$24.8 million. That’s how much money Wisconsin taxpayers spent in the recall election in which Gov. Scott Walker won his seat a second time – with more than 200,000 votes than the first time. Instead of splitting his party or turning the public against him, the unions' “smash-mouth tactics had the opposite effect,” the governor writes in his memoir.
Walker says that his reforms were needed (the state faced a $3.6 billion budget deficit when he took office) and that they worked (the state now enjoys a half-a-billion-dollar surplus) without raising taxes, slashing jobs, or harming public services. “We freed school districts from the stranglehold of collective bargaining rules – allowing them, for example, to buy health insurance on the open market and hire and fire teachers based on merit for the first time,” he writes.
