Empower Wisconsin | Jan. 9, 2023

Gov. Tony Evers began 2023 like he ended 2022, as a tool of the far left.

Evers’ inauguration speech called for unity, as he savaged his political enemies.

He doubled down on the left’s election denier rhetoric, picking up the Democratic Party’s talking points that representative democracy was at risk — that voting for Democrats somehow saved the republic.

“This past November, Wisconsin rejected a trajectory bent toward permanently undermining the tenets and institutions that are fundamental to who we are as a people. Wisconsin rejected a rhetoric born out of apathy and animosity toward our neighbors. And Wisconsin rejected a return to the bitter politics of resentment,” the governor declared.

He mistakenly sees his 3.4 percent victory over businessman Tim Michels in November as a mandate to push the liberal agenda demanded by the leftists who elected him.

“Governor Evers’ calls for bipartisanship and unity will ring hollow if he insists on defining ‘bipartisan’ as the garden variety liberal agenda,” said Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville). “It becomes even more difficult to ‘forge forward, together’ when those who do not share his liberal political ideology are caricatured as threats to both democracy and the ‘tenets and institutions’ of our constitutional republic.”

And what was the governor’s first order of business the day after he was sworn in? Meeting with the infamous “Wisconsin-5”, the mayors of the state’s five largest cities — Democratic Party strongholds, all.

The cities received the lion’s share of “Zuck Bucks,” millions of dollars in so-called “safe election” grants funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and fronted by liberal activist groups and Dem operatives. Reports show the left’s get-out-the-vote initiative meant lots of extra votes for Joe Biden in 2020, and it arguably set the infrastructure for Wisconsin’s 2022 gubernatorial election.

His meeting with the Wisconsin-5 mayors looked a lot like political payback to the politicos that served Evers a second term.

And he paid tribute to his strong allies at Planned Parenthood, who dumped a lot of money into electing their abortion-on-demand champion.

“We look forward to continuing to work with the Evers administration to achieve needed change and secure a better future for the people of Wisconsin,” said Steven Webb II, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, executive director in a statement on the speech.

If the governor’s inauguration showed us anything, it’s that once a tool, always a tool.

And Tony Evers starts the new year as Empower Wisconsin’s Tool of the Week.