It’s never too early to look to the future, right?

Away from the turmoil of Washington, GOP governors are already gearing up for reelection campaigns in 2018. With Democrats predicting big gains as President Trump’s approval ratings flatline, Republicans are courting an audience that they’ve neglected since the Tea Party victories of 2010: moderates.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker is doing just that with an ambitious budget proposal for the state that would “invest more money into education than ever before in the history of Wisconsin.” Is he likely to succeed? Hard to say.

Walker's budget would increase K-12 funding by $649 million and freeze tuition throughout the University of Wisconsin System, with plans to reduce tuition by 5 percent the following year. To offset costs associated with tuition cuts, the proposal includes $35 million in additional state funding on top of $100 million in additional state initiatives for the university system.

The proposal, announced in February, appeared geared toward rebuilding sagging approval ratings and getting moderate Republican voters to say, “Hey, maybe he’s not that bad?” Judging by early responses from the mainstream press, they've largely reinforced Walker’s attempts to look moderate, too.

Associated Press reporter Scott Bauer called the budget “surprisingly liberal,” while Inside Higher Ed excitedly declared, “Scott Walker Loosens the Purse Strings.” The UW System President Ray Cross went so far as to proclaim Walker's “the best budget … proposal we’ve had in over a decade, and we need to be appreciative.”

But in the months following the proposal, the positive reception to Walker’s bill has also begun to sour as new details have emerged.

In late March, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed the qualifying conditions for K-12 schools to receive the $650 million promised to them. The conditions had already caused rifts between the governor and legislators, and Walker's budget would incentivize compliance with the highly controversial Act 10 law that requires teachers to pay 12 percent or more of their insurance costs.

For schools that comply, they’ll receive approximately $200 more per student than the non-compliant schools. Compliance, however, means effectively cutting teacher pay, especially for public schools in Madison and Milwaukee, where staff in the lower salary range may only pay 2 or 3 percent of insurance costs. For the districts that choose not to comply, they’d be standing up for their teachers at the cost of the students.

As for Walker’s UW funding, that measure was dead on arrival. The state’s Joint Finance Committee voted along party lines, with Republicans voting unanimously against Walker’s proposed tuition cut and the $35 million increase to cover the funding gap. State lawmakers, however, still found room for a public speaking stipend that helps bring conservative speakers to campuses.

Part of the problem, it seems, is that few people ever took Walker’s commitment to education all that seriously. Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) called the proposal a “death-bed conversion” for Walker, and Republican senators were quick to voice their skepticism, with leaders calling for caution in the wake of the announcement. House Speaker Robin Vos, a regular ally of Walker’s, publicly questionedwhether the state could even afford the additional spending.

Some university faculty, like UW Milwaukee professor Nick Fleisher, also recognized the curious timing of Walker’s change of heart – and the political project that underpins it.

“Walker's budget proposals for education… reflect the political reality of running for reelection next year rather than any change of heart on the underlying policies,” Fleisher wrote in an email. “I think it's great that he and the legislature are planning to increase budgets for K-12 and UW System, and it's a clear indication that there is internal Republican polling suggesting that people around the state are concerned about education funding.”

The silver lining for educators and advocates is that GOP legislators are finally reacting to the University of Wisconsin's slide out of the ranks of the nation’s top five research universities, and to the state’s teacher shortages and faculty exodus.

But Fleisher, a former representative of the American Association of University Professors, is careful to put the funding increases in context.

“It's important to keep in mind that the increases don't come close to undoing the cuts that have been enacted since 2011," Fleisher said. "The anti-teacher effects of Act 10 are all still in place, and there are numerous other strings attached: for UW, a certain proportion of performance-based funding, and for K-12, much will hinge on revenue limits and the possibility of other legislation limiting local referenda on property taxes.”

The courtship of moderates and Democrats while making gestures toward education funding isn’t unique to Walker. Republican incumbent governors in Iowa, Arkansas and Arizona are all currently considering reelection in 2018 – and all have proposed or supported bills increasing the state’s contribution to education.

Ironically, these government executives are staking their popularity on fixing the ailing schools in their states – which mostly means each governor will be required to walk back cost-cutting policies they previously helped enact. But this is a change of heart that Wisconsin’s legislature didn’t buy from Walker. With just days remaining before state budgets are finalized, the time to convince voters there, and elsewhere, is running out.

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