Source: Politics<\/p>\n
For more than a year, the battleground state of Wisconsin has been victimized by the partisan culture wars that have defined the Covid response.<\/p>\n
Now, a well-known conservative is stepping up in an attempt to resolve those differences. <\/p>\n
Scott Walker, the former Wisconsin governor, presidential candidate,and longtime Republican darling, has joined up with another former Wisconsin governor who\u2019s on the opposite side of the political spectrum \u2014 Jim Doyle, a Democrat \u2014 to urge people to get vaccinated. <\/p>\n
In a new public service announcement<\/a> to air across Wisconsin television beginning this week and shared with POLITICO, Walker and Doyle banter back and forth. <\/p>\n “Let\u2019s do a commercial together, reminding people in Wisconsin how important it is to be vaccinated,\u201d Walker says in the ad.<\/p>\n “That may be the best idea you\u2019ve ever had,\u201d Doyle responds. <\/p>\n The two joined up as officials in Wisconsin \u2014 like many battleground states that are ideologically divided \u2014 are attempting to reach out to pockets of the population that have resisted getting vaccinated.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn’t a political issue. This doesn\u2019t invoke Trump or Biden or Fauci or anybody else,\u201d Walker said in an interview. \u201cThis is just the two of us saying \u2018Hey we agree. We think it’s a good idea to get vaccinated.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n UW Health, an academic medical system that is affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, which is behind the public service announcement, moved to cut the ad as the state attempts to address a sharp disparity in vaccination rates in different counties. In Wisconsin, some counties are seeing less than 30 percent vaccination rates<\/a> while others are nearing 70 percent. <\/p>\n Like other parts of the country, there are low percentage rates in both rural and urban areas in Wisconsin, representing hesitancy across the ideological spectrum. Most publicly-available data shows that the constituency least likely to get vaccinated in America are Trump supporters. In Wisconsin, that has not been helped by the fact that the states most prominent Republican elected official, Sen. Ron Johnson, has expressed skepticism<\/a> about the need for people to get vaccinated quickly.<\/p>\n But African American communities, which vote overwhelmingly Democratic, have seen lower rates of vaccination too. In Wisconsin, some of that has been attributed<\/a> to access to the vaccine, though disinformation campaigns<\/a> have been cited as well.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew we were going to have a sizeable population of vaccine hesitant individuals on both the right and the left where politics was at least partially a factor,\u201d said UW Health spokesperson Tom Russell. \u201cWe thought a strange-bedfellows ad might be a good way to break down some resistance to getting the vaccine and demonstrate that it really is something that\u2019s good for all of Wisconsin.\u201d<\/p>\n