Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee, left, a Democrat, is opposing Scott Walker, right, the Republican governor, in the recall election on Tuesday. More Photos »
WAUKESHA, Wis. — If this was ever an election just about Wisconsin, it is far more than that now.
With more than $30 million raised from conservative donors, many of them from other states, and visits from a who’s who of high-profile Republican governors (Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Bob McDonnell), Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign to survive a recall vote has the feel, the money and the stakes of a national race.
And in many ways it is. The outcome of the election on Tuesday will not just decide the state’s leanings on matters of budget, taxes and policy, as well as the ultimate trajectory of Mr. Walker’s fast-rising political prospects. It will also send a message about a larger fight over labor across the country, and about whether voters are likely to reject those who cut collective bargaining rights, as Governor Walker did here last year for most of the state’s public workers, setting off this battle in the first place.
Broadly, the results will be held up as an omen for the presidential race in the fall, specifically for President Obama’s chances of capturing this Midwestern battleground — one that he easily won in 2008 but that Republicans nearly swept in the midterm elections of 2010.
On a recent afternoon, Mr. Walker, who is only the third governor in the nation to face a recall election, dashed onto a makeshift stage on a loading dock here as supporters screamed, the song “Only in America” pounded from loudspeakers, a bank of television cameras rolled and Mr. Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, beamed behind him.
With the remnants of a sinus infection and round-the-clock campaign stops lingering in his voice, Mr. Walker urged the crowd not to let up, declaring that union bosses were pouring money into the state to remove him because, he said, “they don’t like the fact that we’ve got a governor here who stood up and took on the powerful special interests.”
Mr. Walker’s Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee, who holds the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin residents who began seeking Mr. Walker’s recall just a year into the governor’s first term, has trailed in some public polls, though Mr. Walker’s lead has generally fallen within each poll’s margin of sampling error.
A Marquette Law School telephone poll of 600 likely voters, conducted last week, found Mr. Walker leading 52 percent to 45 percent; the poll’s margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percentage points for each candidate.
Mr. Barrett, who ran for governor against Mr. Walker in 2010, again became the Democrats’ nominee a month ago when he won a contested primary — one step in the process, set by Wisconsin law, for calling what amounts to a new election for a sitting governor if at least a quarter of the total number of voters from the last election sign recall petitions.
He has drawn his own outside help from national Democrats as well as from union groups, which are operating at least 32 field offices here and say they have been building neighborhood alliances with advocates for environmental issues, women, retirees and other causes. In the last few months, Mr. Barrett has raised more than $4 million in contributions — a lot, though not on the same scale as Mr. Walker, who benefited from a quirk in state law that allowed him to raise unlimited contributions (in some cases, as much as $500,000 from individual donors) for his campaign’s expenses before a recall was officially declared by the state.
At a restaurant in Mondovi, a small town in western Wisconsin, a table of women continued their bridge game the other day as Mr. Barrett asked for the crowd’s votes, pledged to end the “civil war” that has boiled over in Wisconsin in the last 16 months and poked at his opponent’s blossoming national profile.
“He loves being the poster boy for the Tea Party movement in this country,” Mr. Barrett, addressing another group jammed into a cafe in Menomonie, said of Mr. Walker. “And he has had a lot of success — he’s become the rock star of the far right.”
Former President Bill Clinton was expected to arrive here on Friday to campaign for Mr. Barrett, but to the disappointment of some voters, Mr. Obama has not appeared in person to bolster the campaign, nor have his top surrogates.
Although the president has conveyed his support for Mr. Barrett, the recall is an undeniably complex calculus for Mr. Obama’s strategists: Wisconsin has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since 1988, but the margins have sometimes been remarkably slim, and the recall election has led independents and Republicans who voted for Mr. Obama four years ago to take sides. He needs their votes in November and may not want to alienate them by stepping conspicuously into the fight.
