Posted on 01/08/2020 10:36:26 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
You can be forgiven if you failed to notice a milestone in Wisconsin Tuesday, since it was about as nondescript and forgettable as the man who marked it. Governor Tony Evers celebrated one year in office with, I don’t know, some warm milk and a nap maybe? It would be fitting for a Governor elected with a shrug, inaugurated with a blank stare, and who has governed with palms outstretched as if to say, “Well, what do you want me to do?”
The answer has been next to nothing, as Evers’ first year in office has been about the least eventful in recent gubernatorial history.
Even after outgoing Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Legislature dramatically curtailed the powers of Wisconsin’s executive branch in late 2018, Evers’ biggest fight in 2019 wasn’t with them, but with FOX 6 over his refusal to turn over even a day’s worth of his emails.
And, amazingly, as of three weeks ago Evers himself didn’t even know about that fight!
When FOX 6 reporter Amanda St. Hilaire confronted the Governor over his staff’s refusal to comply with the station’s open records request, Evers expressed shock.
“When?” he said. “No, I have no idea.”
“No one’s told you?” St. Hilaire asked in obvious disbelief.
“No.”
There could have been no better metaphor for Evers’ year than that.
“Oh, [my emails will] be pretty, pretty boring I’ll tell ya,” he explained to St. Hilaire. “If I do one email a day, that’s an extraordinary day. So, we’ll work on that.”
“So you think the public should be able to see one day’s worth of your emails?” St. Hilaire responded.
“Yeah. It’s pretty boring. I mean, I can’t remember sending an email all week.”
Correction: There could have been no better metaphor for Evers’ year than that.
This also raises serious questions about what exactly he’s been doing for the past year. Never before in Wisconsin’s history has a Governor been so content to let those around him do the heavy lifting (or any lifting at all, for that matter).
Consider this year’s battle over the state’s biennial budget. Evers flatly refused to meet face-to-face with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, and instead delegated the most important negotiations of this and next year to his 32-year-old Chief of Staff.
Why couldn’t Evers be bothered to do such important work himself? It certainly wasn’t because he was busy catching up on his email.
The Governor’s apparent laziness (and/or duplicity) was evident in the only major policy win he was able to claim in the budget he eventually signed—a massive increase in K-12 education spending he achieved through a constitutionally dubious line item veto.
Evers didn’t fight tooth and nail for the cause about which he claims to be most passionate. He simply sleepwalked his way through the negotiations that could have won him a legitimate victory and then sidestepped every notion of good governance by vetoing himself a spending increase.
Conservatives should of course thank their lucky stars that Evers isn’t more of a go-getter—that his executive orders have focused on such virtue-signaling trivialities as a task force on climate change and a diversity and inclusion council—but it is nonetheless slightly unnerving that Wisconsin has a Governor who seems to have so little interest in, you know, governing.
If a chief executive’s first year (or even first hundred days) in office is his most effectual, then Wisconsin should get used to even more of Evers’ bland laziness. His stubborn inability to compromise or even meet with a hostile Legislature combined with a lack of the sort of charisma that would allow him to build a popular mandate for his agenda all but ensures that he will get nothing done in the coming year (if not the remainder of his term).
Oh well, at least he’ll have time to finally fire off an email or two.
THIS Wisconsinite is glad he's a lazy place-holder for the next Republican Governor of Wisconsin! :)
Do people of Wisconsin miss Scott Walker yet?
He had a very tough act to follow. Governor Walker instituted a lot of positive outcomes for the people of Wisconsin.
We need a guy like that in California.
Oh, every DAY, LOL!
However, he was tired of the death threats and the lunatic LibTards in our state. I don’t blame him for running a half-hearted campaign.
Also, he left a LOT of stop-gap measures in place to prevent a Dem Governor from doing much of anything, Thank Goodness!
Look for bigger things from Scott in the political arena in the future. Right now he is starting a new job with an organization that gets young Conservatives involved. (Rumor has it, he should be making $1 million a year!)
The best kind of Democrat politician today is one who does nothing. It’s when they do something is when the real trouble starts. Thank goodness for you folks in Wisconsin you have a “lazy” Democrat governing you from Madison. California and New York would benefit greatly if they had “lazy” Democrat governors and legislatures!
Is the real reason he thinks there is only one email a day is because there is someone else actually controlling his email account, and they don’t want to release them because then that will be discovered?
You bet your a$$ we do ! At least he subs on WISN 1130 every now and then - great to hear him.
The media likes to portray Democrats/Leftists as boring technocrats. The idea being, of course: “the public don’t have to worry about the dull details of government, we have wonks running things properly.”
I don’t live in Wisconsin, but I suspect if he’s a typical Leftist, he’s quietly re-opened the bureaucratic sluice gates to allow the swamp to flood back in.
The furor over Walker was that he was, step-by-step, draining the decades-long lake of “boring” bureaucratic rules, regulations, adjustments, obscure budget items, new administrators and hirings who become the leftist government machine.
I would like to fantasize that Evers is being “lazy”, but he’s a democrat, he’s up to something.
I was born & raised in Wisconsin, and I have not lived there since Feb of 1964.
I EVEN MISS SCOTT WALKER
You people in Wisconsin need to get creative. Have you suggested to the governor yet that bikini waxing a badger is a rite of passage in Wisconsin? If not, why not?
LOL! Live Badgers are hard to come by around here.
Beau spends more time in the field than any human this side of Jeremiah Johnson, and this year, he saw his FIRST live Badger in 30 years. One of our Treeing Walker Coon Hounds flushed one out when they were hunting for raccoon and THANK GOODNESS that dog had sense enough to RUN from it, versus standing and fighting it!
However, your point is well taken.
Still thankful every DAY that Governor Walker left us with a Republican House and Assembly (Senate), and he pretty much Bullet Proofed all of his legislation while in office.
He was one Smart Cookie! As I said above, expect more of him in the future. My ONLY complaint with the guy is that he’s a bit of a Chamber of Commerce Guy, but much, MUCH less than any of the other lying RINOs we’ve had to choose from in the past for President.
P.S. I hope Paul Ryan NEVER comes back to the National Stage. But, that’s probably too much to ask. :(
The guy reminds me of Sgt Schultz....
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