The reaction to Gov. Tony Evers’ inaugural address is about what you’d expect from Republicans and conservatives in Madison.
Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Cedarburg, didn’t waste much time ripping Evers’s speech to start his second term.
“It comes as no surprise that Governor Evers devoted much of his inaugural address to advancing the erroneous idea that Wisconsin voters provided him with a sweeping mandate to push through a laundry list of partisan ideas that emanate from Madison and Milwaukee,” Stroebel said. “[The governor] conveniently glosses over the fact that Wisconsinites voted to return stronger Republican majorities to both Houses of the Legislature.”
Stroebel added that he doesn’t expect the governor to get much of what he wants, because as Stroebel puts it, he doesn’t want to “reverse course on key reforms.”
“Gov. Evers’ calls for bipartisanship and unity will ring hollow if he insists on defining ‘bipartisan’ as the garden variety liberal agenda,” Stroebel said. “It becomes even more difficult to ‘forge forward, together’ when those who do not share his liberal political ideology are caricatured as threats to both democracy and the ‘tenets and institutions’ of our constitutional republic.”
Eric Bott with Americans for Prosperity in Wisconsin also didn’t praise Gov. Evers’ speech.
“It comes as no surprise that Gov. Evers’ focus on more spending and big government still rings true in the New Year,” Bott said. “Wisconsin doesn’t need additional money being thrown at a broken system when families and businesses are struggling to make ends meet. Instead, we need transformative policy solutions that will prioritize our students, deliver quality health care at affordable prices, and create a strong economic environment.”
Evers on Tuesday used his inaugural speech to press for more money for local governments, more money for Wisconsin’s public schools, more people enrolled in Medicaid, and more abortion access in the state.
However, he will unlikely get much of that from Republican lawmakers.
