TPMDC

Wisconsin GOPer In Electoral Trouble After Voting For Walker Bill

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)

One of the people running to replace now-Governor Scott Walker as Milwaukee County Executive is a Republican state assemblyman who voted for Walker’s plan to eliminate collective bargaining for public workers.

He’s already regretting that.

“I understand it’s a major issue to the unions,” Jeff Stone said, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “It’s not necessarily the way I would have drafted this budget-repair bill. I would have approached it in different ways.”

Stone said he would have preferred to leave the collective bargaining intact, but felt the other provisions in the measure made the repair bill worth supporting.

“It’s not a perfect bill,” Stone said.

This is after Stone voted against every Democratic amendment to the budget repair bill — including ones that would have protected collective bargaining — and stood with Scott Walker when he introduced that same bill at a press conference a few weeks ago.

I think there were probably a lot of state Republicans in Wisconsin who were for Walkers bill before they were against it realized how huge a liability it was.

Labor, Republicans, Scott Walker, collective bargaining
Brian Beutler

Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.

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