I was at the Wisconsin Newspaper Association convention Friday. (More about that later this week.)

My guess is this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about the Act 10 fight and Recallarama will get an award at next year’s WNA convention:

Behind the scenes, there was more to the Republican governor’s fight with public employee unions than just Walker’s speeches and the massive protests of union supporters. An in-depth review reveals a rich backstory, including the undisclosed visit to Wisconsin by President Barack Obama’s campaign manager just before the effort to recall Walker; the role played by a conservative Milwaukee foundation in pushing labor legislation in Wisconsin and elsewhere; and the tension between Walker’s office and law enforcement over handling the demonstrations that greeted the governor’s proposal.

Walker emerged from the legislative fight and the subsequent recall election with a majority of support among Wisconsin voters, deep opposition from Democrats, and a hero’s status among conservatives nationally. Public worker unions lost fundamental powers and in some cases their official status altogether.

But both sides managed to surprise the other with their dogged opposition, from Feb. 11, 2011 – the day the governor announced his legislation – to June 5, 2012, the date Walker became the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election. …

The least surprising news is that this was not just a Wisconsin fight:

During the three weeks Democrats stayed in Illinois, then-Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller (D-Monona) spent thousands of dollars in personal funds on meeting spaces, food and hotel rooms for himself and others. Then and later, Miller was adamant that Democrats made their own decisions to go to Illinois and stay there, but he welcomed the free use of meeting space from the sympathetic Illinois teachers union.

Labor leaders made their own use of the space. Seeking to persuade the Democratic senators to stay out of Wisconsin, three union officials traveled to Libertyville to meet with them: Rich Abelson, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees local that represents county and municipal workers in Milwaukee County; an unidentified person; and John Stocks, the incoming executive director of the National Education Association, which with 3 million members was the largest union in the country.

Stocks wasn’t an outsider – he knew most of the Democrats from his 14 years as a former top official and lobbyist with the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the in-state affiliate of the national teachers union. A New Orleans native and former Idaho state senator, Stocks still had a home in the Madison area and was among the union officials who had been consulting with Miller.

Stocks registered with Wisconsin ethics officials as a lobbyist for the NEA on Feb. 22, 2011 – five days after the Democratic senators left the state and four days before the meeting in Libertyville. He turned in his lobbyist’s license several months later. Stocks, who didn’t respond to interview requests, was the NEA’s only registered lobbyist in Wisconsin and the only one for any national union office turning up in state records during that time.

The NEA reported that Stocks and other NEA staff spent more than 200 hours on lobbying and related activities on the bill for a cost of $67,600 in total – small change compared to the millions of dollars spent by labor and business groups on the labor legislation but significant because of the national profile of both Stocks and the union.

Not all of those hours would have been with Democrats. Stocks also reached out to some Republicans he knew from his time with WEAC.

Sen. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) had been among those talking to Stocks individually, but he skipped the Libertyville meeting with union officials because he considered it inappropriate for the caucus to meet privately with any interest group and thought it would eventually come out and reflect badly on the Democrats.

Other Democrats said they saw no problem in meeting with the unions because it is common for lawmakers to talk to people directly affected by legislation. Sen. Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point), who as caucus chairwoman led the meeting, said listening to the unions did not mean Democrats did whatever they asked.

Unlike Jauch, Sen. Tim Cullen (D-Janesville) decided to stay in the meeting despite his own concerns about it. “I was interested in one question and my question was, ‘How long are you expecting us to stay and what’s your strategy for us coming home?’ ” Cullen said of the union leaders. “I wanted to hear their answers. And I got no answers from them.”

If you ever needed evidence that the Madison Police Department is every bit as political as the rest of the People’s Republic of Madison, here it is:

There were also tensions behind the scenes as police and Walker’s aides sought to deal with the massive protests back in Madison against the governor’s bill. For instance, on Feb. 17, 2011 – the day that Senate Democrats left the state – the Walker administration said in a statement that the Capitol police had estimated the number of demonstrators at 5,000 inside the statehouse and 20,000 outside it.

But Susan Riseling, the chief of the University of Wisconsin-Madison police and the officer responsible for the Capitol’s interior during the protests, estimated the crowd inside the building that midafternoon at nearly 25,000, or five times the Walker administration’s count. Riseling, who developed her expertise in estimating crowds over years of overseeing UW football games, made her estimate based on the crowd’s density and the amount of floor space it covered.

“Whoever the officer was who reported the information (the 5,000 figure) – well – I can’t imagine how they got their numbers. Way, way low. Now, crowds did ebb and flow. My kindest interpretation would be these numbers come from a real ebb,” she said.

Tension rose even higher on March 9, 2011, when Republicans on a conference committee of the Legislature’s two houses abruptly convened and amended Walker’s legislation so it could be passed without Senate Democrats present. In part because Republican lawmakers hadn’t told Capitol police of their plan, not enough officers were on hand to handle the thousands of demonstrators who rushed to the Capitol.

When Deputy Chief Dan Blackdeer of the Capitol police telephoned the Madison Police Department urgently requesting help, the city police refused, according to several sources directly familiar with the events of that night.

More unsurprising news: The Obama administration was paying close attention:

In October 2011 at a three-hour private meeting at the Madison headquarters of the state teachers union, Jim Messina and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Obama’s campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, met with a half-dozen Wisconsin Democrats and union leaders and discussed the looming recall attempt against Walker.

Messina was skeptical of the recall. Correctly predicting Walker’s coming fundraising success, Messina warned the group that a Republican had told him Walker’s side could raise $60 million to $80 million. That would hurt Democrats in the recall and could hurt Obama’s re-election effort in a battleground state.

According to participants, the Wisconsin group told Messina and his deputy that the recall would happen no matter what.

“The basic message to (Messina) was ‘We have no way to stop this,’ ” one participant said. “He came to appreciate this train was leaving whether we liked it or not.”

In June 2012, Walker became the first governor in the nation’s history to win a recall election. But Obama, who steered clear of the recalls, ultimately won the state and his own re-election later that year, proving in the process that Wisconsin was the nation’s consummate political battleground.

Interesting additional observations come from reporters Jason Stein and Patrick Marley:

Q.Biggest winner of the whole chapter in Wisconsin history?
Marley. I think you’d have to say Scott Walker. He did become the first governor to win a recall election. Won by a bigger margin than he had in 2010 and launched him on to a national stage where he was welcomed as a hero at the Republican National Convention and is now named as a potential candidate for 2016.

Q.Who were the biggest losers?

Marley. Public sector unions in Wisconsin. Act 10 did not completely eliminate them, but it reduced their power dramatically. Their role in lives of people of Wisconsin is already dramatically diminished.

Stein. And though they have won a few small victories in the legal battles over Act 10 that continue to this day, largely the courts at state and federal level have left that law in place.

Q.What’s the main take-away people locally and nationally should have of Gov. Scott Walker through this entire episode?

Stein. There was an incredible amount of pressure on everyone who was involved in that struggle from lowly reporters up to lawmakers and on no one was that pressure more intense than on the governor. One thing you could see from him is that he was able to remain extremely cool, to keep his rhetoric very focused and disciplined even in the midst of incredible pressure. So, as you think about somebody who could deal with the rigors of a presidential campaign, that’s something that people ought to take into account.

Well, this is embarrassing: One of my readers (who I got to meet after many years at said WNA convention) points out that my premise is wrong because the Journal Sentinel no longer enters the Better Newspaper Contest because the Journal Sentinel feels itself above the Wisconsin newspaper fray. (That’s my paraphrase of his description. I can do that as an unwillingly former Journal Communications employee.)