As clocks struck 6 p.m. inside the Capitol rotunda, the four televisions in the building’s North Gallery carrying a live feed of the Wisconsin State Assembly’s floor session went black.

Five seconds later, Gov. Scott Walker appeared onscreen to what seemed like the loudest jeers in the short history of demonstrations against his budget repair bill. Walker’s decision to address Wisconsinites in primetime, preempting local broadcasts throughout the state, is much more common for American presidents than Midwestern governors.

The speech, many protesters said, had no effect on their motivation to keep returning to the Capitol. A marathon debate about the budget repair bill, which would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees, continued on the Assembly floor long after Walker’s speech.

But if Tuesday was supposed to be a turning point in the current crisis transfixing Wisconsin and the nation, it only furthered the stalemate between Democrats and Republicans in the state.

Walker’s address, officially called a “fireside chat,” did not differ greatly from previous statements he has made to the media in interviews and press conferences.

In both situations, he has referenced an apparent influx of out-of-state protesters, commended the 300,000 public employees who showed for work throughout the week and assailed Senate Democrats for leaving Wisconsin for Illinois.

“As more and more protesters come in from Nevada, Chicago and elsewhere, I am not going to allow their voices to overwhelm the voices of the millions of taxpayers from across the state who think we’re doing the right thing,” Walker told Wisconsinites in the address.

Politically, Tuesday’s Assembly session and Walker’s address, both of which had the potential to be game-changers in the crisis unfolding throughout Wisconsin, only furthered the division between public employees’ unions and Walker’s colleagues in the Republican Party.

Assembly Democrats continued debating the bill on the floor beginning Tuesday morning and lasting into late Tuesday night, insisting that the delay was a necessary part of the democratic process. They added nearly 200 amendments to the bill.

“If the governor isn’t willing to bend a little bit, why don’t we”? said Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha.

Assembly Speaker Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, told Democrats Walker’s bill was essential to Wisconsin’s fiscal viability and said he would not acquiesce on the bill unless Democrats found a method of fixing the budget situation with an amendment – more a rhetorical statement than a call to action.

“Give me an amendment that solves the budget without raising taxes,” Fitzgerald said. “I’ve heard from people I haven’t heard from in 20 years. It’s not easy stuff.”

Adding to the stalemate, the makeup of protesters inside the Capitol has changed from University of Wisconsin students and union leaders to a mixture of local public employees who said they usually go to the rotunda in the evenings.

All of them, however, said they plan to continue occupying the rotunda until their demands to allow collective bargaining are met.

“I am a fifth-generation Wisconsinite,” said Patty Werner, a teacher for Verona Public Schools protesting in the rotunda after Walker’s address. “I can’t be the generation that just gives it up.”

Nathan Germain, a UW graduate student and teaching assistant in the Department of French and Italian, said he does not know how much longer UW-affiliated protesters will be able to continue protesting without compromising.

“If anything, the resolve has increased,” Germain said. “Despite the stalemate that we’re in, I don’t think that much despair has set in…I haven’t seen from the governor or from the majority party, much willingness to talk with these people that have been occupying the Capitol for over a week now.”

With the Assembly’s debate over the budget repair bill causing further divides and political fury just steps from protesters in the Capitol insisting they will continue rallying until elected officials meet their demands, no end to the crisis appears to be in sight.

But regardless of the outcome, the week’s events have greatly changed Walker’s political recognition throughout the state or even around the country.

Charles Franklin, a political science professor at UW, said he believed Walker’s address likely could have been an attempt to refocus attention on him from national perspective back to a local, Wisconsin-based point of view.

“I think [Walker] is certainly trying to use the address to communicate his views to more voters throughout the state,” Franklin said. “But he’s had so much exposure nationally..that he hardly needs this to provide national exposure.”