Interview With Scott Walker

I had the opportunity to interview Scott Walker yesterday.  He’s officially announcing his candidacy for governor today in a five site swing through Wisconsin.  I’ll have the text for his speech up later today.  I figure I should let him actually deliver it once before posting it.  In the meantime, here are some excerpts from my interview with him.

Owen: Why are you running for Governor?

Scott Walker: I’m not satisfied with where this state is headed and I think we can do better.  I have the experience being out there in the trenches getting it done as an executive. 

Owen: I noticed your unofficial/official announcement of your campaign on Twitter last Friday.  Is that an indication of how your campaign plans to utilize alternative media and social networks?

Scott Walker: Absolutely.  In fact, as part of my speech tomorrow, I’ll be taking an aside to invite the people of this state to be involved in this campaign and really open up a conversation.  As of 12:01 tomorrow morning we’ll have up a brand new website.  It’ll still be www.scottwalker.org, but it will have a brand new look to it.  We’ve got a YouTube video at the beginning.  We’re going to have LinkedIn and FaceBook and Twitter and as many different networking means as possible. 

We think it fits with the overall comments of our them as well because we’re going to talk about how Jim Doyle represents turning back the clock to the failures of the past.  We’re going to talk about how we’re going to build a brighter and better future. 

Owen: Nobody has won the governorship from Milwaukee is a very long time.  How do you plan to win over voters who are not from SE Wisconsin?

Scott Walker: Absolutely.  I have to laugh a bit because the same thing was true about nobody ever electing a Republican to be the Milwaukee County Executive.  We’ve broken that trend before and we can certainly break it when it comes to governor. 

Two things are going to be important for us when it comes to that.  One is reminding people a little bit about my background.  I grew up in Delevan in Walworth County, a little town about seven or eight thousand people.  I have small town roots and I’ve applied those values to everything I’ve done including being the Milwaukee County Executive.  My values and my roots are very similar to those all across the state. 

Secondly, unlike many politicians from Milwaukee in the past, I’m not of Milwaukee.  I’ve taken on the Milwaukee machine.  I’m not someone who has been a tax and spend liberal who asks for more money without accountability.  I’ve been the guy who has taken on the machine here not once, not twice, but three times and won.  We won not because we asked for more but because we said that people have had it.  They don’t want more taxes.  They don’t want government without accountability.  They want to take their government back.  I think that’s a message that resonates across the state. 

Owen: What are your thoughts on reports that Mark Neumann is planning on running?

Scott Walker: I think that a primary can have value.  Certainly if it’s a primary where we each talk about why we’re not satisfied with Jim Doyle and we’d like to do to turn the state around.  I think it could provide us a great platform if we can have that kind of a positive, issues-oriented primary that allows each of us to get our issues out.  I think it’s great because it would give us a broader platform to tell the people of this state not only what’s wrong with Wisconsin, but how we can make this a state to believe in again. 

I think in our case, the thing that it good to get out in a primary is also a good thing to get out in a general election and that it, I’m not just talking.  I’ve delivered.  I’ve been in the trenches and getting the job done.  When you talk about things like taxing and spending, I was elected in 2002.  Jim Doyle was elected in 2002.  Since then, I’ve done seven straight budgets without a tax levy increase.  Jim Doyle has repeatedly raised taxes even though he said he wasn’t going to.  Jim Doyle has the largest budget deficit in state history and one of the largest in the country.  We just finished off 2008 with a surplus.  Jim Doyle talked about reducing the size of the state workforce by 10,000 people and he’s going to be nowhere near that.  I’ve cut more than 20% of my workforce since we got started.  Jim Doyle’s debt is through the roof and his bond rating has gone down.  I’ve cut our debt by 10% and improved the county’s bond rating.  All these things are the mechanics of being a chief executive.  We both made promises – even under the most remarkably difficult circumstances.  While we’re not perfect here, nobody is, we have a proven track record that we get the job done and I think that’s a compelling message in November and I think it’s an equally compelling message in September. 

Owen: If you were presented with Jim Doyle’s proposed budget, as written, what would you do?

Scott Walker: Well, I know a thing or two about line item vetoes.  I would buy extra ink and get to work.  At a time when this state has unemployment higher than the national average – when the jobless rate is as high as it’s been since ’82.  When we’ve lost 112,000 private sector jobs since March of last year.  The last thing people want when the economy is the way it is is for state government to increase spending by 10% and increase taxes by nearly $3 billion.  I’d veto out the tax increases and I’d veto out the spending.

Owen: That brings me to my next question.  There’s the politicians’ version of spending “cuts” and there are real spending cuts that people in the private sector make every day.  Will you, as governor, push real spending cuts in state government?

Scott Walker: Absolutely, particularly when it comes to public sector employees.  I know people all across the state in businesses and workers who are saying, “my employer offered to give everybody a 1% pay cut to keep everyone on staff and as tough as that is, we did it because who wants to see a coworker laid off?”  People are talking about paying more for their health insurance premium or putting in more for their own retirement.  Those are things that are just given.  Those are things that you just have to do when the economy is this tight, and yet, people in state government aren’t even talking about that.  To me, that’s just a slam dunk.  We’d be doing that in a heartbeat. 

Owen: As you know, there has been a lot of consternation over open carry in Wisconsin.  What would you do as governor regarding open carry and concealed carry?

Scott Walker: This is exactly why Wisconsin needs a Personal Protection Act.  Having the legal right to carry.  Having a permit.  For all the hype and hysteria after Van Hollen’s release, the reality is that if people want to feel safe in this state – well, the most important thing to do is get guns out of the hands of people who can’t legally have them – is to put in place a very reasonable right to carry law like nearly everybody else in the country.  It would allow us to know, by virtue of the permitting process, that the person has gone through a course; they know what they are doing; they are perfectly capable of doing that.  In states like our neighbor Minnesota, they have had no problem with that.  Despite all the hype about the Wild West, it didn’t come to pass.  Instead, they have law-abiding citizens who know what they are doing and are well prepared to carry a firearm. 

Owen: What are you most proud of in your role as Milwaukee County Executive?

Scott Walker: In an overall sense, that we made bold promises when we ran for office and we’ve kept every single one of them.  We talked about never increasing the tax levy.  We talked about changing the pension board.  We talked about capping pension benefits.  We talked about reducing our workforce.  All the things we talked about we accomplished.  Sadly in politics, that turns out to be something unusual.  It should be the expectation. 

Owen: Any regrets from your terms?

Scott Walker:  One of the more frustrating things is that we didn’t start out more aggressively trying to contract out services.  We have the past several years, but some of these things we’ve been able to do incrementally is part of the reason we’ve been able to reduce our workforce by 20%.  When the County Board had the greatest incentive to act on what we pushed was early on when they were so afraid of those recalls.  I would have liked to have gotten more of that through early on. 

Owen: Anything else you want to tell the readers of B&S?

Scott Walker: We’re going to talk about Doyle taking us back to the hopelessness of the past.  We’re going to talk about building the future.  And what I mean, to rattle off a few examples, taxes… spending… I think back to when I was growing up in Delevan.  We were near the state line in the 80’s in almost identical circumstances.  Tony Earl, a Democrat, was the governor.  The legislature was controlled by Democrats.  A national recession.  Budget deficits.  People giving it all they had.  And what did they do?  They raised taxes.  Things got so far out of control that so many people left the state, so many jobs left the state, that there were billboards along the state line that said, “will the last person out of Wisconsin please turn out the lights.”  It was really just that bad. 

I look at this now and say these policies, this agenda, Jim Doyle’s agenda, is taking us down the same path and I don’t think we want to go that way.  Not only in taxes, but he’s pulling us back to the days when we were a welfare magnet.  Changing things like joint and several liability that will make us a haven for frivolous lawsuits.  Taking us back to a point when personally it’s very offensive to me, I was the author of two truth in sentencing bills, when he was Attorney General he said he was for it; now he’s talking about early release.  On issue after issue after issue he’s taking us back to things that we had corrected over the years. 

My hope is that we can say to the voters of this state, we don’t want to go back to the failures of the past.  We want to move the state forward.  So we’re not going to just talk about taxes, spending, and jobs, but we’re going to talk about the quality of education.  We’re going to talk about higher education.  We’re going to talk about health care.  We’re going to talk about attracting more hard working people and entrepreneurs.  We’re going to talk about public safety.  But we’re going to talk about it in a way that has a good conservative agenda – a bold agenda that I still think that the voters of this state, given a good clear conservative message, will still gravitate to.  

 

Posted by Owen at 0002 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin