Without a plan of its own, Evers campaign tour taunts Walker on road funding

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The Tony Evers campaign and two prominent construction unions hit the road this week on a tour to taunt Gov. Scott Walker over his transportation policies.

But despite union backing and a new poll that foretells a neck-and-neck governor’s race this fall, Evers has yet to release a roads plan of his own.

Mandela Barnes, who will run alongside Evers as the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, said during a stop in Milwaukee on Wednesday that a gas tax, toll roads or other proposals could all be part of the campaign’s still unformed transportation plans. Meanwhile, Barnes and others attacked Walker as being too reliant on borrowing to pay for roads, bridges and similar infrastructure.

“Options are on the table,” Barnes said. “There’s nothing that’s definite right now. We’re a week into the general election. The road issue is something that will be forthcoming.”

The campaign stop comes as a new Marquette University Law School poll shows support for Walker and Evers is even at 46 percent each among likely voters, although Walker leads Evers among registered voters, claiming 46 percent of their support to Evers’ 44 percent.

The poll surveyed 800 registered voters between Wednesday and Sunday and had a 4 percent margin of error. When the pool of respondents was restricted to likely voters, the margin of error increased slightly, to 4.5 percent.

The poll was the first to be conducted throughout the state since Evers emerged from a crowded Democratic primary election on Aug. 14.

The poll also found that respondents think the condition of Wisconsin roads is among the most important of all issues in the state. Twenty-five percent of the respondents to the survey said roads are the first or second most important issue in the state, whereas 41 percent listed jobs and the economy and 40 percent listed schools.

Support for the Foxconn project remained consistent with findings in the second most-recent Marquette poll. Forty-four percent of respondents then said the $4.5 billion worth of incentives the state is offering the company in exchange for a $10 billion plant in Racine County wouldn’t pay off, whereas 41 percent said it would. Barnes on Wednesday criticized Walker’s plan to divert $90 million from road projects around the state to roadwork near Foxconn.

In a statement, Alec Zimmerman, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said Democrats should not be casting stones.

“The fact is that when Democrats controlled state government, they raided the transportation fund while increasing taxes on families by billions of dollars,” Zimmerman said in a statement. “Scott Walker has invested $3 billion more into transportation than his predecessor in the same amount of time, and invested over $20 billion into our transportation system statewide — including the largest increases for local governments in the last 20 years.”

But the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau has found reason to question Walker’s claim that he has spent $3 billion more on transportation than his predecessor. The agency said the figure ignores the effects of inflation and miscounts borrowed money.

Walker’s boasts have irked union and local-government officials who are already frustrated with the governor over his support for the state’s right-to-work law and elimination last year of the state’s prevailing-wage laws.

“(Walker’s) plan for 8 years was, ‘Just charge it, put it on the credit card,'” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said during the event in Milwaukee. “That’s less and less money for roads and more and more to debt service.”

At a Democratic campaign stop in Eau Claire, two prominent unions came out in support of an Evers-Barnes ticket.

The Wisconsin Laborers District Council said it would “mobilize” its 9,000 members in support of the Evers’ campaign. The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 139, the largest construction union in the state, also announced its support of Evers.

Local 139 revealed last month that it was behind a group called Safe Transportation Over Politics, which has spent at least $350,000 on a series of radio ads attacking Walker over his road plans.

The announcements come on the heels of an endorsement from the Wisconsin State Conference of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which was made on Monday.

“Whether it is making the proper investments in our state’s roads and bridges, supporting fair pay for a fair day’s work, keeping the costs of health care down, or investing in our children’s education, Tony’s values are the same as the values of our members,” said John Schmitt, president and business manager of the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council, in a statement. Follow @natebeck9