On November 2nd, voters across Wisconsin will go to the polls to elect the next governor of our great state. Students right here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have the opportunity to play the deciding role in who leads our state for the next four years. I know that when I head to the polls, I’ll be voting to take Wisconsin in a fundamentally different direction. That’s why I’m voting for Scott Walker.

It is time to take Wisconsin down a better road. Over the last eight years, our state has experienced massive tax increases and record setting deficits. And as a result, we’ve lost over 160,000 jobs. As a student who plans to seek employment in Wisconsin after graduation, this is unacceptable to me. Tom Barrett’s record has shown he would take us down this same, dangerous path toward even larger deficits and higher unemployment.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett likes to spend a lot of time talking about how he has created jobs and will “put Madison on a diet.” But his record speaks for itself. A recent report shows that under his watch, the city of Milwaukee has one of the worst job creation records of any city in the country. The fact that he has raised taxes every year in office, even proposing a massive 24 percent increase has played a large part in this. And that’s not all. Milwaukee was just rated the fourth poorest city in the entire nation. We can’t let Tom Barrett do what he’s done to Milwaukee to our great state of Wisconsin.

Students have another choice this November. They can choose the bold leadership and proven record of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. Scott has a strong record of keeping taxes low and eliminating government waste. He introduced an incredible nine consecutive balanced budgets that didn’t increase taxes from the previous year. And by working across party lines in his heavily Democratic county, he’s been able to cut the county debt by 10 percent, while our state’s deficit has soared to record levels. But what makes me the most excited to vote for Scott is his plan to create 250,000 new jobs right here in Wisconsin by 2015.

As a student who will soon enter the workforce, I know that I will directly benefit from the 250,000 new jobs Scott will create during his first term in office. He’ll create them by following his common sense Brown Bag Guide to Government, which says: Don’t spend more than you have; Smaller government is better government; and people create jobs, not the government.

On November 2nd, I hope you’ll join me and thousands of other students on campus in voting for Scott Walker. We can’t continue with the same policies that got us into the mess we’re in today. Instead, we must bring Scott Walker’s bold leadership to Madison to get our state working again. Independents across the state realize this, and it’s why the Wisconsin State Journal and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have both endorsed Scott Walker. With your help, we’ll make this a Wisconsin we can believe in again.

Neil Isono ([email protected]) is junior at UW and the chair of Students for Scott Walker.