More than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions, and the Fight for Wisconsin

4. “The First Step”

N amed for the Roman god of wine and excess, the Bacchus restaurant had dark wood trim and shining hardwood floors, making it a fine place for the powerful and influential to celebrate. Six days after winning the governorship, Scott Walker dined at the downtown Milwaukee establishment with some of the people who had helped him get where he was and who would be among his staunchest allies going forward—the board and senior sta¤ of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. This conservative heavyweight had a low profile among the general public, receiving much less attention than some others on the right, like the billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch; the newspaper publisher and tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife; and the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed group promoting conservative legislation. But the Bradley Foundation, as it was commonly known, was very much in their league. From 2001 to 2009 the foundation had paid out nearly as much money as the Koch and Scaife family foundations combined, a 2011 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review of the organization found. Bradley’s charitable giving from 2001 to 2010 to arts organizations and conservative groups of various stripes amounted to $350 million. It gave millions of dollars to groups like the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Public Museum, and Marquette University. But that was just a slice of the donations made by the foundation, which seeks to promote limited government, unfettered markets, and national defense. Its projects range from supporting private voucher schools in Milwaukee to deregulating campaign spending and promoting “right-to-work” laws that would limit the power of private-sector unions. 4  “The First Step” 35 The group had a massive endowment honoring the namesake brothers of the foundation, high-school dropouts who helped found an industrial giant, the Allen-Bradley Company. With that money, the foundation helped sustain such well-known conservative institutions as the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, the libertarian magazine Reason, and other major conservative publications. The foundation donated to Hollywood film companies to further conservative ideas and sponsored the Bradley Prizes to honor pundits. Bradley also provided major funding to lesser-known right-wing groups inside and outside the state, such as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a local think tank; and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, creator of the Jihad Watch website. One Bradley-supported group created a website called Teachers Union Exposed. Another relatively new think tank, the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, served to advance free markets and other conservative ideas in Wisconsin. It was no mere chance that brought Walker together with the Bradley Foundation. They had in common Michael W. Grebe, a prominent seventyone -year-old Republican lawyer who was both the president and chief executive of the foundation and the chairman of Walker’s successful gubernatorial campaign. Grebe was also serving as the chairman of Walker’s transition team and would go on to interview candidates for some cabinet posts in the new administration. In short, the Vietnam veteran and former top executive at the law firm Foley & Lardner was a key backer of Walker and his projects for governing. Grebe later said there was nothing conspiratorial or secretive about the Bradley Foundation or his work. In an interview with the Journal Sentinel, Grebe, a former high school quarterback, likened the foundation to the 1960s Green Bay Packers and their seemingly simple but e¤ective ground game: “We’re going to run o¤ tackle, right over there, and we’re telling you we’re going to run there and we’re going to knock you on your butt and carry the ball down the field,” Grebe said. “There are no surprises.” Nevertheless, the foundation had at least a financial link to what would soon be a great surprise in Wisconsin politics. On November 24, 2010, just a few weeks after the meal at Bacchus, the MacIver Institute posted on its website an editorial by its communications director, a Republican operative named Brian Fraley. Bradley was a primary funder of the relatively small MacIver outfit, giving it $360,000 in its first three years of operation. Founded in 2009, at a time when Republicans were out of power in Wisconsin, MacIver had advocated for less government spending and, in its many reports, often focused on what it saw as problems associated with unions, such as higher health insurance 36 “The First Step” [18.218.61.16] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 06:01 GMT...