Obama Goes To Wisconsin To Promote The Democrat Gubernatorial Candidate

10.28.2014 | Daily Surge |

With Gov. Scott Walker the center of union attacks, President Barack Obama paid a visit to Wisconsin Tuesday night to help the Democratic challenger Mary Burke.

After some delays, the president arrived in Wisconsin, where he was immediately greeted by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett at Mitchell International Airport. After a Democratic National Committee donor roundtable discussion, the president headed to North Division High School for the Burke rally.

The president began his speech with a reminder about early voting before encouraging the crowd to get out the vote for Burke, saying, “grab your friends, and grab your coworkers, and grab the lazy cousin who’s sitting at home, never votes during the midterm elections. He’s watching reruns of old Packer games.”

“Just grab him up. Take all of them to cast their ballot, and cast their ballot for Mary Burke” he added.

Obama then immediately went into why he believed the crowd should vote for Burke, “Right away you just know this is an honest person. You get a sense this is somebody who cares about people. You have an impression of somebody with integrity,” he said. “But there’s also some policy reasons and some political reasons why you need to vote. “

These policies include expanding access to Medicaid under Obamacare, raising the minimum wage and what the president described fair pay for women.

After touting his own economic policies, the president then noted, “The country as a whole is doing better; Wisconsin is not doing so good. Over the next week, you have the chance to change that. You have a chance to choose a governor who doesn’t put political ideology first, who’s not thinking partisan first. She’s going to put you first.”

The president added, “Republicans are patriots, they love their country just like we do. But they’ve got some bad ideas. That doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate them as Americans.”

Walker, the Republican incumbent, has been a primary target of criticism from Democrats and labor unions because of his state law known as Act 10. The law prohibited collective bargaining for unions on anything beyond raises tied to inflation, eliminated automatic union dues deductions from worker’s paychecks and required them to contribute more to their health insurance and pensions.

Walker and the Republican-controlled state legislature passed the law back in 2011. The governor survived a union-backed recall over the law

However, despite criticism from the left, labor groups and even the president, the law has shown great successes in many regards.

Back in September, Walker remarked, “I call on Mary Burke and the Madison school board to use our reforms to save millions of dollars for the taxpayers they represent.”

He continued, “Our reforms allow school districts and local governments to effectively manage their budgets, and so far statewide they’ve saved taxpayers more than $3 billion.”

The Milwaukee-based Public Policy Forum found that Act 10 helped Milwaukee public schools make considerable health care savings, which allowed the superintendent to propose a 2015 budget that avoided cuts in teaching positions along with allowing for some investments in new school based initiatives.

The Wisconsin gubernatorial election will be held next Tuesday.

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