Wisconsin’s popular Democratic governor, Tony Evers, decided not to run for a third term in this November’s election. Instead, it’s a contest between Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany.
As Evers enters his last few months in office, WUWM’s Maayan Silver turned to UW-La Crosse political science professor Anthony Chergosky to talk about the governor’s impact.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maayan Silver: How would you sum up Democratic governor Tony Evers' legacy?
Anthony Chergosky: He's been governor during a time of intense partisanship and polarization. We've seen that on full display because Republicans have held majority control of both chambers of the state Legislature throughout his entire time in office.
He has consistently been part of battles with the Legislature over important policy issues. But there have been moments where Evers and Republican legislative leaders have found common ground on issues, for example, relating to shared revenue and the funding for local governments, as well as key elements of the budget that was signed in the previous biennium, and also surrounding the Brewers' stadium. And so, [his term in office has been] mostly characterized by conflict and political division, with some moments of bipartisanship.
Can you kind of drill down and let us know some of those GOP priorities and policies that Evers blocked?
He has vetoed a number of Republican bills related to hot-button social issues, like transgender issues. He has vetoed key elections-related bills that reflect the prevailing sentiment within the Republican Party. He has vetoed key tax proposals from Republicans while signing others into law. But when I think about Evers, it's not just his use of the veto, it's that he could use the veto credibly and in a real effective way, from his perspective, because the GOP never had the numbers to override his vetoes.
Is there anything that you think people should know about how having Evers in the governor's chair has impacted the state and changed people's lives?
With the Wisconsin governor, the partial veto power is unique, it stands alone, there is no veto power in any other state that goes as far as the partial veto does in Wisconsin. So I think we can trace Evers' policy influence to the budgets that he signed and the way that he has used the partial veto aggressively, including, of course, the 400-year veto, which creatively changed or eliminated certain aspects of the budget so as to provide essentially an indefinite increase in the revenue limits for public schools.
But the influence goes beyond that in terms of the back-and-forth that has happened on taxes throughout the entire Evers administration. So when I think about Evers' impact, I certainly think about the impact that he made just by unseating Scott Walker and denying Walker a third term. I also think about his impact in terms of blocking key Republican priorities from getting enacted. And I think about his impact in terms of his use of the partial veto, which has a real concrete effect on Wisconsin residents because the budget is such a central aspect of what the state government does.
