Governor Jim Doyle chose Friday afternoon at the close of business to veto two bills with a wide swath of public support.
The first veto was yet another suck-up to the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC). Doyle vetoed a bill that would have raised the caps on the number of poor students allowed to enter private schools under a voucher system. Doyle apparently wants them to be stuck being taught by the ugly mob armed with fresh fruit that descended on La Crosse recently regardless of whther the children actually learn reading, writing and arithmetic.
The second veto affects every voter in the state, effectively diluting the legitimate ballots cast by removing a proposed check on voter fraud. Republicans proposed, and achieved some bipartisan support for, a bill that would require a photo id when a person when into vote. The bill provided for relief for anyone who could not afford the photo id. Citing a number impossible to verify, the governor vetoed the bill arguing that the requirement would disenfranchise over 100,000 voters.
The governor knows this is not the case. But he's playing directly to the paranoias of the Democratic party base and he figures the cost will be small. By vetoing the bill late on a friday afternoon, along with the school choice veto, Doyle hopes that it will be missed by the majority of voters in the state. Republicans should force the vetos back into the public eye by staging very public attempts to override. Even as these efforts will fail, voters will know upon whom the blame squarely rests.
As of today, Congressman Mark Green has joined Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker in the hunt for the governor's chair. The vetoes may have fallen on a friday but I suspect the governor will be falling on a tuesday in November 2006. On that day he may look back on these two vetoes and think, that was the day the race for governor began.
