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July 10, 2020
Dear fellow Wisconsin Democrats,
This morning, the conservatives on the Wisconsin Supreme Court ignored decades of jurisprudence and stripped away some of the veto powers of the Wisconsin governorship.
We elected Tony Evers to wield a strong veto pen against the gerrymandered GOP legislature—the legislators, from Robin Vos on down, who lost the popular vote in the 2018 election and should be consigned to minority status, but who hold power due to unfair maps. Now, Governor Evers’s ability to do his job is unjustly constrained.
It’s a deliberate diminishment of democracy. It’s at the core of why we fight.
In 2018, the GOP lost with the voters. Ever since, they’ve been grabbing power through the legislature and the courts. They passed the lame-duck power-grab laws in December of that year. Yesterday, the GOP activists on our state Supreme Court upheld many of those laws. And today, those same justices executed a power grab of their own.
And what does the GOP do with its power? Undermine the health, safety, and prosperity of Wisconsinites, and fail to lead on anything else.
Case in point: the GOP’s relentless drive to undermine our COVID response. Republican legislators sued to strike down our #SaferAtHome order. Republican justices ruled in their favor. Instantly, the state’s rule against large gatherings became a mere suggestion. And this weekend, the Republican Party of Wisconsin will gather 300 delegates in person for their annual state party convention. Masks will be optional.
The GOP will be meeting in Green Bay, which has the state’s second-biggest COVID outbreak. We hope dearly that nobody—not the delegates, not the workers who are setting up and cleaning the rooms in which they meet—contracts COVID. But the fact that the event itself can take place is a testament of the GOP’s toxic combination of grabbing power and then using it to make things worse instead of better.
We know the path forward. Stop the GOP from winning supermajorities this year in order to save Gov. Evers’s veto—which, though tattered, is still critically important. Then win fairer maps after the census. Campaign and organize to win majorities in our state legislature. And then, in 2023, win a progressive majority on the state Supreme Court.
That’s the path to restoring democracy to Wisconsin—and to building a better and stronger democracy than we’ve ever had before. We must wrest control from democracy’s foes.
In solidarity for the long haul,
Ben |
