For Wisconsin Governor, Battle Was Long Coming

Gov. Scott Walker said the continuing protest over his effort to revamp benefits for state workers “doesn’t faze me one bit.” 

MADISON, Wis. — Just last fall, people here were waving campaign signs. But the blocks around the State Capitol have been filled for the past week with protesters brandishing signs with a different message — demanding a recall of Gov. Scott Walker, calling him a bully and likening him to Scrooge, Hosni Mubarak, even Hitler. 

Seemingly overnight, Mr. Walker, a Republican, has become a national figure, the man who set off a storm of protest, now spreading to other states, with his blunt, unvarnished call for shrinking collective bargaining rights and benefits for public workers to help the state repair its budget.

Wisconsin may seem to the rest of the country like an unlikely catalyst, but to people who have watched the governor’s political rise through the years, the events of the week feel like a Scott Walker rerun, though on a much larger screen and with a much bigger audience.

Critics and supporters alike say Mr. Walker has never strayed from his approach to his political career: always pressing for austerity, and never blinking or apologizing for his lightning-rod proposals.

He regularly clashed with the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors over the past decade when he was that county’s elected executive. He pushed to privatize cleaning and food service workers and sought changes to pension and health contributions and workers’ hours. At one point, he proposed that the county government might want to consider, in essence, abolishing itself. It was redundant, he suggested.

“All I can think is, here we go again,” said Chris Larson, one of 14 Democratic state senators who fled Wisconsin last week to block a vote on Mr. Walker’s call to cut benefits. Mr. Larson knows the governor well, having served on Milwaukee County’s board when Mr. Walker was the executive. He says that Mr. Walker is a nice guy on a personal level, “a good listener,” but that his politics are another matter.

“Unions have always been his piñata, over and over,” Mr. Larson said. “And this time I think he’s trying to out-right-wing the right wing on his way to the next lily pad.”

Mr. Walker’s supporters cheer the governor for what they see as delivering on the campaign pledge of frugality that got him elected in November and forced a surprising makeover, at all levels of government in the state, from Democrats to Republicans.

“This doesn’t faze me one bit,” Mr. Walker said Friday as thousands of protesters from around the country marched and screamed and filled every unguarded cranny of the Capitol, just as they had all week.

He said he had seen plenty of labor protesters before. Crowds of them in green T-shirts once even showed up when he presented a Milwaukee County budget proposal — one of nine proposals in a row, he boasts now, that included no tax increase over the rate the board had settled on the year before.

“I’m not going to be intimidated,” Mr. Walker said, “particularly by people from other places.”

Mr. Walker, 43, the son of a Baptist preacher, is an Eagle Scout. He opposes abortion. He rides a motorcycle. For years, he has carried the same bagged lunch to work (two ham and cheese sandwiches on wheat) — a fact he has been fond of mentioning on campaign trails. His political heroes: Tommy Thompson, this state’s former governor, and Ronald Reagan.

“He didn’t flinch,” Mr. Walker said of Reagan. “Obviously, I take a lot of inspiration from that.”

Mr. Walker once lost a bid for class president at Marquette University (which he attended but did not receive a degree from), but won a seat in the State Assembly several years later.

By 2002, when a pension scandal engulfed the Milwaukee County government, the county executive stepped down and Mr. Walker ran on a reform platform to replace him. He was never an obvious fit for a county that leans Democratic and that, in the view of Mr. Walker, was “addicted to other people’s money.”

Mr. Walker describes himself as a fiscal conservative with a populist approach. It is a label that many in the enormous and angry crowds here would question, but it has won Mr. Walker backing in recent years from Tea Party supporters, who planned counterprotests this weekend in Mr. Walker’s defense.

Barack Obama won Wisconsin in 2008, but last November, Republicans swept into power in the state, shocking many who pointed to its long tradition of union power.

 Republicans took control of the State Assembly, the State Senate and a United States Senate seat held by a longtime incumbent, Russ Feingold, in addition to the governor’s office. Former Gov. James E. Doyle, a Democrat, did not seek re-election, and Mr. Walker — who promised to bring 250,000 new jobs to Wisconsin in his first four-year term — defeated Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee and a Democrat, 52 percent to 46 percent.

“This is the one part of the equation people are missing right now,” said Scott Fitzgerald, who became the Republican majority leader in the State Senate after the election and whose brother became the speaker of the Assembly. “Scott Walker and I and my brother Jeff went into this session with the understanding that we had to deliver on campaign promises, that people wanted the Republicans to make change, that the more feathers you ruffle this time, the better you’ll be.”

Within days of becoming governor, Mr. Walker — who hung a sign on the doorknob of his office that reads “Wisconsin is open for business” — began stirring things up, and drawing headlines.

He rejected $810 million in federal money that the state was getting to build a train line between Madison and Milwaukee, saying the project would ultimately cost the state too much to operate. He decided to turn the state’s Department of Commerce into a “public-private hybrid,” in which hundreds of workers would need to reapply for their jobs.

He and state lawmakers passed $117 million in tax breaks for businesses and others, a move that many of his critics point to now as a sign that Mr. Walker made the state’s budget gap worse, then claimed an emergency that requires sacrifices from unions. Technically, the tax cuts do not go into effect in this year’s budget (which Mr. Walker says includes a $137 million shortfall), but in the coming two-year budget, during which the gap is estimated at $3.6 billion.

Democrats here say Mr. Walker’s style has led to a sea change in Wisconsin’s political tradition.

“Every other Republican governor has had moderates in their caucus and histories of working with Democrats,” said Graeme Zielinski, a spokesman for the state’s Democratic Party. “But he is a hard-right partisan who does not negotiate, does not compromise. He is totally modeled after a slash-and-burn, scorched-earth approach that has never existed here before.”

The protests last week have put people in surprising circumstances. Mr. Fitzgerald and other legislators have needed police escorts to leave their offices. Protesters have swarmed to Mr. Walker’s home, apparently to the deep dismay of his wife, Tonette.

But Mr. Walker was already preparing the ground for his showdown last fall. While still waiting to take office, he urged lawmakers, many of whom he already knew from his years in the Assembly, not to approve new contracts for state workers during their lame-duck session. Once he came into office, he would need “maximum flexibility,” he said at the time, to handle the state’s coming budget.

In the end, after emotional fights in both legislative chambers (one lawmaker was deposed by his colleagues from his leadership role), Mr. Walker got his wish. And that gave him his chance to push his own plan. Last week, he announced that he wanted to require state workers to pay more for pensions and health care; to remove most collective bargaining rights, aside from wages, from discussion; and to require unions to hold annual membership votes.

As the battle here grew into a standoff, with the protesters’ numbers swelling every day and the legislation tied up and waiting to be voted on, Mr. Walker said he was feeling perfectly fine.

To the anger of his critics, who say he thrives on publicity, he has been on television and radio call-in shows and has taken phone calls of support from some of his Republican friends. He said he was speaking with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on Thursday night while exchanging e-mail messages with Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, whom he describes as a “great inspiration and mentor,” and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida.

“Months from now, when this is enacted and people realize it’s not the end of the world,” Mr. Walker said, “not all, but I think the vast majority, including the vast majority of the public employees, will realize this was not nearly as bad as they thought it was going to be. And we’ll get back to work in the Capitol.” 

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 19, 2011
An earlier version of this article contained an incorrect given name for the Democratic state senator Chris Larson.

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At Church’s Urging, Cuba Frees 7 More Dissidents

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s government has agreed to free seven more prisoners, the Roman Catholic Church announced on Saturday.
Six of the prisoners, who were charged with crimes against state security, would be sent to Spain, the church said. The seventh prisoner said he planned to stay in Cuba.
The government has recently released dozens of prisoners, most of them political dissidents, at the behest of the church. Almost all of them have been quickly sent into exile.
But the Havana archbishop’s office said that Ivan Hernández, one of the men on the latest list or freed prisoners, had refused exile. Mr. Hernández, an independent journalist, was among 75 people arrested in a crackdown on dissidents in 2003. The inmates who have vowed to remain in Cuba have been the last to leave prison.
“This is what we have been waiting for so long!” Asunción Carrillo, Mr. Hernández’s mother, said from her home in Matanzas, about 85 miles east of Havana.
The archbishop’s office said the other six prisoners on the list released on Saturday were Roger Cardoso, Yoan José Navalon, Yosnel Batista, Juan Antonio Bermudez, Marco Antonio Zayas and Reinier Concepción.
Mr. Bermudez had been serving a four-year sentence for carrying out attacks and causing damage, and Mr. Zayas and Mr. Concepción had been sentenced to eight years for terrorism, according to the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which keeps a list of political detainees.
The commission’s president, Elizardo Sanchez, said that Mr. Cardoso was serving a 20-year sentence, and Mr. Navalon and Mr. Batista had been sentenced to prison for piracy — a category that often includes people who seize boats in an attempt to leave the island.
Ms. Carrillo said that the archbishop, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, called her on Friday to say her son “would be freed in the coming hours. He did not say when or how, but I am very happy. Imagine it!”
She said her son later called and told her that Cardinal Ortega had also told him that he was about to be released.
“It is great joy, but my son also confirmed that he is maintaining his decision not to leave Cuba, to stay in his country,” Ms. Carrillo said. Mr. Hernández, 39, had been serving a 25-year sentence.
The government arrested 75 dissidents in 2003 and accused them of working with the United States to undermine Cuba’s communist system. The dissidents have denied the accusations.
Fifty-two of the dissidents were still in prison last year when the church announced that the Cuban government had promised to free them all.
Most have been sent to Spain with a few relatives, but a small group has refused to leave Cuba, and their releases have been delayed.
Last week, however, the government freed Ángel Moya and Héctor Maseda, whose wives had crusaded for their release as part of the Ladies in White group that staged weekly demonstrations in Havana. Only 6 of the 75 original dissidents remain in prison.

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Cycle of Suppression Rises in Libya and Elsewhere

A government supporter was hit with a police baton at a demonstration on Saturday in Algiers.

 

 

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Libyan security forces moved against protesters Saturday in Benghazi, the country’s second-largest city and the epicenter of the most serious challenge to four decades of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s rule, opposition leaders and residents said. The death toll rose to at least 104 people, most of them in Benghazi, Human Rights Watch reported.

The events appeared to mark a decisive turn in four days of protests that have shaken Libya, a North African nation rich in oil. By nightfall, a deadly cycle had clearly emerged in a city where thousands have gathered in antigovernment demonstrations: Security forces fired on funeral marches, killing more protesters, creating more funerals.
The scope of the crackdown was almost impossible to verify in an isolated country that remains largely off limits to foreign journalists and, as part of the government’s efforts to squelch the protests, has been periodically cut off from the Internet. But doctors reached by Al Jazeera, an Arabic satellite channel, said dozens and perhaps hundreds were killed and wounded in the fighting, which persisted into the night. And a Benghazi resident who visited the hospital said by e-mail that 200 were dead and nearly 850 wounded; if confirmed, that would substantially raise the death toll by Human Rights Watch, which reported at least 20 people killed Saturday.
“It is too late for dialogue now,” said a Benghazi resident who has taken part in the demonstrations but refused to be named. “Too much blood has been shed. The more brutal the crackdown will be, the more determined the protesters will become.”
“We don’t trust the regime anymore,” he said in a phone interview.
The government response in Libya underlined an unintended consequence of the success of uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, where protests pouring into the streets day after day forced the departure of long-serving authoritarian leaders. In Libya, Yemen and Algeria, the governments have quickly resorted to violence to crush unrest before it gathers momentum that might threaten their grip on power.
A day of antigovernment marches in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, took a violent turn as government supporters opened fire on a group opposing the 31-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, wounding at least four people. And hundreds of police officers in the Algerian capital, Algiers, used clubs to overwhelm antigovernment demonstrators.
The crackdown in Libya has proven the bloodiest of the recent government actions, drawing criticism from the United States and European allies.
In London, Foreign Minister William Hague said he had reports that heavy weapons fire and sniper units were being used against protests, organized in a half-dozen cities or more. “This is clearly unacceptable and horrifying,” he said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, thousands had returned to the courthouse in Benghazi. Idris Ahmed al-Agha, a Libyan writer reached by telephone, said the crowd had grown to more than 20,000 by midday — an account confirmed by others — with many of the people there planning to take part in funeral marches to bury dozens of people killed a day before.
Opposition Web sites reported that security forces later fired on some of the mourners. One site, Al Manara, said snipers fired from an army base that sits on the route to the cemetery, and a video posted on a Facebook page that has compiled images from the protests showed a march coming under fire, with at least one man shot in the head. Doctors have said that most of the dead have suffered gunshots.
“It seems that security forces in Libya do not feel there are limits on how far they can go in suppressing protests,” said Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Cairo who has been in contact with residents and doctors in Benghazi.
The government has viewed the situation in Benghazi as so precarious that Colonel Qaddafi sent his son, Saadi, to the eastern Libyan city last week in an attempt to mollify resentment, residents said. In a speech Wednesday, the son promised reform, but his overtures were seen as condescending, several said. His whereabouts were unclear on Saturday, with some saying he was holed up in a hotel in the city, where Colonel Qaddafi’s hold on power is not as strong as in the capital, Tripoli, in the west.
In Benghazi, protesters have echoed a chant heard in Tunisia, then picked up by protesters in Egypt: “The people want to topple the regime.”
One of the region’s wealthier countries, Libya has been spared the economic grievances that offered a cadence to protests against President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Nor does Colonel Qaddafi seem to generate the loathing that President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali did in Tunisia. Though his rule has proven idiosyncratic and eccentric, he has a luxury not afforded neighboring Egypt: vast oil revenues and a small population.
But political grievances in places like Benghazi have deepened with the crackdown. Some accuse the state of deploying special forces and foreign mercenaries unable to speak Arabic to crush the protests, and the bloodshed — much of it inflicted on funeral marches — seems to have struck a chord of anger.
“They’re not going to go back to their homes,” said Issa Abed al-Majid Mansour, an exiled opposition leader in Oslo. “If they do, he’ll finish them off. They know the regime very well. There’s no to way to go back now. Never, never.”
The Libyan crackdown comes amid one of the most tumultuous moments in the Arab world in recent memory, with two longtime leaders falling in as many months and a series of Arab states facing defiant calls for change.
In the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, saved from much of the devastation visited on the rest of the country during the American-led war, a demonstration ended with gunfire for the second time in less than a week. Gunmen wearing civilian clothes fired on a group of students from the University of Sulaimaniya, wounding 12 people. Hundreds of students chanting antigovernment slogans had gathered on Saturday to demand the government apologize for the bloodshed at the earlier demonstration. The original protests were against local leaders in the semiautonomous area and echoed complaints across the region over the excessive power of long-ruling parties and corruption.
About 1,000 protesters demanding Mr. Saleh’s ouster in Yemen gathered for another day in Sana, squaring off against government supporters. Some protesters shouted, “Be peaceful!” but the calls were drowned out as the two sides hurled bottles, rocks and shoes at each other. Government supporters fired at protesters; one man, his chest bloodied, was carried away.
In Algiers, hundreds of baton-wielding police officers pushed back demonstrators, breaking up an antigovernment protest in the downtown. Thousands paraded peacefully through Tunis to demand the country adhere to secular traditions, in one of the largest protests since Mr. Ben Ali’s fall in January; since his ouster, many exiled Islamists have returned to the country, apparently raising concerns that that they would push for religion to play a greater role in politics. The government there also signed an amnesty decree that would free prisoners convicted on grounds of politics, security or activism.
The military government in Egypt took more steps toward a handover of power. State television reported that that within six months, the government would end the so-called emergency law which, for 30 years, has allowed detentions without charges or trial. The judge heading the effort to draft constitutional amendments said his panel might produce recommendations as early as Sunday, for a referendum in the coming weeks. And the government recognized the first new political party formed since the revolution, a moderate Islamist group that has sought recognition for 15 years.

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