that safety net benefits serve as incentives that prevent people from working. As such, he has supported drug testing for unemployment benefits and food stamps. In September he said, “My belief is that we shouldn’t be paying for them to sit on the couch, watching TV or playing Xbox.”

Burke is generally supportive of safety net programs such as unemployment insurance. “Making sure that people can access unemployment insurance while looking for work, bridging the gap between jobs, is important to ensuring economic stability.”

Read the rest of this series here.

Andrea Flynn is a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Follow her on Twitter @dreaflynn.

Shulie Eisen is an independent reproductive health care consultant. Follow her on Twitter @shulieeisen.

Cross-posted from the Roosevelt Institute’s Next New Deal blog.

The Roosevelt Institute is a non-profit organization devoted to carrying forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Photo: President Obama and Mary Burke appear Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014, at North Division High School in Milwaukee. Burke, a Democrat and former Trek Bicycle Corp. executive, is running against Republican Gov. Scott Walker. (Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MCT)

In Wisconsin Campaign, Obama Is Asked To Preach Only To The Choir

In Wisconsin Campaign, Obama Is Asked To Preach Only To The Choir

By Kathleen Hennessey, Tribune Washington Bureau

MILWAUKEE — If there is a place in America where President Barack Obama can guarantee a warm welcome, it should be this city’s North Division High School, a polling place for a largely black precinct. In the last two presidential elections, Obama’s two GOP opponents scraped together just eight votes here — between them.

Yet Obama campaigned in the packed school gymnasium Tuesday not to celebrate the power of his electoral legacy but to fight a weakness. The groups the Democratic Party counts on for votes — blacks, young people, women and Latinos — regularly stay home in greater numbers in midterm elections.

When Obama’s name is not on the ballot, turnout here nosedives, as it does in many predominantly black neighborhoods in the U.S., and Democrats suffer.

Obama was dispatched to try to ease that pain and to campaign for Mary Burke, the Democrat trying to oust GOP Gov. Scott Walker. He painted a stark picture of the stakes, playing off black voters’ loyalty.

“Grab your friends, grab your co-workers, grab, you know, the lazy cousin sitting at home who never votes in midterm elections; he’s watching reruns of old Packer games,” Obama said. “Take all of them to cast a ballot and cast a ballot for Mary Burke.”

It’s a message he’s been quietly pushing for weeks on black radio and in community newspapers and digital ads. The White House and Democratic National Committee plan to keep up the focus in the final week with robocalls, mailers and Web ads targeting base voters.

On Tuesday, the DNC released a video showing clips of young people knocking on doors interspersed with snippets of a speech Obama gave to a mostly black audience, exhorting them as well to get friends, relatives and neighbors to cast votes.

“Go out and get your friends to vote. Go out and get your co-workers to vote! Remember, the power is in your hands,” Obama says.

Obama’s reliance on these lower-profile tactics is a sign of his sunken popularity among most other voters. Democratic candidates fighting for Senate seats in North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere could use help juicing up their base but have decided they can’t risk the backlash from independents and swing voters if the president were to widely campaign on their behalf.

That has confined Obama to the deepest blue pockets of deep blue cities. His trip to Wisconsin was the first in a final blitz of rallies in Democratic strongholds. He’s due this week to campaign primarily for governors — a group less vulnerable to Republican attempts to tie them to Obama than Senate candidates are — in Portland, Maine; Philadelphia; and Detroit.

Wisconsin offers a clear picture of what is considered safe territory for the battered president. Obama won the state solidly twice. Although his approval rating in the state has fallen from its 2012 re-election high of 53 percent to an average in the low to mid-40s, it has typically floated just above his national rating, said Charles Franklin, a pollster for the Marquette University Law School poll.

“The key thing is, he’s not campaigning throughout the state. He’s coming to Milwaukee, the single largest bastion of Democrats in the state, and he’s going to a ward that votes 99 percent for him,” Franklin said. “Rather than a show of strength, it’s a show of how constrained his ability to help campaigns is right now.”

Obama’s appearances are an opportunity for Republicans too — to implore their own loyal voters to cast ballots, and to raise money. Walker emailed supporters hours ahead of Obama’s arrival asking for donations “so we can turn Mary Burke’s publicity stunt against her.”

The state also neatly demonstrates the party’s midterm woes. Democrats running statewide rely on running up the score in the major cities of Milwaukee and Madison to offset losses in suburbs and rural parts of the state. But in Milwaukee, where Obama won 79 percent of the vote two years ago, Democratic voters disappeared in 2010. In 2008, 275,000 people cast ballots in the city. Two years later, that number fell to just 187,000. In 2010, 62 percent of registered voters showed up. In 2012, it was 87 percent.

Republicans typically see turnout fall about 10 percent to 20 percent statewide, Franklin noted.

Democrats have been working to replicate the Obama turnout machine — without Obama — in Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina with a months-long voter registration campaign and an early-voting push aimed at black voters.

Polling has shown blacks remain Obama’s most loyal bloc of supporters. His approval rating among black voters has consistently been about 40 percentage points higher than the national average, according to the Gallup poll.

It’s not surprising, then, that Obama’s message has appealed to this allegiance. A DNC ad running in black newspapers, including the Milwaukee Community Journal, tells voters, “Get his back — Republicans have made it clear that they want our president — Barack Obama — to fail. If you don’t vote this November 4, they win.”

Tuesday’s election, Obama said, is “a choice about two different visions for America and it boils down to … who’s going to fight for you?”

Obama was briefly interrupted by a protester objecting to his policy on deporting immigrants who entered this country illegally. The president told the crowd the woman should aim her frustration at Republicans who have blocked immigration reform in Congress.

Obama and Burke focused their pitch on the economy. Burke promised “a fair shot” for the middle class and more jobs. “Too many folks work harder than ever and actually have less to show for it,” she said.

Wisconsin lags the nation in job growth, Obama said. “You have a chance to change that.”

Demetrious Lewis, a 52-year-old special education assistant at a middle school, said she’s focused on ousting Walker because she thinks he hasn’t done enough to create jobs in her community.

“We need some changes,” she said as she waited to hear Obama speak. “Things aren’t going good for a lot of people in the neighborhood — jobs-wise.

“We need some changes,” she repeated.

Although Lewis said she’s certain to vote, she noted the excitement in the gymnasium was not matched in the neighborhood outside.

“Compared to the crowd in here, I don’t know,” she said, trailing off. “I hope everyone is going to get out there. I hope.”

AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski

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Midterm Roundup: Scott Walker Might Be In Trouble

Midterm Roundup: Scott Walker Might Be In Trouble

Here are some interesting stories on the midterm campaigns that you may have missed on Wednesday, October 15:

• Having failed to oust Republican governor Scott Walker with an unapologetically progressive challenge in 2012, Wisconsin Democrats are trying a new tactic this year: moderation. There are signs that Democrat Mary Burke’s centrist challenge is gaining steam: She has drawn even with Walker in the latest Marquette University Law School poll, and Walker now leads by less than 1 percent in the Real Clear Politicspoll average. But Walker still has one big advantage: His Republican base is a much safer bet to turn out in big numbers than Burke’s coalition.

• Due to the latest case of Ebola in Texas, President Barack Obama canceled his planned campaign rally in Connecticut with Governor Dannel Malloy. The Democratic incumbent could use all the help he can get in his re-election fight; he leads Republican Tom Foley by just 2 percent in the poll average.

• A new CNN/ORC poll of Colorado’s Senate race finds Republican Rep. Cory Gardner leading Democratic incumbent Mark Udall, 50 to 46 percent. The poll is the latest in a series to show Gardner in a good position, and he’s now up 2 percent in the poll average. Democrats maintain that Colorado polls have historically overestimated Republicans’ chances in Colorado, and that Udall’s support may be stronger than it presently appears.

• Two new polls find Republican Joni Ernst leading Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley in Iowa’s Senate race. Quinnipiac has Ernst up 47 to 45 percent, while USA Today/Suffolk University shows her up 47 to 43 percent. The surveys push Ernst’s narrow lead in the poll average up to 1.6 percent.

• And if you’re overwhelmed by all of the predictions from various election forecasters, this handy chart from The Upshot should help you keep them straight.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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