Roger Bybee explains why the Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin feel the battle over the rights of public-sector unions is so important.
“The tide is turning, and people are turning against this bill to take away worker rights in Wisconsin,” says a determined state Sen. Mark Miller, a Democrat from Wisconsin, his voice hoarse from a nonstop schedule of interviews with media from around the nation. “If the governor remains intransigent, there will be consequences,” he vowed.
Miller is one of 14 fugitive Democratic state senators who refuse to be present in the state Senate, denying the 17 Republican senators a chance to pass one of the nation’s most radical assaults on public-employee rights ever witnessed. The 14 Democrats have been given “religious sanctuary,” as Miller put it, by interfaith groups in Illinois. They are thus outside the jurisdiction of the Wisconsin State Patrol, which Gov. Scott Walker sent after the absent Democrats to force a vote on the bill he introduced Feb. 11.
