Wisconsin showdown looms over national governors’ meeting

The showdown in Wisconsin between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and state public employee unions has injected an ideological flash point into what is traditionally a non-partisan annual gathering of the nation’s governors in Washington this weekend.

For years, the National Governors Assn. meeting here has been an opportunity for states’ chief executives from both parties to lock arms in the name of solving problems while castigating the blood sport of politics in the nation’s capital. The meeting offers governors the opportunity to share best practices and lobby federal officials on behalf of mutual concerns.

But in recent years the bipartisan message has gotten murkier. In 2009, Republican governors came to Washington threatening to reject federal dollars from the newly passed stimulus bill. The following year, governors were debating the merits of the proposed federal health reform law that was ultimately passed the following month.

And now, following an election in which Republicans won back a majority of state houses in addition to the House of Representatives, a starker contrast has emerged as governors work to tackle monumental deficits in their respective budgets.

Symbolic of the new divide among state leaders, a group of only Democratic governors met with President Obama at the White House on Friday, separate from a bipartisan meeting planned for Monday. A handful of Republicans are coming to Washington only for events with their party’s campaign committee, having decided to stop paying dues to the officially nonpartisan NGA.

At a discussion Friday morning hosted by the website Politico, Democratic Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley sparred with Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry over a range of issues, illustrating the more prominent divide.

O’Malley said that with stimulus dollars no longer coming to help states balance their books, “people are going to see a strikingly different governing philosophy between the Republican governors and the Democratic governors.”

“We all have to balance our budgets,” he said. “The Democratic governors do so in ways that protect the education of our people, that improve the skills of our people and that give our people a better footing in order to be winners in this changing economy.”

Perry, without endorsing the specific actions Walker is pursuing in Wisconsin, said November’s elections sent a clear message.

“[Voters] said we want you to have leaner, more efficient government,” he said. “[Walker] knows what he believes in, and he’s expressing that. And the voters in Wisconsin basically said this is the person we want running the state.”

An unprecedented 27 of the 50 governors took office only in the last few months, all but three for the first time. Three of the most prominent supporters of President Obama’s stimulus bill were Republicans — Charlie Crist of Florida, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jim Douglas of Vermont. Each left office this January. And the new crop of GOP governors seem less wary of a high-profile battle with Washington.

“You’re gonna be seeing a lot of me on the front page saying Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell,” Maine’s new governor, Paul LePage, promised during the 2010 campaign.

Most governors find similar challenges this year, though the approaches to solving them may be different.

According to a National Governors Assn. analysis of 35 state of the state addresses, 12 governors – from both parties – called for downsizing their state workforces as part of budget austerity plans. Fourteen governors called for reforms to their states’ state pension and benefits systems.

“Without [pension] reform, the problem we face is simple: Benefits are too rich, and contributions are too small, and the system is on a path to bankruptcy,” Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, said in his address to the New Jersey Legislature.

Christie has won national plaudits for his tough approach in dealing with the state’s powerful teachers union, among others. But in Connecticut, new Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy this week pledged to be the “anti-Christie.”

“Chris Christie has to do what he thinks is best for his state and I have to do what I think is best for my state,” he said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “The people of Connecticut, I think, are maybe a little bit different, that they actually don’t want to close nursing homes and put people on the street. They don’t want to close schools. They don’t want to cut funding to local school districts.”

The NGA meeting officially begins Saturday with sessions dedicated to job creation — also a focus of Democratic-only sessions on Friday. On Sunday night, the White House hosts all of the governors in attendance for a state dinner, before Monday’s working meeting.

michael.memoli@latimes.com

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