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11/9/2006 Scott Walker Would Have Beaten Jim Doyle For Governor By Ken Lamke The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com. No incumbent statewide office holder in Wisconsin has lost in the last three decades unless his general election opponent emerged from a contested primary election. There are six examples. Govs. Martin Schreiber (1978), Tony Earl (1986) and Scott McCallum (2002), Sens. Gaylord Nelson (1980) and Robert Kasten (1992) and Attorney General Don Hanaway (1990) are the only statewide incumbents to lose during that time and all were defeated by candidates who came out of contested primaries. Doyle himself defeated McCallum after winning a contested Democratic primary and beat Hanaway for AG after winning a contested primary. Either Mark Green, this year's losing GOP gubernatorial candidate, or Scott Walker would have benefitted from winning a contested GOP primary. Voters give a primary winner a real boost for the general election -- as opposed to the boost obtained from merely running ahead in a poll, for example. Winning an election is real. In addition, a primary in the out party prevents the incumbent, in this case Doyle, from going negative against his opponent until after the primary, simply because he doesn't know who's going to win the primary. Either Green or Walker would have been spared five months of negative Doyle TV ads had there been a primary. I believe Walker would have beaten Green in a GOP primary. Walker himself ill believes it. He dropped out only because he thought he wouldn't have enough money after the primary to beat Doyle. But look at Walker's advantages over Green as a general election candidate:
Green's campaign was limited by its country club Republican orientation and lack of a strong message. The populist Walker, with perhaps a 3-4 point boost from beating Green in the primary, would have gone on to overcome what became Doyle's 7-point margin in the general over Green. Doyle could not have gone negative against Walker until September, Walker's anti-tax message would have been LOUD and CLEAR, bolstered by his record in office, Walker would have been at least competitive in Milwaukee County, and Walker would have benefitted from the anti-gay marriage amendment's victory. Rick Graber, the Milwaukee big-business attorney and state GOP chairman, was ecstatic when Walker dropped out last spring so that establishment candidate Green would be unopposed for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Graber, now U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia, and the GOP establishment were wrong. -- Lamke is a retired Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter who covered politics for the Milwaukee Sentinel for 21 years. |
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