Following the Nov. 4 election and a widening of the GOP’s margin in both the state Senate and Assembly, Republicans will likely have minimal difficulty passing more conservative legislation in Wisconsin.
Issues that got stymied in the state Senate in the past year will be brought to the forefront in the next legislative session, University of Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden said.
“Republicans in Wisconsin are ready to go with a really ambitious agenda,” Burden said. “They will be moving fast after the new year to push some things through the Legislature.”
The focus of the next legislative session will likely include expanding school voucher programs beyond Milwaukee to several other cities in Wisconsin, additional tax cuts, drug testing for people who are public assistants, expansion of the mine project in Northern Wisconsin and passing a more conservative budget, political science professor David Canon said.
The voter ID law will remain relevant in the coming session as well, Canon said. Republicans will do all they can to ensure that legislation requiring a government issued photo ID to vote will go into effect, he said. Even if the law is turned down by the courts, Canon said he is sure Republicans will come back and try to change the voter ID law to make it acceptable to the courts.
Because the GOP had such a substantial gain in both chambers, agreement within the party will determine the efficiency with which the state Legislature runs, Canon said.
“They have the votes to pass pretty much whatever they want to,” Canon said. “It just depends on whether or not there’s agreement within the Republican Party.”
The substantial Republican victory in the midterm election does not come as a surprise however, both Canon and Burden said.
Overall, Republicans have consistently done better in midterm elections, while Democrats have fared better in presidential elections, Canon said. Generally, he said the marginal voters who only vote in presidential years tend to be more democratic.
“History shows that presidents tend to lose seats at the state legislative level in midterm elections, and those losses are even bigger in their second term than in their first, so we knew that was going to happen,” Burden said. “Obama’s approval ratings were somewhat low so the penalty for him was probably bigger than it would have been for some other presidents.”
The other force at play in the Republican victory is redistricting, Burden said. Because Republicans were in place after the 2010 elections, they were able to redraw the district lines to elect additional seats. These new district lines were in place in 2012 and again in 2014.
Despite widespread Republican victories, the Democratic Party is still optimistic about its chances in the 2014 presidential election, Burden said.
“In 2012, Obama carried Wisconsin and Tammy Baldwin beat Tommy Thompson for the U.S. senate, which nobody thought she would,” Canon said. “I think what Democrats will be hoping for would be a repeat of 2012 or 2008 when they also did quite well.”
Democrats will count on getting the high voter turnout they get in presidential years, Canon said.
