Hold the Obits

By Charles J. Sykes

This week’s election suggests that the obituaries for conservatism in Wisconsin may have been premature, even if they were understandable.

In November’s election, Governor Jim Doyle was comfortably re-elected as Republicans at all levels of government were turned out of office. Republicans not only lost Congress, but also the state senate and much of their majority in the state assembly. Understandably, Democrats claimed a mandate and conservatives were crestfallen.

Clearly emboldened by the apparent shift to the left, Doyle quickly abandoned his longstanding no-tax pledge and proposed $1.75 billion in tax increases. Newly empowered Democrats in the state senate raised the ante even higher, raising the possibility of even sweeping expansions of the state sales tax and taxes on business.

Local officials also read the election as a sign that the property tax revolution had run its course. School districts across the state quickly approved hundreds of millions of dollars of increased spending and pushed for voter approval during the Spring election. April 7 saw more tax-raising questions on the ballot than any previous election since spending caps were imposed in 1993.

Political observers suggested that the public mood on taxes had so softened that there was a chance that even voters in conservative communities like Brookfield and Elm Grove were likely to approve questions authorizing a staggering $109 million in taxes. Franklin voters were expected to approve more than $78 million in new spending.

So the actual results came as a surprise.

The Brookfield referendum was rejected 61-39; the spending in Franklin by a similar margin and across the state, voters delivered similar verdicts and the tax revolt unexpectedly smoldered to life. All told, voters rejected more than $425 million in 36 referenda, while approving only $239 million in new spending.

And in a match-up between a conservative and a liberal for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, 58 percent of the electorate voted for the judicial conservative. The election was a sharp rebuff to the direction the court has taken in recent years as the liberal majority has become increasingly activist. With the retirement of conservative Justice Jon Wilcox, liberals had a chance to seal their dominance for a generation. From Doyle on down, Democratic politicians and interest groups such as the teachers union, trial lawyers, and Planned Parenthood rallied around Madison lawyer Linda Clifford.

Business groups and conservative supporters of tort reform mobilized to elect conservative Annette Ziegler.

Ziegler won overwhelmingly, even outpolling her liberal challenger in heavily-Democratic Milwaukee County. Her victory sets the stage for next year’s campaign to replace a liberal Doyle-appointee with a judicial conservative, which would actually tip the balance of the court to the right.

The election results suggest at least two things:

First, despite the November election, the electorate remains fiscally conservative and hostile to proposals for big spending and tax hikes. The results should have a sobering effect on Democrats rushing to enact billions in new taxes and should encourage wavering Republicans to stand up for beleaguered taxpayers.

Second, voters also remain strongly conservative on issues involving the law and the courts. J.B. Van Hollen’s victory for attorney general in the teeth of the Democratic landslide was not a fluke – even in a Democratic year voters do not want law enforcement officials who are soft on crime. The landslide approval of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage by the same voters was also a clear message that they also do not want social policies made by judges.

“If you take Bush and Iraq out of the picture,” one political analyst suggested Wednesday morning, “this is where the electorate is.”