Wisconsin Democrat Tom Barrett Aims to Unify Party Before Recall Vote

At the Wall Street Journal, "Wisconsin Candidate Labors to Unify Party" (via Google):

After winning the Democratic primary for Wisconsin's gubernatorial-recall election, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said that as governor he would unify a polarized state. Before he gets that chance, he will need to unify his party.

Mr. Barrett, who defeated four other Democratic candidates in Tuesday's primary, has just four weeks to rally their supporters before the June 5 recall to beat Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The governor has raised $13 million in the past four months and his supporters appear energized. Mr. Walker, who has gained folk-hero status in national GOP circles, won his own primary on Tuesday with 626,538 votes—nearly as many as the five Democratic candidates combined—even though he didn't face a serious challenger.

To win, Mr. Barrett will need the labor unions that backed his main primary opponent, Kathleen Falk, a former county official, to align behind him. Major labor organizations spent $4 million backing Ms. Falk. Some of them counseled Mr. Barrett not to enter the race and circulated a video attacking him as being hostile to labor. Mr. Barrett beat Ms. Falk Tuesday by 24 percentage points.

"It's important that you have unity and you have manpower and foot power because Walker has so blessed much money," said former Democratic Congressman David Obey, a Barrett supporter. Mr. Barrett "needs those (Falk) votes."

On Wednesday morning the candidates Mr. Barrett defeated, as well as the labor groups that opposed him, all endorsed their new standard bearer. What remains to be seen is how strong that support will be for someone they earlier hoped would fail.

"We don't regret endorsing Falk, we're just focused on moving forward," said Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. "Our focus has always been about restoring our rights, the candidate that will support that, we're behind."

The recall was prompted after Mr. Walker championed a law reducing collective-bargaining rights for most public employees. Protesters marched on the state capital for weeks and eventually collected more than 900,000 signatures to force a recall. A Walker loss next month would mark only the third time a U.S. governor has been recalled from office.

Mr. Walker defeated Mr. Barrett in the 2010 election by six points. In this year's rematch, a Marquette University Law School poll released late last month showed Mr. Walker and Mr. Barrett in a dead heat, with just 4% of voters undecided. That makes it important for each party to mobilize its base, but perhaps especially so for Mr. Barrett, who has just $475,000 in the bank, compared with Mr. Walker's $4.5 million.

Polls showed that anxiety over the economy has superseded restoring collective-bargaining rights as the reason Democrats wanted Mr. Walker out. That shift helped Mr. Barrett, who is perceived as less beholden to unions than Ms. Falk. During the election, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees accused Mr. Barrett, as mayor of Milwaukee, of taking advantage of the new law limiting the power of public sector unions to negotiate.

On Wednesday Mr. Walker expressed both surprise and confidence. "We went out and were campaigning, but we didn't have an organized, sustained get out the vote effort this," he told a Milwaukee radio station. "Obviously we do for June 5th."

Actually, folks should see Althouse's post, "'Tuesday’s recall election was a giant repudiation of Big Labor'."