It’s not what you think, in Wisconsin:
Three hunters turned their truck and trailer around and pulled up to where I stood on the sidewalk. I explained that I was with the Recall Walker campaign. “It’s why we turned around,” the driver said. He had already signed, but his father wanted the chance. First, he checked to see that I had a campaign volunteer badge. “Some people pretending to be with the campaign are destroying petitions,” he said.
While his father signed, I told him about the woman losing $200 a month. He held up four fingers. “For me, it’s four hundred a month.” He’s a prison guard, and the cut in health care and retirement benefits is hitting his paycheck hard.
I believe that the Recall Walker campaign leaders significantly underestimated discontent in rural areas. When the Iowa County office opened up to train volunteers several days ago, over 100 people showed up. And in five days, they have gathered well over 50 percent of the total signatures they expected to gather in that county in the entire two months of the process.
Walker’s pals like to talk about Milwaukee, Madison and then the rest of the state, because “Madison” is code for college kids and homosexual communists and “Milwaukee” means black people, but the rural areas of the state are more liberal than the suburbs of the largest cities.
It may make those who oppose the recall feel better to think there are all these quietly stoic farmers and manly hunters out there who silently support them, but the truth is, the range of opinion is not, entirely, based on location.
Mr. A and I were traveling all around for the holidays and saw the Thanksgiving weekend signature gatherers on corners and outside stores. Heroes, one and all.
A.