Wisconsin and Minnesota have a long, storied tradition of being border rivals. Whether its Badgers versus Gophers or Packers versus Vikings, people of both states look forward to finding bragging rights over their next door neighbor.
Increasingly over the past few years, Minnesota has been kicking Wisconsin's butt on almost every economic measure. Minnesota has lower unemployment, higher wages and a better gross domestic product.
With Scott Walker poised to ram Right To Woe down Wisconsin's collective throat, the gap between the two states are about to grow even bigger as Minnesota State Representative Pat Garofalo, a Republican, seeks to capitalize on Walker's folly:
Minnesota Rep. Pat Garofalo, the Republican chairman of the Minnesota House Job Growth and Energy Affordability Committee, sent letters this week to two Wisconsin businesses offering assistance in relocating their headquarters to Minnesota.
The letters went to Hoffman Construction and Rock Road Companies, Inc., both union contractors who privately contract with the International Union of Operating Engineers.
Owners of both businesses testified against the Wisconsin Legislature's fast-tracked right-to-work bill in public hearings before lawmakers.
"Wisconsin's right-to-work legislation would negatively impact the private contracts between these companies and the unions they have voluntarily decided to partner with," Garofalo said in a statement. "It's heavy-handed and the wrong for Wisconsin to inject government into these private contractual relationships that has worked well for private companies for decades."
In the letter to Rock Road President Bill Kennedy, Garofalo wrote that many Republicans in Minnesota believe such a law interferes with a business's right to set terms and conditions of employment in the workplace.
"That Republicans in Wisconsin would inject the heavy hand of government into this relationship is regrettable and quite inconsistent with the principles of free enterprise and limited government," Garofalo wrote in the letter.
One would expect Democrats to make hay out of Walker's blunders, but when even his fellow Republicans have stopped taking him seriously and start to capitalize off of his mistakes, you know it's not looking good for Walker's presidential aspirations.
It's also a bad sign that Walker hasn't figured out that when you're in a hole, you should stop digging.
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