however, clearly there are two parties in this election. but jeff stone is a republican member of the state assembly. he did vote for that walker bill, which stripped public unions of most of their collective bargaining rights, and that has certainly been used against him. milwaukee does have a considerable union membership and a union history, and his opponent, chris ably, who is a political newcomer, has really tried to link stone and that vote to scott walker in hopes of garnering that union support and really sort of energizing that effort to get people out to the polls. were you or anybody else covering this race for wtmj? was anybody able to really determine anything, i guess, anecdotally important about turnout in this race? seeing any kind of either anti scott walker effect, or response to the big spending effect? is there any evidence of larger turnout than you would normally expect on either side for this kind of a local spring election? absolutely. i mean, spring electio
one from either campaign seems to think it s going to be before 10:00 p.m. tonight. i just think both sides if it is as close as everyone is expecting, are really going to going to want to wait until all the numbers trickle in. certainly, this is a statewide race so smaller counties and more rural areas take longer to report. and both sides want to wait forrer forrer forrer every single vote. laura from wtmj, live from milwaukee, you have one of the best jobs in reporting tonight, covering a race like this. i envy you and grateful to you for your help. thank you. thanks, rachel. if the soon to be george w. bush library in dallas builds an exhibit about an attempt to privatize social security, they would probably call it something like like political capital squandered or have some regrets. so now republicans are trying to do the same thing with medicare. fail to learn, doomed to repeat, et cetera, et cetera. just ahead.
opponent, chris ably, who is a political newcomer, has really tried to link stone and that vote to scott walker in hopes of garnering that union support and really sort of energizing that effort to get people out to the polls. were you or anybody else covering this race for wtmj? was anybody able to really determine anything, i guess, anecdotally important about turnout in this race? seeing any kind of either anti scott walker effect, or response to the big spending effect? is there any evidence of larger turnout than you would normally expect on either side for this kind of a local spring election? absolutely. i mean, spring elections are not generally very well attended. if you get 25% turnout, that s considered a victory in a spring election. today, we are seeing areas with 45, 50% turnout. almost governor s race or presidential race type numbers. in wisconsin, turnout is always a huge part of the game, because it is such a swing state.
reporter from wtmj, said he knows the budgets have to be balanced and are facing crises. he thinks that everyone is going to have to sacrifice, everyone will have to pitch in. then he went a step further and said to the extent you have a governor who appears to be going after the right to collectively bargain, that s where he takes issue. i think the president probably thought he was being more centrist in that response by acknowledging, yes, tough decisions had to be made. joe, what s striking here is the collision course that the president is engaged in. what does he want to be doing right now? you played that sound bite coming into this segment. he wants to be talking to business about how this government can help business create jobs and invest capital. he wants to be seering a centrist course, whether it s talking about tax reform or entitlement reform. he wants to do battle with republicans over the budge tote make them look extreme over how far they want to cut. yet, the bigge
nance they believe than saying, we don t want to take cuts in our pay. we don t want to have to pay more for our pension or health care. i want to go live out to madison, wisconsin, nick is there from wtmj. he has been watching these protests play out all day. do they understand and i want details of whether the democrats are going to come back to work, do they understand that the nation is watching in wisconsin? reporter: yes, i think that has become clear, between yesterday and today, there has been some increase to national exposure on this story. i think people are aware that this is a big fight. most certainly, the union leaders are aware this is a big fight. we know that some of the largest municipal and county, state employee unions have brought in national leaders and national lobbyists too put pressure on the state of wisconsin on this issue. i think people here are well aware of what s at stake. how long do the state senate