Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers is the kind of Democrat who used to get elected a lot in America—a folksy, inoffensive bookworm whose “aw shucks” blandness and ability to view Republicans as something other than subhuman reassured voters that his party wasn’t totally insane.
His election in 2018 was a model for national Democrats, who rigged their presidential primary two years later to ensure that a similar candidate would be their standard-bearer (although few would call Joe Biden a bookworm or even suggest he has ever actually read a book). He was just bland enough, just inoffensive, just normal enough to hide the radicals behind him.
For a while, it worked, both in the White House and in Wisconsin. Socialist bureaucrats wielded power from the shadows while Biden’s mental capacity rapidly declined, and Evers was a similar (though marginally less comatose) empty vessel for the kooks in his Administration to declare war on the Republican State Legislature than try to work with it.
In May 2020, they secretly recorded Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and then-Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and then leaked the audio to willing accomplices at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the most Nixonian attempt at a political hit this state has perhaps ever seen.
Evers feigned outrage but, tellingly, never disciplined a single staffer over the scandal. It was clear from that moment on who was really running the Evers Administration…and it sure wasn’t Evers.
Democrats had their Badger State Biden, and all was right in their world. Evers cruised to re-election in 2022 and although divided government limited how leftward his bureaucrats could push the state, they did manage to score significant victories, most notably a 400-year property tax increase through the governor’s partial veto power.
The move was patently unconstitutional, but the liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld it anyway in a 4-3 decision. Earlier this year, the Court added another liberal justice and will take a 5-2 liberal majority into the new legislative session next year.
This would give a new Democrat governor and legislative majority carte blanche to enact their dream leftist agenda without regard to pesky little things like the Constitution getting in their way. Every single Democrat who turned on Evers over the surplus deal sees a blue wave in November as inevitable and their ascension to unconstrained power as just months away.
And Evers almost ruined it for them by daring to give taxpayers some of their money back. The generation of Democrats now seeking to supplant him sees that money as their birthright just as much as they see political power as their destiny. And what good is power without the money necessary to properly wield it?
The second that Evers interfered with this plan, he needed to go; just as Biden was forced to drop his bid for re-election two years ago the second Democrats could no longer pretend that was mentally competent. Both Evers and Biden were never more than kindly, grandfatherly faces to present to a gullible public, but once the mask slipped, the people who were really in control asserted their authority.
Biden was no longer useful because he let the public see his true mental state. Evers was no longer useful because he dared to break free from his handlers and cut a deal that was better for the public than it was for them.
Democrats no longer need (or want) his grandfatherly face to hide their radicalism. They firmly believe that this November’s election is already in the bag and, as such, they can run as far to the left as they want without fear of voter backlash.
Then, once they have regained power, they can spend all $2.2 billion of Wisconsin’s surplus on whatever they, not the voters, want. Evers was dangerously close in stopping them from doing so and, since they no longer need to pretend that he is the kindly face of their party, they dropped him.
It was always inevitable; it just took a catalyst like the surplus deal for Democrats to finally drop the mask.
