Doyle not vindictive and partisan? No, he's not," Schoof said. Dan Schoof, who was running Doyle's state Department of Administration during his last months in office, said what Doyle did was honorable. Given the way Walker handled his last days in office, some Democrats think Doyle should have been more aggressive with the train. Even though the media treats an election as though that's the end of the term, it's not." "The will of the voters four years ago was to elect me to a term that ends Jan. 4 and 5, 2018, at the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison, Wis. And Walker supported it.Īssembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, addresses the press ahead of the Assembly gathering for an extraordinary lame-duck session of the Legislature held Dec. While Doyle chose not to go to the mat for the train in 2010, Walker was far more aggressive when he was a lame duck in 2018.Īfter Walker lost the 2018 election, Republican lawmakers moved quickly to pass laws that would limit the power of his Democratic successor, Tony Evers. Those contracts never passed the Democratic-controlled state Senate in 2010.Īll of this is viewed in a different light today because of the way Walker used his last months in office as a lame-duck governor. "There was no way in the world you could say to somebody, 'Go to work on something that you're going to have to quit working on in 30 days.' So that's the reality of where we were," Doyle said.ĭoyle was willing to take other political risks at the end of his governorship, pushing unsuccessfully to renew state employee contracts.
Even if he kept the project moving temporarily, he didn't think it was fair to workers who would be laid off once Walker took office in January. Department of Transportation wasn't moving as quickly as he'd hoped. I would have loved to have had this train."ĭoyle said the rail project was still in the early stages in November 2010 because the U.S. "I mean I, more than anybody in this whole story, I'm the one that brought this train here. "Does anybody really think I didn't want this train?" Doyle told WPR. "Oh, I thought at the time - it's not even hindsight - I mean right at the time I thought, you know, you should just get this done," Black told WPR.ĭoyle isn’t unaware of this sentiment, but he said he doesn't feel like he ever had a choice. He wanted Doyle to move forward with the rail line, even after Walker's election. Spencer Black, the Democratic state representative from Madison who put $50 million in rail bonding in the budget in 1993, was still a state representative in 2010. Some Democrats thought he should have run it more aggressively. 2, 2010, but Doyle was still governor, and he would still be running state government for another two months. Jim Doyle talks with reporters after the voting at Midvale Elementary School in Madison, Wis., Tuesday, Nov. So he basically, then, was handing in the keys to the house a few days before the lease was signed. "Doyle really needs to be blamed for it," said Tim Osswald. "He understood where the incoming government stood on it, and he backed off," said Diane Osswald. On a Saturday morning at the Dane County Farmers' Market in Madison in late September, Diane and Tim Osswald had a lot to say about Doyle. And some blame Doyle for not fighting harder.
LaHood told WPR he tried to get Walker to change his mind after the election, but the governor-elect wouldn’t budge.īut other people who wanted this rail project vividly remember Doyle's role in the decision. Ray LaHood, former President Barack Obama's Transportation Secretary, said, without a doubt, it was Walker who stopped the train. There are obvious reasons this is a footnote to the larger story of the train.įor one, Walker ran against this train in a very public way.Īnd key decision-makers point the finger at Walker. Jim Doyle.ĭoyle paused work on the rail line two days after Walker was elected in 2010, and it never started back up again. There's a key detail in the high-speed rail saga that sometimes gets overlooked: It wasn't technically former Gov. Here are some of the questions we didn't get to in "Derailed." Did Gov. Other stuff, like the Olympics connection, seems to have been lost to history. Some of it, like Doyle's role in ending the train, is still discussed today. Jim Doyle have moved ahead with the high-speed train when he was a lame duck?Īlso, what did the 2016 Olympics have to do with all of this?īecause the story of "Derailed" happened over the course of decades, there's a lot there, and a lot we didn't get to.
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