Scott Walker lost because his war against the public sector came back to bite him.

Wisconsin Wisconsin's eight-year-old mandate, Scott Walker, will be remembered for his multi-year battle against state-owned public sector unions, which he decimated with his "Compensation Bill". "Budget 2011", known as Act 10. The law dismantled public service employees from almost all significant collective bargaining powers, forced leaders to take part in exhausting certification annual elections and forcing most public service employees to pay more for health insurance and pensions, resulting in a drop in net pay of 8 to 10%. (Police and firefighters have been exempted from most of these provisions.) Union membership was cratered. This year, all Democratic nominees for governorship have pledged to repeal the law.

On Tuesday night, it was tempting to see Walker's fall as a triumphant return from the Midwest's labor power, especially during the Democrats' winning campaigns in Illinois and Michigan. The Chicago Sun-Times, for example, has praised the defeat of "the public enemy No. 1 organized workers." To complete the story, Walker even lost to Tony Evers, a former teacher and head of public school. But if Tuesday's results are a referendum on the decisive moment in Walker's career, Walker's main problem – the organized workforce – is far less important than what lies behind: education.

Not only because Mr. Evers won only 30,000 votes, a margin well below that of Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin. (In his own race, Baldwin defeated Leah Vukmir, a senator who sits on the board of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Koch-backed group that, with the help of Vukmir, sent a handful of unconditional conservative laws to the state legislature.) And not only because Evers did not draw such a hard line on Act 10, claiming that it was open to a "compromise" that restored bargaining rights, while maintaining Payments from Walker's employees. More because Walker was tested more explicitly on the union issue in a recall election in 2012 and again in 2014 – and easily won both victories.

But if the unions themselves could not defeat Walker, the more general problem of education definitely had it. More than 2 of 3 ads in support of no more candidate were on education this year. Fleeing the tone of the 2011 union protests (and breaking with a dramatic movement of teachers in other states led by the GOP) in favor of a more "local and local" calmer approach, the defenders Wisconsin Education have tackled budget cuts, vouchers, inequities, and shortage of teachers. Tuesday, in Madison, a liberal stronghold and home to the besieged university of Wisconsin, the turnout has peaked amazing 93 percent.

Walker had tried to counter; he faked (falsely) a "record investment" in schools. But coming from a guy who asserted his foreign policy by comparing Protestant teachers to "radical Islamist terrorists," the idea that Walker was the "governor of education" was a bit exaggerated.

That Evers was the director of the public school only accentuated the contrast. Mandela Barnes, elected lieutenant governor (and next senior black official in the history of Wisconsin), summed up the democratic platform in a victory speech: "We are bringing education back into the state of Wisconsin. We report science to the state of Wisconsin. And we will bring equality back to the state of Wisconsin. "

Walker effectively cut $ 800 million from the school budget over two years in 2011. (School districts offset some of that by saving on benefits and pensions.) State inflation declined by 20% over the previous decade. peak and did not recover.

The Democrats knew the problem would be serious, as Wisconsin localities attempted to offset the state's withdrawal through numerous bond referendums to raise funds in school districts in the Wisconsin countryside in the suburbs of Milwaukee. More than 60 districts spent more than $ 1.4 billion in ballots Tuesday, as part of a record wave. With the state's economy getting stronger, voters' views on taxes and spending have been reversed since 2013: they are willing to pay more for education.

But the piecemeal solution has consequences. The rise in localized expenditure measures (related to property taxes) aggravates the inequalities between rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods. Like the teacher shortage attributable to Law 10, which gave the high-spending districts an advantage in the newly unstable labor market. The gap in achievement between black and white students who complete their education in Wisconsin is the highest in the country. Research by the Center for American Progress suggests that Act 10 has caused lasting harm to state teachers; A study by economist E. Jason Baron indicates that student test scores have dropped. Act 10 made save taxpayer money by taking it out of the pockets of teachers.

Aside from this correlation, the brutal reaction against Walker hardly concerns the attacks of the Labor Law. In fact, Democrats could find the signing of Walker's bill impossible to overturn, especially as Republicans continue to flourish in the Wisconsin elections. It may not be so easy to rebuild the unions – and the ambitious jobs they created for the middle class.

Ironically, Walker's other Perhaps the most important legacy of Wisconsin is the Foxconn plant, where the state spends the largest grant to a foreign company in US history. Even if the agreement went perfectly as planned, it would still be a huge investment from the state to create a series of good jobs in the middle class. Which, if you think about it, is a bit like what Wisconsin used to have in its public sector unions. Paying teachers' health care will probably have cost less per job than what the state seems likely to pay for Foxconn's new workforce. But the most important difference may lie in the types of employees supported by the state. The ancients taught the children; the new ones will build LCD screens.