Governor Dayton’s Baleful Influence on Labor Relations
By Jacob Laksin/FrontPageMag.com
“Don’t retreat! Recall!” declared Wisconsin’s Democrats after failing to take back the State senate through a special election this August. Now, backed by their allies in public sector unions, they are trying to heed their own slogan, repurposing their efforts in a bid to recall their principal hate figure, Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
Early media hype has cast the state’s recall campaign as a showdown not only over Walker’s efforts to reign in collective bargaining by most public sector unions but also as a referendum on the efforts of Republican governors across the country to balance state budgets by challenging union power. But the reality may be decidedly less dramatic.
Contrary to the left-wing opposition’s spin, the recall campaign is not really representative of a broad uprising against Walker, let alone Republicans nationwide. Spearheading the recall effort is a left-wing political action group called United Wisconsin. Although United Wisconsin styles itself as a “grassroots organization” of “concerned citizens” and a “growing base of volunteers,” it would be more accurate to describe it, as the Wisconsin-based conservative watchdog group Media Trackers has, as “just another front for the Democratic Party and left-wing interests in Wisconsin.”
