Not that union leaders didn't give it their all. From their headquarters in Madison, activists manned phone banks and hit the streets with anti-Walker paraphernalia. The scene "was kind of remarkable," says David Poklinkoski, the president of Local 2304, an electrical workers union here. Together they built a motley political apparatus largely separate from outside labor lobbyists and Democratic Party apparatchiks. That coordination, Mr. Poklinkoski says, will ensure that the progressive movement continues, even when the outsiders go elsewhere.

Reflecting on the recall vote, Mr. Walker points to the strong turnout and four GOP victories as an indicator of where the electorate stands on his reforms. Viewing Wisconsin through the prism of the rotunda rabble-rousers, he cautions, would be a mistake. "You can get a pretty skewed perspective," he says, here in the capital. Beyond Dane County, where gray-beard professors and union heavies roost, Republicans, he tells me, are winning the battle for Wisconsin.