As Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin faces a well deserved recall votenext month after stripping public unions of their bargaining rights, voters are discovering the generosity of Diane Hendricks. Ms. Hendricks, the billionaire chairwoman of the nation’s largest roofing and siding wholesaler, wrote a check for $500,000 last month to help defend Governor Walker, a Republican, against his Democratic challenger, Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee. The eye-popping donation was made possible by a quirk in the state law for recall campaigns. And Ms. Hendricks has never been shy about what she wants. A newly released piece of documentary video shows her running into Governor Walker two weeks after he took office in 2011. In what was presumed to have been a private discussion, Ms. Hendricks asked, “Any chance we’ll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions and become a right to work” state?
Governor Walker replied, “Oh, yeah,” and he discussed a “divide and conquer” strategy, beginning with collective bargaining for public employees. “That opens the door once we do that,” he said. Mr. Walker, busy as he is with recall, has not taken aim at private-sector unions. But, as an assemblyman, he favored a right-to-work law that would have barred unions from collecting dues from nonmembers.
Full Article: Political Money Talks – NYTimes.com.