Gregory Fossedal - Kohler: A Political Biography of Walter J.Kohler, Jr.

First published 2003 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2002032446

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fossedal, Gregory A.

Kohler: a political biography of Walter J. Kohler, Jr./Gregory A.

Fossedal; with a foreword by William Proxmire and an introduction by

Tommy Thompson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-7658-0192-2 (cloth: alk. paper)

1. Kohler, Walter J. (Walter Jodok), 19041976. 2. Governors

WisconsinBiography. 3. WisconsinPolitics and government1951-

I. Title.

F586.42.K64 F68 2003

977.6053092dc21

[B]

2002032446

ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0192-0 (hbk)

Walter Kohler was my first political opponent in several of my races for governor and senator and he was a good man. He was a true gentleman who valued harmony above all else. He helped improve health care, teacher pay, pensions, and the state highway and highway safety system.

Kohler was very different from the sharp and divisive politics that you see a lot of today. We had pretty big disagreements about the tax cut he signed, and other matters. But you knew with Kohler that there was serious thought about policy and a sincere concern for the people of Wisconsin. Of course, I often thought where he came out at the end of this process of thinking was wrong, but anyway there was thinking and a real care for the public interest.

I respect him the most, I think, for his efforts during the Kohler strike. Kohler had no connection with his familys company at that time, but of course he was under a lot of pressure to try to do something. This became one of the most bitter episodes in Wisconsin or for that matter U.S. labor relations ever.

Kohler went out on a limb more than once in urging the union and the company to agree to an arbitrated settlement. He didnt get any applause for it. The union would have accepted such an arrangement, but when the company wasnt interested, it dropped the idea. And the company, his own family members, were furious with him. They treated him like Benedict Arnold for a time. Of course, the irony was, if the company had accepted the arbitration Kohler had suggested, they would almost certainly have been better off. In the end they suffered through a 10-year strike, and lost their case before the NLRB and in the courts. I think it was the biggest settlement against a company ever.

When I was able to finally defeat him in the special senate election, I did not think for a minute that it was Kohlers last race. He was a good administrator as governor, and I thought the moderate direction in which he had led the Republican party was a sensible way for them to go. It was a loss for the state that he got out of politics at that point, though it was probably a gain for Democrats. Kohler might have kept them competitive in the state for a long time.

Tommy Thompson

At regular intervals over the last 150 years, Wisconsin has enjoyed a role as a leader and innovator among the states. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, voting rights for blacks and women were both advanced at key points by popular referenda and the debate engendered by themitself an innovation in which Wisconsin was a leader. Pioneering legislation on labor, taxes, and legislative redistricting followed. So again, in more recent years, the state has been a model and a catalyst for welfare reform and the use of school-choice vouchers in educationtwo name just two. These episodes are well-recorded, and deservedly so, in the annals of both academic and popular histories. Yet, unfortunately, Walter Kohlers role has not been written up and remembered to nearly the extent it deserves to be. In the generally fine official volume of the period by the Wisconsin State Historical Society, for instance, by William Thompsonan excellent book overallthere is little material on Kohler, who is mentioned chiefly as a foil to men like Senator Eugene McCarthy, or as part of the family whose company was targeted in the famous Kohler Strike. In many histories of Wisconsin, its hard to find a record of the Kohler tax cut, the Kohler battle for highway expansion and safety, or the way Kohler battled special interests from both parties to enact a constitutionally mandated reapportionment of the state. The result is a gap that needs to be filled. And thats why Im delighted to introduce this affably written but carefully researched volume by Gregory Fossedal, reviewed and edited by the University of Wisconsins Dennis Dresang. Fossedal brings us the man and his achievements, a political record but also a living human being. Most important, he places these events, and Kohlers own too-rare excellence as a citizen politician, in a national and historical context. This is important for any state, but it is especially important for Wisconsin since we areand should take pride that we areso often a leader in national affairs. Kohlers story has been neglected too long. In this book, Gregory Fossedal corrects that omission with skill and grace. It should not only be read widely in the state, and around the country, but it should make us, at once, proud and impatient. Proud, that our state and our system is able to produce leaders like Walter Kohler Jr. Impatient, because in a time of a certain pessimissm about politics, we have the means at our disposal to select and produce leaders like him. I remember Kohler as governor from my own days in elementary and high school in Elroy, Wisconsin. As a young man working in my fathers grocery store there, and later as a public servant, I learned to apply a kind of common sense standard to issues of politics and policy: Would it work in Elroy? Looking back on those years, and reliving them here through Gregory Fossedals book, I think one of the reasons Wisconsinites were very close to Walter Kohler, felt affectionate towards him as a man who was always straight with them, was that Kohler, too, seemed to live and govern by such an Elroy standard. The common-sense leadership of men like Walter Kohler is not nearly as remote as we sometimes think. We need only practice the vigilance and activism of good citizens and voters to enjoy his kind of leadership again.

Tommy Thompson is the Secretary of Health and Human Services and was Governor of Wisconsin from 1987 to 2001.

1. See, for example, the Wisconsin State Historical Societys series, The History of Wisconsin, especially William Thompsons volume 6, Continuity and Change 19401965 (Madison); Joint Committee on Legislative Organization, State of Wisconsin Blue Book, 20012002 (Madison: Legislative Reference Bureau, 2001); Richard Haney, A Concise History of the Modern Republican Party of Wisconsin, 19251975, (Madison: Republican Party of Wisconsin), and also Haneys The Rise of Wisconsins New Democrats: A Political Realignment in the Mid-Twentieth Century, in Wisconsin Magazine of History, Winter 7475 (58); Albert O. Barton, LaFollettes Winning of Wisconsin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992; and Bernard A. Weisberger, The La Follettes of Wisconsin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).