Scott Walker For President? WALK AWAY NOW!
Scott Walker announced his candidacy for President this week with promises of a better America. While our current President moved us “Forward” with the unified force of “Yes We Can,” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made promise after promise and not only failed to follow through on those commitments, but actually moved his state backward.
Scott Walker’s campaign is just getting started, but it’s never too soon to walk, or run, very far away from a man who’s record of failure presents a cautionary tale of what a Walker presidency would look like.
His (very public) record speaks for itself:
1. ELECTIONS: Scott Walker has been elected three times in a traditionally ‘blue’ state (including a recall win). This will be the centerpiece of his campaign. Let’s give him that win. But don’t forget that Wisconsin voters are no longer happy with Walker and at the outset of his Presidential campaign, he already trails Hillary Clinton in his home state.
2. ECONOMIC GROWTH: At the close of 2010, a year and a half after the recession officially ended, Wisconsin could claim one of the better economic recoveries in the country. Employment had grown at a faster clip than in most states, and the value of Wisconsin’s publicly traded companies was up almost 40 percent. Tax revenue, a sign of economic health, had risen more than 50 percent.
THEN SCOTT WALKER BECAME GOVERNOR AND THINGS WENT SOUTH. Over the four years that followed, Wisconsin’s economic performance ranked 35th in the country, according to the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States, which tracks the change in a series of economic indicators. The state has lagged Michigan (3rd place), Illinois (14th), Iowa (18th) and Minnesota (19th).
And refusing to raise the minimum wage puts Wisconsin far behind other leaders across the nation AND overwhelmingly impacts working women more than any other demographic group.
3. EDUCATION: Watch out kids — he’s coming for your teachers and your schools from K-12 all the way to universities across the state. He’s taken direct aim at teachers by limiting the ability to negotiate contracts. Teachers? Really? They’re already underpaid in, perhaps, one of the most important roles that shape the future of your children. At the University level he’s gutting funding and going after tenure, which will drive some of the best educators from the state.
4. MARRIAGE EQUALITY AND LGBT INCLUSION: While Walker’s wife and two sons applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling in support of marriage equality, Walker doubled down on his stance against same sex marriage and continues to push for a Constitutional amendment that would, once again, make same sex couples second class citizens. He takes it a step further by supporting “religious freedom” laws that legalize discrimination against LGBT individuals, couples and families based on so-called “deeply held religious beliefs” despite the deliberate separation of church and state outlined in the Constitution. Walker clearly stands in direct opposition to the overwhelming majority of Americans who now support marriage equality and laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
5. WOMEN: Governor Walker has repeatedly demonstrated his lack of respect for and, arguably, outright contempt for women. Here are four areas where Walker targeted women:
-CUT REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE ACCESS: Walker signed a 2013 law that would require women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds and require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where they perform the procedure. The law has been blocked by a judge while a challenge works its way through the courts. But Walker’s budget policies have forced even reproductive health clinics that don’t provide abortions to close. Five have shuttered under Walker, whose 2011–2013 budget cut more than $1 million in funding for Planned Parenthood clinics. Walker also tried unsuccessfully to repeal the state’s contraceptive equity law in 2011, which requires insurance companies to cover birth control.
-REFUSED TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE: Women are far more likely to hold low wage jobs than men; nationwide, women make up two-thirds of the 20 million low wage workers, in industries like home health care, child care, fast food service, and retail. A recent report on the state of workers in Wisconsin found that one in four workers in the state is living in poverty. That works out to approximately 700,000 people earning less than a living wage, which federal standards set at $11.36 an hour. And Wisconsin women are more than twice as likely to hold a job that pays less than $10.10 an hour than men.
-REPEALED EQUAL PAY LAWS: The year before Scott Walker was elected, the state legislature passed a law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to take their cases to court. In 2012, with Walker’s hard-line conservative Republican allies in control of the state government, the law was repealed. Women in Wisconsin earn 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to the Wisconsin Institute for Women’s Health, two cents less than the national average.
-SUPPORTS DRUG TESTS FOR PEOPLE SEEKING GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE: We already know how that worked out in Florida — an epic failure costing tax payers millions of dollars and uncovering less an abuse rate of approximately 1%. Overwhelmingly, working and single mothers are the key target in this demographic. “My belief is that we shouldn’t be paying for them to sit on the couch, watching TV or playing Xbox,” Governor Walker said last September.
This proposal isn’t so much an item on the Walker wish list as it is a way to polish his “tough on the poor” credentials in his quest for the Republican Presidential nomination. Federal law prohibits drug testing for people seeking food stamps, which means the idea is unlikely to become law. Food assistance recipients are hardly idle; nearly half of all food stamp benefits go to children, and some 40% live in a household where at least one person is working. According to a Pew Research Center survey, women are twice as likely as men to rely on food stamps at some point in their lives, which means drug tests for food aid would be an intrusive and costly extra step for parents trying to feed hungry children.
-PUSHED ANTI-UNION POLICIES THAT DISPROPORTIONATELY IMPACT WOMEN: Walker grabbed national attention in 2011 when he championed a bill that gutted public sector union rights. It’s a move that inspired massive protests and an attempted recall, and one that jumpstarted his national ambitions. Teaching, nursing, and social work are all public sector fields that are overwhelmingly female, and women account for more than half of all public sector union members. Walker’s most famous act as governor was to slash union membership and cut labor protections for thousands of working women in the state.
Get ready, Scott Walker will likely be the Republican nominee for President. The more you more you know about him, the more you’ll know that he has not been good for Wisconsin and WILL NOT be good for this country.
It’s time to walk Away from Scott Walker…as quickly as we can.
Ryan Siskow is a People and Organizational Capability Consultant, Social Media Strategist and Author. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa but is ‘virtually’ everywhere.
