Gavel to Gavel in 15 Seconds: Why Lawmaking Is Frozen in Key States

This article would have been better if it had led with the paragraph stating the fact that even though the people of Wisconsin voted the Republican governor out of office, the Republican party in the state legislature immediately curtailed the power of the governorship. That curtailing of the power of the governor when your party loses is effectively undermining and removing the will of the people. That should be the thrust of this article, and more should be written about this type of anti-democratic actions the Republican party took when they lost control of certain states in the 2018 elections.

"Such is life these days in Wisconsin, a state that for much of the last decade was a laboratory for some of the nation’s most conservative policymaking and a hotbed of partisan fervor..." Sorry, but this is only true if you consider the beginning of history to be the year 2010, when the ultra right-wing evangelical Scott Walker became governor and the entire legislature and the attorney general turned right wing on the coattails of the Koch brothers. Prior to that, Wisconsin was actually a progressive state with an excellent (by US standards) social safety net. This tradition goes back to the 1850s and was not disrupted by Republican governors such as Tommy Thompson. Thompson was still interested in governing a healthy state. This new bread of Republicans is firmly in Trump's camp (Walker, Fitzgerald, Vos and others). They are like locusts devouring the entire state, a plague of truly biblical proportion. Evers is a good man (he was my boss for many years), a moderate mild mannered Democrat, who breathes compromise and getting along with people. If he is blocked at every turn, if even he is outraged, that says something about Republicanism in Wisconsin and all over the country.

I happen to live in a state that has been plagued by gerrymandering. Michigan may not be the most gerrymandered (that belongs to North Carolina, with Wisconsin & Ohio not too far behind), but it is certainly gerrymandered in the GOP's favor. Now, don't get me wrong: Democrats have done it too (although not as often). Maryland is such an example. I think that the temptation for many politicians to consolidate their power is so much, that they forget about doing the right thing and focus on what they want. They end up drawing districts that are beneficial to THEM but NOT beneficial to the people. I'm GLAD that my state passed a proposal for an independent redistricting committee. Although we Michiganders still have to wait until 2022 to have elections under fair maps, the wait will certainly be worth it. I hope you Wisconsinites get fair maps sometime soon, but I'm only being optimistic, not realistic. The GOP appears to have sliced & diced your districts so badly, that the possibility of fair maps becomes hard to imagine. You do have Tony Evers, a Democrat, as a governor, and he still can veto districts. However, I do believe the state legislators in the state can bypass that veto by going to the state Supreme Court to get them OK'd. Knowing the partisan makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, it is a possibility; not a guarantee, but a possibility nonetheless. God bless you Wisconsinites. God bless you all.

So the Republicans deliberately hamstrung the Democrats and Governor before the beginning of the term, yet this article is somehow suggesting the Democrats are at fault for not getting things done? The legislature would be far less Republican had the state not been gerrymandered all to pieces. As we see time and again, Republicans have to cheat to win, and then they still have the crust to complain when people don't just let them do whatever they want.

The fact that regressive laws are no longer being passed itself a proud accomplishment. If nothing happens for the next 2 to 4 years it is better than a continuing retrenchment. The same goes for the presidency. If President Biden or Bloomberg or Buttigieg or whoever it is accomplished literally nothing, it would be vastly preferable to 4 more years of destruction.

Republicans like to exert their power, even if they are in the minority, despite gerrymandering. They have politicized the Judiciary in Wisconsin and enacted laws in a lame duck session that limited the legitimate powers of the elected Democratic governor and Democratic Attorney General. Wisconsin and Minnesota used to be sister states. Now Minnesota (under Democratic leadership has a GDP per capita of $57,807 (2017) and Wisconsin under Republican leadership has a GDP per capita of $50,431 (2017). Further, Scott Walker's signature success in luring Foxconn to set up a jobs rich facility in Wisconsin continues to fall short despite Billions of Wisconsin state government incentives.

I lived in Wisconsin in 1966 and 67 and loved it there. I can't believe what it has become. To have policies for the people, you have to get rid of every republican.

I also was born and raised in Wisconsin, learned about its progressive heritage in public school there and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison which has a progressive history. Today I barely recognize the state as one that I was familiar with and have not visited in years.

I grew up, earned three degrees, and worked in Wisconsin for part of my adult life. This article leaves out very important information: 1. The majority of voters in WI vote for Democrats running for the legislature but Republicans have control. 2. The Koch brothers funded a propaganda blitz of the state for years and managed to get Walker elected as well as other Republicans, who then enacted policies that the majority of WI citizens reject. My husband and I had planned to retire in WI but will not move there and pay taxes to support the undemocratic situation there. We would be happy to pay to support the university and schools in Wisconsin that have been gutted by the GOP.

I grew up in WI in the 50s and 60s (Milwaukee). This "new" Wisconsin is not really Wisconsin, but more like an appendix of some southern state. The influence of the northern European immigration that led to progressive laws, the "Wisconsin Idea," socialism in Milwaukee, etc., has obviously petered out. Everyone still likes their Social Security, but they don't want to remember how they got it, and what it took.

The good news- the very good news- is that deadlock is infinitely better than being a laboratory for conservative policy. There is a lesson here. Imagine if the US House of Representatives had a Democratic majority in 2016. We wouldn’t be dreaming of reversing the Republican tax gift to the rich. Until the country matures, deadlock in order to neuter Republican social malfeasance might be the best we can hope for. I am counting on young voters in the 2020, 2022 and 2024 elections to bring us to a more promising and no longer deadlocked land.

The elephant in the room is that Democrats had a large majority of the vote for both chambers of Wisconsin's legislature. Republicans hold power because of gerrymandering, so why should they care about the voters?

I was born, raised and educated in Wisconsin and I can no longer recognize the political landscape in this state. I liken the entrenchment of the gerrymandered Republican minority to the takeover of the Taliban in Afghanistan. I give Evers credit for fighting them, but if Wisconsin is going to become permanently governed as if it were deep red Alabama, then the brain drain of those who don't want to live inside the nightmare of a neverending ALEC-sponsored authoritarian experiment will only continue. I feel for those living back in Hungary on the Great Lakes.

Although I live 850 miles away for Milwaukee even I know that the Wisconsin Republican legislature stripped the governor's office of much meaningful power after the defeat of Scott Walker. It occurs to me that if I were to write a story about Wisconsin I would have the headlines say that the Democratic governor can't get anything accomplished. Rather I would simply say "Mission Accomplished for the Wisconsin Legislature".

As we have seen in Wisconsin, Kansas, Michigan if the conservative policies of the Republicans do not worked or if the Republicans are rejected by the electorate, they will not changed their policies. They will killed democracy instead. How? Gerrymandering, suppress the vote if they are in power. If they are defeated but kept the control of the legislature they will obstructed, passed legislation to limit the powers of the executive (governor). In other words, if the voters dare to reject conservative policies, or even think about it, they will just changed the rules.

Isn't this more a story about the impact of Gerrymandering than anything else?

WI is one of the most gerrymandered states in the union. It has led to Republicans controlling 65% of legislative seats while getting no more than 52% of the state wide vote. What Republicans fear is that after the 2020 census districts will have to new boundaries, the rural areas are either losing population or are static and the areas around Madison and Eau Claire and the college towns are growing. These are Democratic areas. This time there is a Democratic governor to veto Republican gerrymandering. The next two years are going to be very exciting.

Gridlock is good, because it forces both parties to work together and prevents any one party from running rough shod over the other.

I grew up in Wisconsin in the 60’s and 70’s and earned both of my degrees in Madison. I was always proud of the reputation my home state had for progressive politics but now I hardly recognize it. The scorched earth policies of Walker decimated one of the greatest land grant universities and divided the electorate for purely partisan reasons. Trying to limit the power of the incoming governor was a pathetic gasp for power that was a direct affront to the will of the voters. I hope my home state can once again become the beacon of progressive liberalism it once was.

Gerrymandering. For example, in Michigan in 2018, significantly more people voted for Democrats than Republicans, yet more Republicans are seated. Same story in the Michigan Senate. And every statewide-elected office, state and federal, is held by a Democrat. At least Michigan is changing to a non-gerrymandered process of drawing district lines that will be in effect for the 2022 election. That's an opportunity that folks in Wisconsin won't have.

Keep up the faith Democratics in WI. Next year will be even better for you. Don’t give up.

Does anyone else remember which party declared itself "the party of no"? I do. on gun law proposals - I would like to hear opponents' arguments against funding research into gun violence. getting facts would seem to be hard to argue against.

Thank you for this. One omission..... how gerrymandering has produced a Republican-dominated legislature that is intransigent and does not reflect the state.