After a brief but bruising campaign that followed a more than yearlong fight over union rights and Wisconsin’s cash-strapped budget, voters in the narrowly divided state began casting ballots Tuesday on whether to recall Gov. Scott Walker.
The first-term Republican was back on the ballot just a year and a half after his election. Enraged Democrats and labor activists gathered more than 900,000 signatures in support of the recall after they failed to stop Walker and his GOP allies in the state Legislature from stripping most public employees of their union right to collectively bargain.
Walker faces a rematch with Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, whom he beat in 2010 by 5 percentage points, as he tries to become the first U.S. governor to successfully fend off a recall.
Walker would be just the third governor recalled in US history and the first to defeat a recall attempt.
On the other hand, liberal Madison is expecting “119% turnout,” an impossibility made possible by same-day registration and, maybe, busing in voters from out of state.
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