Amazing GOTV effort in WI could bring Barrett a win

From the Friends of Teamsters Local 222 Facebook page.

In just a few hours the polls will open in Wisconsin. The energy surrounding the election is reaching a fever pitch in Milwaukee, where We Are Wisconsin knocked on more than 257,000 doors on Saturday alone.

Workers and activists have been canvassing and phone-banking for weeks in a high-stakes struggle to beat back Gov. Scott Walker’s well-financed campaign. Walker that has outspent his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, 20-to-1.

The flood of out-of-state corporate money that has deluged the Wisconsin recall on Walker’s behalf has reached over $30 million – the most money ever raised by a public candidate in the state’s history.

The Nation’s John Nichols wrote this weekend,

Governor Scott Walker is not trying to win the Wisconsin recall election that will be held June 5. He is trying to buy it. If the embattled governor does prevail, he will provide essential evidence not of his own appeal but of the power of money to define our politics.

But activists and union members have mounted a huge get-out-the-vote operation that relies on people power to defeat the governor.

And as the election comes down to the wire, more news broke today about the governor’s role in the John Doe corruption investigation:

Scott Walker's closest political aide has just been named in Milwaukee County Circuit Court Monday as the source of damaging revelations that undermine Walker's claim that he has cooperated with the John Doe criminal corruption probe into his current and former administrations.

Tim Russell…was said in court Monday to have given Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice information that showed that, contrary to Walker's claims, Walker was stonewalling investigators all along.

Ever since Walker rammed through legislation last year that stripped collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, the Badger State has been ground zero for the war on workers. And we’ve learned a lot about Walker over the past year.

Most important, Wisconsin's economy has suffered under his policies. According to the federal government, Wisconsin had the worst job record of any state in the country. To counter that fact, Walker put out his own job numbers that the Bureau of Labor Statistics would not confirm.

Walker is famous for being the only governor in Wisconsin history to set up his own criminal defense fund. The governor was caught detailing his divide-and-conquer strategy against unions in the state. And last week, we learned about Walker’s “deer czar” who has a history of taking public land away from hunters.

So, it’s not surprising that Walker has felt the need to spend enormous sums on ads attacking Tom Barrett.
Despite all the money Walker has spent, the tight race between the governor and Barrett is in a dead heat, according the latest PPP poll.

The outcome tomorrow hinges on turnout. Labor is mobilizing in big numbers to get union members out to the polls in one of the most important elections for workers around the country.

We like what Rev. Jesse Jackson told a crowd of Wisconsinites on Sunday:

Sooner or later the coach has to stop talking. The ball's in your court now. You can go out and vote on Tuesday. Most of you couldn't have been there in August of 1963 on the Mall in Washington, or marching from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, but God keeps giving us chances to change the world in our times. This is one of those times.

Added Esquire’s Charles Pierce:

At the end of the day, which is coming on Tuesday, that's all that's left. The marches and the occupations and the gathering of the signatures, it was all prologue to a couple of million individual decisions. Stay home or go out and vote. Everyone's equal when the curtains close.

On Wisconsin!