The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee will have the first of its public hearings on the 2017–19 state budget at UW–Platteville this morning.

The reality of the budget process is that the budget will be decided by legislative Republicans’ votes and Gov. Scott Walker’s vetoes. Legislative Democrats will say a lot, but will have no influence on what becomes law around July 1.

That’s because, the Wall Street Journal reports, Democratic influence in state politics has faded like lawn furniture left out all year:

Six years ago, as a bitter winter gripped the Upper Midwest, Wisconsin Democrats mobilized for a major political protest. Demonstrators packed the streets of Madison tighter than a playoff game at Lambeau Field. They descended upon the Capitol in the tens of thousands to oppose Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10, which would curtail the influence of the state’s powerful public-employee unions.
Some thought those snowy protests would launch a Democratic surge in Wisconsin. Instead they appear to have marked the beginning of the party’s decline. Since 2011 Wisconsin Republicans have been on a winning streak.
In the state Assembly, Republicans enjoy their largest majority since 1957. Twenty of the 33 seats in the state Senate belong to the GOP, the most since 1970. Mr. Walker, who easily survived a recall election in 2012, won a new term in 2014. Last November voters rejected Democrat Russ Feingold’s bid to reclaim the Senate seat he lost in 2010 to Republican Ron Johnson. Remarkably, Donald Trump won Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes—the first GOP presidential candidate to do so since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
The latest evidence of Democrats’ sorry slide is the election next Tuesday for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. Only six years after their historic demonstrations against Act 10, Democrats couldn’t find a single candidate willing to run against conservative Justice Annette Ziegler in her bid for another 10-year term.
A spokesman for the state’s Democratic Party told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in January that “a number of people” considered opposing Justice Ziegler before ultimately deciding not to take the plunge. Considering Wisconsin’s political history as an incubator of 20th-century progressivism, this development is rather stunning. “The Democratic Party has done a terrible job,” Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy told the Journal Sentinel. “We haven’t built the kind of infrastructure that says to a Supreme Court candidate, ‘We can help you.’ ”
The trend, though, goes back to the turn of the millennium. In Supreme Court races that pit a conservative against a liberal, voters seem to prefer the conservative virtually every time. In 2000 Diane Sykes —now a federal judge, whom President Trump has floated as a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court—beat progressive Louis Butler for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. Four years later, when Justice Sykes left for the federal bench, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle appointed Mr. Butler to the vacancy anyway. But when voters had their say in 2008, they again rejected him in favor of conservative Michael Gableman.
Ms. Sykes’s win in 2000 began an incredible run of conservative victories in competitive Supreme Court races. Today only two reliable liberal justices remain on the court of seven.
Wisconsin progressives have scrambled to explain away the conservative ascendancy. “Big business,” they claim, has swayed court races with large contributions to third-party campaign organizations that promote conservatives.

But Democratic-aligned groups have spent millions on behalf of their favored court candidates. In 2011, the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee put $1.6 million into ads in the last two weeks of the race between conservative Justice David Prosser and liberal JoAnne Kloppenburg, more than any single pro-Prosser group spent. Mr. Prosser eked out a victory anyway, even amid the political storm raging over Gov. Walker’s labor reforms.
Ms. Kloppenburg was later elected to a lower-court seat, but a year ago this April she lost another race for the Supreme Court. Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley weathered a storm of her own, fending off brutal attacks that dredged up newspaper columns she had written 24 years earlier as a student at Marquette University. Justice Bradley prevailed 52% to 47%, solidifying conservatives’ 5-2 majority.
On election night, Justice Bradley concluded her victory speech with a paraphrase from Winston Churchill: “There is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at without result.” If that’s the case, Wisconsin conservatives have a lot to be exhilarated about. Even more so now that the state’s Democrats are so deeply demoralized that they appear to have given up on shooting altogether.

The article doesn’t mention the typical Democratic complaint about redistricting, which is a complaint about the same system Democrats used to redistrict the Legislature after the 1982 gubernatorial election. Whether you call it redistricting or gerrymandering, that fails to explain the aforementioned Supreme Court wins, nor Walker’s three wins, nor U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s two wins over ex-Sen. Russ Feingold (D–California — oops, Wisconsin). It’s safe to say that 2016 was about as complete a disaster as possible for state Democrats, beginning with the primary election one year ago.

Wisconsin Democrats’ news got worse late last week, when three potential candidates for governor — former Sen. Tim Cullen, businessman Mark Bakken and former Green Bay Packer Mark Tauscher — all announced they’re not interested in running for governor as Democrats. That adds to such previously reported Democrats declining to run as U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D–La Crosse), state Sen. Jennifer Shilling (D–La Crosse), state Rep. Peter Barca (D–Kenosha) and Madison Mayor Paul Soglin. On the other hand, Republicans are having no trouble finding potential opponents for U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D–Wisconsin).

Running against Act 10 isn’t working. Running against Walker — 2014 candidate Mary Burke’s sole strategy was running as not-Walker — isn’t working either. Running against a presidential opponent of unprecedented unpopularity didn’t even work.

On Sunday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:

After three losses to Scott Walker, Wisconsin Democrats think they finally have a chance at the Republican governor in 2018.

There’s just one catch: They don’t have a candidate. Democrats still have time to find a leader who can raise money, hire staff, craft policies and a message to voters, but they don’t deny the clock is ticking.

“If we get to late summer and early fall and lack one or more than one credible candidate, it’ll be time to be worried,” said Joe Zepecki, a Democratic strategist who worked on businesswoman Mary Burke’s failed bid against Walker in 2014.

At the moment, the Democrats have no one on the field.

Former state Sen. Tim Cullen of Janesville registered a campaign committee for governor this month, but even he isn’t in for sure. The former Senate majority leader looked at a run in the 2012 recall election but decided against it then, noting that unions had greeted his overtures with “respectful indifference.”

“There is a big issue in the room and the issue is money,” he said in an interview.

At this point in 2009, then-Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker had been basically running against then-Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle for more than two years. When Doyle signed the state budget that year and then decided not to run for re-election, Walker had an advantage against the other candidates that he never relinquished.

Walker will have to make his own decision on whether to run for a third term after he and GOP lawmakers pass their own budget bill this summer.

Here are some of the factors that the GOP governor will consider:

On the plus side for an incumbent, the state’s unemployment rate in February stood at 3.7% — a level that is at or very near full employment. Walker has also proposed a budget that increases funding for schools and cuts taxes — two top priorities for most voters.

At the same time, Friday’s failure of President Donald Trump and House Republicans to pass an Obamacare repeal underlines the difficulties that GOP politicians up and down the ballot could face next year if the party doesn’t deliver on its campaign promises.The governor may be insulated from problems in Washington, D.C. He’s also proved to be a strong campaigner and fundraiser with a statewide machine that could well outperform Republicans nationally.

But there are some issues at home for Democrats to exploit. Walker, for instance, hasn’t convinced even some Republican lawmakers that he’s right to reject new money for the state’s road fund and instead delay projects.

The latest Marquette University Law School poll put Walker at a 45% approval rating, an uptick that puts the governor on higher ground but not necessarily out of danger if a Democratic wave were to crest in 2018.

Scratch one off the list. The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

Former state Sen. Tim Cullen announced Wednesday he won’t seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018, citing the hefty amount of necessary fundraising as a deterrent.

Cullen, 73, announced his decision in the Capitol Press Room alongside his daughter and a handful of supporters. He said the decision came in response to being told by others who have run for statewide office that he would need to spend three to four hours a day calling potential donors.

“This is a very sad commentary on the state of democracy and elections in Wisconsin,” Cullen said.

Cullen said he expected Gov. Scott Walker would be able to raise $45 million for the campaign after raising $35 million in his 2014 re-election and building up a larger donor base during his unsuccessful presidential campaign. Walker’s 2014 opponent Mary Burke raised $12 and contributed $5 million of her own wealth.

Cullen said the primary reason he considered a run was because “Governor Walker needs to be replaced. His divide-and-conquer approach is unlike any Wisconsin governor in at least the last 65 years.”

A spokesman for Walker replied: “With the lowest unemployment rate since 2000, more people working than ever before, and a bright economic outlook for Wisconsin families, it’s not surprising that serious Democrats continue to think twice and not run against Governor Walker’s strong record of results and reform.”

Cullen, a Senate majority leader in the 1980s who returned for a single term in 2010, was known as a centrist Democrat willing to make deals with Republicans. He has toured the state recently with retired Republican Sen. Dale Schultz to promote nonpartisan redistricting.

Cullen also wrote a book about his experience during the 2011 Act 10 protests, during which he was one of 14 Democratic senators who fled to Illinois, temporarily blocking passage of the law that curtailed public sector union influence in the state. Cullen considered running for the Democratic nomination during the 2012 recall.Cullen said he has been in contact with a number of other Democrats considering a run, but hasn’t endorsed any of them yet. Possible candidates he noted include Dane County Executive Joe Parisi, Jefferson County District Attorney Susan Happ, Rep. Dana Wachs, Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, former Democratic Party chairman Matt Flynn and businessmen Andy Gronik and Mark Bakken.

Off that list, Parisi has no chance of getting votes outside of Madison. Happ has already lost a statewide race. People have heard of Vinehout, but she elected not to run four years ago, and her interest in the job doesn’t seem to be there. Few know who Wachs, a Democrat from Eau Claire, is. Being a party official doesn’t mean you know anything about governing, which is the point of elections.

Who is Gronik? The Associated Press has the answer:

Milwaukee businessman and entrepreneur Andy Gronik said Tuesday that he hopes to decide “fairly soon” whether to seek the Democratic nomination to run for governor next year.

The political newcomer told The Associated Press that he won’t decide within the next two weeks, but that it won’t be months, either. Gronik is among several Democrats, including those in the business community with no political experience, who are weighing whether to run against Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker is raising money and sending strong signals that he will seek a third term, but he won’t officially announce his decision until this summer.Although Gronik hasn’t decided whether to run, he’s already taking swipes at Walker, saying he’s underperformed as governor. Gronik hit Walker for failing to deliver on his promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs during his first term, saying he sees no cohesive strategy to grow the economy.
“This isn’t really about blame, this is about performance,” Gronik said. After six years in office, Walker is still about 65,000 jobs short of the promised 250,000. In the private sector, if someone missed their stated goal by that much “he’d get fired,” Gronik said. …

Gronik, 59, is founder and president of Stage W, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit that advocates for “bridging the political divide” to “advance ideas that create good jobs and provide great education throughout Wisconsin.”

Gronik has been talking privately for months about the possibility of getting into the wide-open Democratic race for governor. He’s never run for office before and he’s made minimal campaign donations. He gave $750 to three Democratic candidates for state offices last year, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s online database.

He said his 35 years of experience working for a variety of other companies around the world give him the skills necessary to help the state. The 2014 Democratic nominee for governor, Mary Burke, also came from the business world and had limited political experience.

Voters have had the chance to fire Walker twice for failing to hit his job goal. Notice that he’s still in office, and by the way unemployment in the state (as measured by how the federal government and every state measures it) is the lowest in Wisconsin since 2000. Whining about redistricting doesn’t seem to be connecting with voters either.

Bakken, meanwhile, helped found Nordic Ventures, a health care consultancy, and HealthXVentures. About the former, Bakken will have to answer questions about this unpleasantness if he decides to run.

Oh, wait a minute: Walker does have an opponent: