In the second and final Wisconsin recall debate, Republican Gov. Scott Walker was asked about the recently revealed videotaped conversation from January 2011, in which he told a wealthy donor — who wanted right-to-work legislation — that he would “divide and conquer,” starting with his upcoming legislation against public employee unions.
“Well a year and a half ago, what I was talking about was that somebody had to stand up and take on the powerful special interests in this state,” Walker said, referring to public employee unions’ previous control of health insurance benefits for public workers.
Moderator Mike Gousha asked whom Walker was seeking to “conquer.” Walker responded: “The special interests … in our case, it’s literally about standing up and finally someone is willing to stand up with the hardworking taxpayers in this state.”
The Democratic nominee, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, shot back: “There was no question. Let’s be honest here. The question was: How can we make this a right-to-work state? How can we take away the right of working people in not just public unions but private unions? And your answer was the first step, the first step is: We’ll go after public unions, and we’ll use divide and conquer.”
“And you did want to pit people against each other, because that’s the way you operate,” Barrett added, tying the conversation to Walker’s later infamous phone call with a blogger who was posing as conservative financier David Koch: “With one billionaire you said, ‘divide and conquer.’ With one person you thought was a billionaire, you said you were gonna ‘drop the bomb.'”
