SUMMARY: John Bates is a naturalist who sees his professional purpose as enabling people to develop environmental literacy. Since 2003, Bates has been particularly interested in old-growth forests, made up of trees that are hundreds of years old at minimum. Bates shares his Brief But Spectacular take on helping others “fall more deeply in love with the world” and connecting time through old-growth forests.
Republican efforts to impose voter ID laws and redraw election districts both wound up in federal court. Dale Schultz ended 30 years in state politics lamenting the recent displays of partisanship.
Dale Schultz, a Republican, served in the Wisconsin Legislature for more than 30 years, from 1983 to 2015. His Senate district is located in south Wisconsin, much of it rural farmland. Schultz was considered a moderate, and so much of what happened in state politics near the end of his tenure dismayed him; partisan fights over the rights of unions, a gubernatorial recall election, and claims of partisan Republican gerrymandering that will now be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
And then there was the prolonged entanglement over voting rights in the state — who could vote, when they could vote, how they could vote. In the face of years of political combat and federal court fights, the legislature ultimately adopted a vast array of changes to election laws. Among them:
- Voters would have to produce certain types of identification.
- Early voting was reduced.
Time frames for how long people had to be residing in the state before they could vote were lengthened.
- Restrictions on absentee balloting were implemented.
Republicans hailed the moves as overdue steps toward improving the integrity of state voting. Democrats cried foul, alleging a conspiracy to suppress votes among people of color and others inclined to vote Democratic.
Schulz was in office for the birth of the efforts to tighten voting procedures and often present for the Republican deliberations about their aims. Schultz, before leaving office, voted for the initial voting measures, a decision he came to regret. He opposed some of the subsequent measures as litigation over the issues made their way through the courts and his career wound down.
ProPublica had a rare interview with Schultz recently about the issue of voting in Wisconsin. The Q&A follows. It has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
ProPublica: You were initially in favor of Republican efforts to tighten voting and reconfigure districts. What first appealed to you about those ideas?
Dale Schultz: Well, the blunt truth is, as a partisan politician, your knee-jerk reaction is to protect the standing of your party because that solidifies your power to accomplish what you want to do. My good friend and former colleague, Tim Cullen, also served as Senate majority leader but on the Democrat side, and we've said we're both guilty of voting for redistricting maps which were politically motivated. This isn't a one party sin. It happens on both sides, and that's why we introduced our bipartisan bill to change how we redistrict in Wisconsin. I'm happy the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up the issue this fall.
ProPublica: The Republicans pushing the voter ID effort cited voter fraud as a concern and a reason to tighten voting rules and requirements. Did anyone ever show you compelling evidence of that?
Dale Schultz: No, in fact, quite the opposite. Some of the most conservative people in our caucus actually took the time to involve themselves in election-watching and came back and told other caucus members that, “I'm sorry, I didn't see it.”
In terms of voting laws, look, I don't have a fundamental problem with having to show a photo ID in order to vote, but what I do have a problem with are the severe restrictions on what kind of photo ID is allowed and also using these laws to suppress the votes of specific groups.
You need to understand, I come from the old school of the “Institution of the Senate.” When I was coming up through the ranks, and even when I was majority leader, I put great stock and respect into the chairmanship system. When you were given a chair of a committee, you were expected to put the good of the Senate above all else. So when the chair of the Senate elections committee says there's a problem with voter fraud in the state, and the committee passes a bill out, you take them at their word.
But that's on me.
Anyway, I ultimately ordered my staff to launch our own investigation and come up with three concrete examples of voter fraud in Wisconsin. Well, guess what? They couldn't do it, and you need to understand the time, I had graduates from the University of Wisconsin journalism school on staff who'd worked for national publications. But we did come up with two examples. One was a Republican legislative staffer who'd voted in the Madison area as well as back in her hometown in the same election. The other was the estranged wife of a Republican. That's it, and both examples were on the Republican side.
ProPublica: Did you ever raise the lack of evidence with your Republican colleagues?
Dale Schultz: Our caucuses were quite raucous. Our meetings and how we dealt with one another was blunt.
I asked my colleagues to show me three specific examples, and all I got was a bunch of hand-wringing and drama-filled speeches about the “buses of Democrats being brought up from Chicago.” I said, “Show me where that was ever prosecuted or even charges brought.” It was crickets. Nobody could give me an answer, and that was both an eye-opening and sad moment for me because I think it finally hit me that time-honored tradition of the “Institution of the Senate” was all but dead.
You know, I had, I think it's fair to say, a reputation for challenging the thinking of our caucuses. But if you find yourself in a situation where you're dissenting too often, pretty soon people go, “Well, he never agrees with us, he's not really one of us. We're not going to bother to listen.” So, you learn to pick your spots and try to make a difference where you can.
I want to be clear. I don't want to cast myself as some sort of superhero. Look, I'm a politician. I was for 30 years. Inherently, that means that you compromise and that everybody's hands get a little dirty as they try to work out a solution that is the best for people.
People were very frank and this is not a game for the timid. People were very emotional, but you know when it comes to casting votes, people know that once the decision is made, the team pretty much sticks together.
ProPublica: Talk about why you later came to regret ever voting for the measures.
Dale Schultz: I voted for the first voter law bill, and then I did what I'd done since I first got elected in 1982; I went out and did my regular scheduled district office hours. It took all of my first stop to realize I didn't do my homework. I had town and village clerks coming up to me saying, “Dale, are you nuts? Do you realize how restricting voting hours and early voting and absentee voting is going to affect how people can vote let alone making our jobs all the harder?” They also made it clear that there was no voter fraud happening that they were aware of. Because of the feedback from my constituents, I voted 'no' on the subsequent bills.
I enjoyed all the people I represented and it was a great honor. But there were occasions where people said, “Dale, I've heard your explanation on what you've done and why you've done it, but I think you got this wrong.” And I think voter ID was one of those.
A long time ago my father told me on the farm, if you happen to, when you're out in the pasture, put your foot in a cowpie, don't sit there and explain why you stepped in it, just take it out. And it's been my experience politically, that when you do that, and you explain the reasons, people tend to see that as a politician evolving and thinking and listening, and I think most people are hungry for that. And they're supportive of that, as long as it doesn't become a daily flip-flop.
ProPublica: The numbers are in from the 2016 election in Wisconsin. The state surprised the pollsters by going for Trump. And now there's likely to be a long debate and examination of whether the voter ID and other measures played a role in that outcome. Any early thoughts?
Dale Schultz: Oh, yeah, all of these things have an impact. Even just constantly keeping up a steady drumbeat of claims about election fraud has an impact. It motivates a base. How big an impact probably varies from state to state. In very close elections, even seemingly small impacts can have great consequences.
ProPublica: You got out of elective office after 32 years. Why?
Dale Schultz: Well, because I like to think I'm old enough and wise enough to know that there's more to life than politics, as important as it's been to me and as enjoyable as it has been to me for all those years. Then again, it's not that I haven't been bothered by the changes I'd seen around me or just the simple reality that it was less fun than it used to be as people stopped thinking and became more Pavlovian.
SUMMARY: Once a proud industrial town, Janesville, Wisconsin, was knocked for a loop in 2008 when General Motors idled its assembly plant, the area's long-time largest employer. Economics correspondent Paul Solman talks to Amy Goldstein, author of "Janesville: An American Story," about the complicated picture of how the town and its people have tried to recover and adapt.
SUMMARY: What do Americans think of President Trump's time in office so far? Judy Woodruff asks newspaper editors from around the nation -- David Bradley of the St. Joseph News-Press, David Haynes of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Lee Ann Colacioppo of The Denver Post -- to weigh in on what they are hearing from their readers.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now that we're one month into the Trump administration, we wanted to get a sense of how different parts of the country are assessing the president's time in office.
To do that, we have asked newspaper editors from three states to tell us what they're hearing from readers in their communities. And they join us now.
Lee Ann Colacioppo is the editor of The Denver Post. David Haynes is the editorial page editor for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in Wisconsin. And David Bradley is the editor of The St. Joseph News-Press in Missouri.
And we welcome all of you to the NewsHour.
David Bradley, I'm going to start with you.
Missouri is a state that went heavily for Donald Trump. He won by something like 20 points. What are you hearing right now from your readers about how he's doing?
DAVID BRADLEY, St. Joseph News-Press: I think people are fairly well satisfied with what Donald Trump is doing now.
I think he's done a lot of things that he said he would do. He's made a few misstatements over the last few weeks, but what he's done, I think, has been pretty impressive.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Lee Ann Colacioppo, what about your readers in Denver around Colorado?
LEE ANN COLACIOPPO, The Denver Post: We're getting a lot of really mixed results, mixed phone calls.
We have got people calling up really upset, angry with the Trump administration, angry with us when we have editorialized in the vein of he's lying. And then we have got a lot of people who are — so we're really hearing from both sides.
JUDY WOODRUFF: OK, we are going to pursue that.
David Haynes, what about in Milwaukee? What are you picking up from your readers?
DAVID HAYNES, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Well, Judy, it always depends on who you talk to.
Liberals in our state don't have much use of Donald Trump. Independents are a little bit divided, although they are concerned about what has been reported as some of the chaos in the White House. Conservatives in Wisconsin didn't support Donald Trump in the primary. They went for Ted Cruz, and so they're still a little wary and worried that the agenda of Paul Ryan, who is from our state, may not get passed in the way they'd like.
But what I hear from Trump supporters, mostly, is you in the media need to let him get his administration organized. And I often hear them saying that, you know, Bill Clinton didn't exactly have an easy transition either, but, in the same breath, they often will say, but, gosh, I wish he would stop tweeting at 3:00 in the morning.
SUMMARY: According to Wisconsin's strict new requirements, voters going to the polls for the April primary must now have a photo ID. While supporters say the law prevents fraud, critics say that as many as 350,000 otherwise eligible voters could be disenfranchised -- most of them poor and people of color. John Yang reports on the struggle some face in getting identification.
JOHN YANG (NewsHour): In a driving rain, Nefertiti Helem and Ernest Barksdale headed to the Department of Motor Vehicles in downtown Milwaukee.
Neither Nefertiti, who walks with a cane because she has lupus, nor her boyfriend, Ernest, has a photo I.D., and they will need one to vote in next week's presidential primary. Starting this year, the path to the polling place for many Wisconsin voters includes a stop at the DMV, which has severely cut its hours across the state.
They filled out forms, had their photos taken and waited to hear how they would fare, all with the help of community organizer Anita Johnson.
Wisconsin's strict new voter requirement was signed into law in 2011 by Republican Governor Scott Walker. It's part of a package of election law changes the Republican-controlled legislature approved along party lines. Implementation of the law had been delayed by courts.
And then last year, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect even as a challenge to part of it moves forward. Opponents say as many as 350,000 otherwise eligible voters may be disenfranchised, many of them poor and people of color.
Neil Albrecht heads up Milwaukee's Election Commission. He's appointed by the city's mayor, a Democrat.
NEIL ALBRECHT, Milwaukee Election Commission: We have seen lawmakers change the hours and the number of days that early voting can occur. We have seen restrictions around voter registration, and we have seen things like the photo I.D. law. All of those can have some effect on voter participation in an election.
JOHN YANG: Across the country, 16 states have new voting restrictions in place in this presidential election year. Wisconsin is one of 10 states with tough voter I.D. laws. It allows only limited types of identification, including a driver's license, a state I.D. or a passport.
Proponents say the new law prevents voter fraud.
Rick Esenberg is president of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
RICK ESENBERG, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty: We don't think it's unreasonable to take some precautions to assume — to assure that people won't cheat.
And I don't know quite follow the argument that voting is the one area in life where we — no one will cheat. People cheat on their taxes. They cheat on their spouses. They cheat in a variety of ways. And I don't know why voting would be something that would somehow be immune from that unfortunate human impulse.
JOHN YANG: Critics say voter fraud is rare.
The controversial law is about to get its inaugural use in a major statewide vote, Wisconsin’s April 5th primary.
On April 5, when voters cast ballots in Wisconsin’s Republican and Democratic primaries, the state’s controversial voter ID bill will face its biggest test since Governor Scott Walker signed it into law in 2011. For the first time in a major election, citizens will be required to show approved forms of identification in order to vote. The law mandates that the state run a public-service campaign “in conjunction with the first regularly scheduled primary and election” to educate voters on what forms of ID are acceptable.
But Wisconsin has failed to appropriate funds for the public education campaign. The result is that thousands of citizens may be turned away from the polls simply because they did not understand what form of identification they needed to vote.
Wisconsin’s failure to fund these public-service ads comes after a clash between the Government Accountability Board, the nonpartisan agency responsible for producing voter education materials, and the Republican-controlled legislature. In October, the agency met with Republican State Senator Mary Lazich, who was a primary sponsor of the voter ID bill in 2011, to inquire after funding and received a tepid response.
The board told Lazich that it would need $300,000 to $500,000 from the state legislature to broadcast advertisements. The legislature had twice appropriated money for public information campaigns during the 2012 and 2014 election cycles, but the ads barely hit the airwaves before court injunctions delayed the law from going into effect.
According to Kevin Kennedy, the board’s director and general counsel, Lazich thanked the board for the information, but didn’t make any promises. Lazich did not respond to requests for comment from ProPublica.
After the meeting, the Government Accountability Board decided against making a formal funding request to the legislature, which had already introduced a bill to dismantle the agency.
“We weren’t sure we would have a receptive audience,” Kennedy told ProPublica.
Two days after the meeting, the Wisconsin Assembly voted to replace the nonpartisan board with two partisan agencies by the end of June 2016. Since 2012, Republicans have attacked the board after it investigated, among other things, whether Governor Walker coordinated with outside political groups during the recount battle that gripped the state. Judicial orders stalled the investigation, and the board eventually took itself out of the probe. Walker, cleared of wrongdoing, survived the scandal.
“I think the board had become very sensitive to the fact that the legislature had become—at least the ruling party had become—very anti-board,” Kennedy said. “And they were like, ‘If you want us to do something tell us what to do, but we’re not going to go hat-in-hand to you.’”
Myranda Tanck, spokeswoman for State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, disputed Kennedy’s account. She said the legislature might have appropriated money for voter education this cycle, but did not find out there was a funding gap until the board held a press conference about it in February. “It’s something we would’ve been willing to consider,” she said.
Some researchers say confusion about what IDs are acceptable can keep voters from the polls, which is why education efforts like Wisconsin’s public service campaign are so important. A study conducted by the University of Houston and Rice University found that half of the voters who cited not having a valid ID as the primary reason they didn’t vote in a 2014 Texas congressional district election actually had acceptable voter identification.
It’s unclear exactly how many potential voters are disenfranchised by the Wisconsin law. In 2012, a political scientist who testified on behalf of the state in its defense of the statute estimated that between nearly 200,000 and 300,000 voters in Wisconsin did not possess a valid voter ID. His counterpart on the plaintiffs’ side put the estimate at more than 350,000 registered voters in the state.
Volunteer groups have spent the past few months fielding calls from voters, handing out informational fliers, holding press conferences on the law and taking voters without drivers’ licenses to the DMV to get state-issued ID cards. But they say it’s an uphill battle. “We’ve heard from a number of people who have said they didn’t have enough information about the law,” Andrea Kaminski, the Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said. “They’re surprised they didn’t see anything on TV, on the Internet.”
A unanimous state appeals court on Thursday deemed unconstitutional a portion of a 2011 law that gave Gov. Scott Walker the ability to halt administrative rules by Schools Superintendent Tony Evers, who is independently elected.
The ruling by the Madison-based District 4 Court of Appeals upholds a 2012 decision by Dane County Circuit Judge Amy Smith.
Walker signed the law in May 2011, which gave his administration a greater say in writing administrative rules, which are used to implement state laws. Administrative rules include more specifics than state statutes and carry the force of law.
Looks like Scott Walker got caught ignoring the State Constitution:
The state constitution says that "the supervision of public instruction shall be vested in a state superintendent and such other officers as the Legislature shall direct." In a 1996 case that the appeals court repeatedly cited, the state Supreme Court held that lawmakers and the governor cannot give "equal or superior authority" over public education to any other official.
The Supreme Court's ruling found that the state constitution prevented then-Gov. Tommy Thompson from transferring powers from the Department of Public Instruction to a new Department of Education overseen by the governor's administration.
"In sum, the Legislature has the authority to give, to not give, or to take away (the school superintendent's) supervisory powers, including rule-making power. What the Legislature may not do is give the (superintendent) a supervisory power relating to education and then fail to maintain the (superintendent's) supremacy with respect to that power," Appeals Judge Gary Sherman wrote for the court in Thursday's decision.
No, Scott Walker, you can't control state education. You've defunded K-12 education by $2 billion and you're stripping $300 million from our previously wonderful State University system. You've made taxpayers fund the private education of rich kids, too.
You have already done more than enough damage.
Since his 2011 inauguration, he's taken complete control of virtually ALL state agencies and has been hard at work on legislation giving him complete control over everything.
The last 3 remaining agencies or departments he doesn't completely control (the DNR with it's soon to be legislatively abolished Citizen Advisory Board oversight, the Secretary of States' Office - run by a Democrat - soon to be stripped of staff and moved to an inaccessible basement by Walker's new budget, and the Government Accountability Board which oversees elections) have now been joined by a 4th, the Department of Public Instruction.
Walker's 2011 law gave him the final say in administrative rules for public schools despite the fact that the Superintendent is independently elected. Not any more.
Aside from national fundraising and speechifying for his long anticipated Presidential run, Walker has spent every hour of every day since his election giving himself control of nearly all aspects of State Government in order to reward donors and punish real or imagined enemies or opponents.
Apparently the GOP isn't concerned that a Democrat could ever be elected as Governor in the future and wield all of that power to set things on the right path again. Maybe they're right since Republicans have friendly media in Wisconsin and mega bucks to propagandize (or suppress) the voters.
It's nice to see Walker lose a big one like this and lose a bit of the power he's grabbed. Well, that and seeing him trip on all the rakes he's been running into as a now top-tier Presidential candidate.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): More details emerged today about yesterday's deadly shootings at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
JOHN EDWARDS, police chief, Oak Creek, Wisc.: Yesterday, at 10:25 a.m., we received our initial call from inside the Sikh temple that there was a problem going on and that somebody was firing inside of there.
JEFFREY BROWN: The gunman killed six people and critically wounded three more with a .9-millimeter handgun before being killed himself by police. This morning, he was identified as Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran.
SUMMARY: After just 16 months in office, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker faces a June recall -- an effort born of protests last year as he pushed through a law limiting collective-bargaining rights for most public employees. Ray Suarez and Frederica Freyberg of Wisconsin Public Television discuss the race and possible national implications.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Like many Republicans in 2010, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was swept into office on a wave of Tea Party support. But after just 16 months on the job, he faces a recall election this June.
The effort was born of protests last year, as Walker pushed through a new law limiting collective bargaining rights for most public employees. Ultimately, opponents of the law collected a million signatures to put the governor's recall on the ballot.
The two leading Democratic challengers are Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker in 2010, and Kathleen Falk, a former county executive. Falk has received more than $4 million from labor unions, which played a key role in organizing protests and collecting the recall petitions. Falk played up her union support in a television ad received last week.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Next, a different political story, this about the continuing fallout in Wisconsin from the big battles over union rights. The governor now could be facing a recall election.
Zac Schultz of Wisconsin Public Television has he story.
FREDERICA FREYBERG, Wisconsin Public Television: And so launched the statewide push to gather more than 540,000 signatures, 700,000 for safety.
The recall drive is a joint effort that includes a group called United Wisconsin and the state Democratic Party.
MIKE TATE, Wisconsin Democratic Party: From the beginning, we have built this signature-gathering effort working with our friends at United Wisconsin to be a truly statewide effort. I know factually yesterday that there were signatures being collected in all 72 counties of this state.
LYNN FREEMAN, United Wisconsin: In Appleton, in Green Bay, in Wausau, there's hundreds of people showing up just to sign.
FREDERICA FREYBERG: For their part, Republican Party officials say Gov. Walker's leadership will prevail.
BRIAN SCHIMMING, Wisconsin Republican Party: He's not afraid of this battle at all, not at all.
FREDERICA FREYBERG: But veteran campaign operatives claim the so-called ground game being worked for this recall effort is as good as President Obama's 2008 campaign operations, only more energized. Party-paid professionals man recall offices across the state. It's a ground game that takes lots of money.
MIKE TATE: We're going to do the best we can. We know we will be outspent, but I think we will have enough money to win.
