Evers Offers a Reelection Budget

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers delivers his State of the State address on Jan. 22, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)

What the hell is going on at the Associated Press?

On Tuesday Governor Tony Evers’ announced that his budget proposal includes a $2 billion tax cut. The AP story offered this headline: “Wisconsin’s Democratic governor calls for tax cuts, pushback on Trump’s tariffs.”

Yawn.

Other media outlets went with the obvious, the $2 billion tax cut. Though not all. Which, hm, may tell us something about the media these days. It would be big news for any governor to propose such a huge tax cut, but a Democrat?

This is the party that likes to tax and spend, according to decades of Republican attack ads, and instead is offering a massive tax cut. And for added spice, Evers aped Donald Trump to propose an end to taxes on tips and also proposed eliminating the sales tax on electricity and gas for Wisconsin homes and on over-the-counter medications.

Yes, ending the tax on tips is a gimmick and yes the Republicans won’t go along with much of what Evers proposed, including major increases in education funding. It’s “dead on arrival,” Assembly boss Robin Vos harrumphed.

But this is not just about policies and what will be passed — though Evers has been strategically smart in both categories. It is also about the politics and in that respect the governor has been particularly adroit. This is a campaign platform he can use to run for reelection.

Evers will turn 75 in 2026 and many assumed he would retire after two terms. But this budget tells me he has as much energy as ever, perhaps more. Though he signed a $2 billion tax cut in 2021, it was a Republican proposal he decided to embrace. And it helped him win reelection in 2022. In his last budget he proposed a smaller income tax cut of $1.2 billion for the middle class that he knew Republican legislators wouldn’t go along with and that felt a bit half-hearted.

This is a bigger, cleaner number and far more sweeping and includes a plan for both a middle class income tax and reductions in the property tax, the most hated tax in Wisconsin. Meantime it includes increases in funding for K-12 schools, technical colleges and the UW system, all done without tax increases, except a proposed income tax hike for those making more than $1 million. So a soak-the-rich tax hike along with less income and property taxes for the middle class and more funding for education.

Add to that his repeated proposal to accept expanded federal funding for Medicaid, thereby expanding access to health care and saving the state some $1 billion a year, along with a new proposal to audit insurance companies that deny healthcare claims, and what’s not to like?

But emeritus Professor and former legislator Mordecai Lee predicts that Republicans, as they did in 2023, would reject the middle-class tax cut.” I think they will do it again,“ he tells Urban Milwaukee. “These guys have ice in their veins.”

But then he wavered. “The only question is if they now feel more vulnerable due to the new maps and don’t want to face the consequences. That might be particularly true in the Senate.”

Ah yes, the new legislative maps. Democrats flipped 10 seats in the Assembly and 4 seats in the Senate in 2022. And only half the Senate was up for election; the other half will be running in 2024 with districts that are no longer gerrymandered. And facing Democrats promoting a budget packed with stuff average taxpayers should love.

“This is very smart politics by the governor and his team,” says a top Democratic consultant. “It lays out a road map of what Democrats are fighting for and should serve as a blueprint for the fight in the midterms.”

It also sent out a signal about Evers intentions, the consultant adds. “I have every expectation that the Governor is going to run again and this document will be the basis for what he campaigns on.”

By the time Republican Scott Walker ran for reelection the voters had begun to sour on him. He took his eye off the ball with his disastrous run for president, and badly hurt himself with a massive subsidy for Foxconn that most people in Wisconsin didn’t believe would help them and turned into a complete fiasco.

Tony Evers, by contrast, has stayed the course, talking about common sense solutions — “let’s fix the damn roads!” — in a style that average voters understand. He talk like someone who grew up in a small-town like Plymouth, Wisconsin, with its overtones of colonial America, and rejected his fancy given name, Anthony Steven, for the simpler Tony. He can be dull, but has never gotten nasty or full of himself. If he does decide to run for reelection — and most Democratic insiders hope he does — he has created the perfect reelection document. And the more of it that Republican legislators reject, the more of a case Evers can make that he needs to return to office to champion these proposals that most voters support.