text: Wisconsin voters will head to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) and install Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) in his place. 
   
   The recall election has drawn massive amounts of national attention and money — $63.5 million and counting, to be exact. Walker enters Election Day as a slight favorite, with even Democrats acknowledging privately that a Barrett win at this point would be an upset. Of course, upsets happen. 
   
   With the national spotlight so firmly fixed on Tuesday’s election — the Fix believes Tuesday’s vote is the second most important and influential race of 2012 aside from the presidential — the stakes for a number of players on both sides are absolutely massive. 
   
   Below is a breakdown of who will be made — or broken — by what happens Tuesday in the Badger State. 
   
   ●Scott Walker. No one has more to gain or lose than Walker. A defeat at the ballot box would, obviously, be a major setback for a politician widely viewed as a rising star when he was elected in 2010. Coming back from such a high-profile defeat — particularly one that came about 18 months after his initial statewide victory — would be decidedly difficult. If Walker wins, however, he will immediately become a national conservative hero (even more than he already is). He would be cast as the guy who stood on principle, stared down the best that Democrats could throw at him and emerged victorious. Don’t be surprised to hear some Walker 2016 or Walker 2020 presidential chatter if the governor can pull off a victory. 
   
   ●Organized labor. If Walker has the highest stakes in the recall vote, the labor movement is a close second. Walker’s bill stripping public-sector unions of their collective-bargaining rights last year triggered a national outcry from labor, which viewed the Wisconsin law as the first step down a slippery slope of workers’ rights being forfeited. While there’s no doubt that the effort to recall Walker wouldn’t have happened without the energy and organization of the labor movement, unions also largely backed Barrett’s primary opponent — a move that some Democrats believe cost them precious time and money to make the case against the incumbent. If Walker survives on the heels of labor’s defeat in the 2011 recall effort to take over the Wisconsin Senate (it came up a seat short) and a failed attempt to unseat then-Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) in a 2010 primary, there will be lots — and lots — of questions asked about whether unions retain the political power they once did. 
   
   ●President Obama. The Democratic National Committee and the White House have gone out of their way to make clear just how much financial and organizational support they have lent to Barrett’s effort. (DNC officials say more than $1.4­ million has been directed to Wisconsin in the 2012 cycle so far.) They touted the fact that DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz traveled to the state last month to aid Barrett and that former president Bill Clinton stumped with the Democratic nominee last week. But some in Wisconsin — and Washington — are unhappy that the president himself decided not to campaign in the Badger State. (One party strategist noted that Obama had time to endorse in a House primary in New Jersey late last week but not to come to Wisconsin.) If Walker wins, not only will Obama get blamed for not doing more — which is always a difficult debate to referee — but there also will be plenty written about how the recall results bode poorly for Obama’s chances in Wisconsin in the fall. 
   
   ●Tom Barrett. Barrett is the forgotten man in all of this, but he’s got a lot on the line, too. A former member of Congress, Barrett is now in his third run for governor (he lost in the Democratic primary in 2002 and then to Walker in 2010). A trifecta of gubernatorial defeats would amount to the end (or darn close) of Barrett’s statewide ambitions. 
   
   ●Bill Clinton. The recall election is nothing but upside for the former president. If Barrett wins, the after-action analysis will almost certainly focus on Bubba’s last-minute campaigning for the party’s nominee. If Barrett loses, no one will blame Clinton — concluding that he did the best he could but not even his popularity could drag the Democrat across the line. Wisconsin is just another reminder that in politics, it’s much easier to be a former president than a current one. ||||| DE PERE, Wis. — President Obama holds multiple paths to re-election, with a handful of battleground states being able to slip away without leading to his defeat. But each possible outcome on his campaign map has always shared a common trait: winning Wisconsin. 
   
   A Republican resurgence here, which has burst into full view as the party determinedly defends its sitting governor in a rare recall election, is spilling into the presidential race. The result is poised to shape the general election fight between Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney, who intends to add Wisconsin to his list of targeted states. 
   
   The president is bracing for a difficult set of challenges, which began last week when an uptick in the unemployment rate provided a fresh reminder of the beleaguered domestic economy and the deepening financial uncertainties abroad. A Republican victory here could set off a wave of adjustments in the lineup of swing states. Even before the outcome of Tuesday’s vote is known, Democrats are warning that Wisconsin is far from a surefire win in November. 
   
   “We are tremendously polarized,” Mike Tate, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman, said in an interview on Sunday. “We’re going to remain a very competitive state heading into the fall.” 
   
   While the presidential campaign is well under way across the country, the contest has been overshadowed here by the effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. The election, a culmination of more than a year of bitter unrest, has created a combustible political climate that defies easy characterization in the five months leading up to the general election. 
   
   But Mr. Romney is within striking distance of Mr. Obama in Wisconsin, according to several public and private polls and interviews with strategists in both parties, and he intends to start building a campaign operation off the robust get-out-the-vote machinery assembled for Mr. Walker. The decision by the Romney campaign to try to contest Wisconsin is the first sign that Republicans are eager to expand their targets of opportunity and compete on terrain that not long ago seemed squarely on Mr. Obama’s side. 
   
   “If we win on Tuesday, this is going to be a shot in the arm and adrenaline that we didn’t expect to have,” said former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, a Republican who is seeking the party’s nomination to run for Senate. “It is going to spark fervor in the presidential race.” 
   
   Mr. Obama has purposefully tried to keep his distance from the recall fight, which has unfolded with all the intensity and acrimony of a presidential campaign within the borders of Wisconsin. The mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett, is the Democratic candidate trying to replace Mr. Walker, who ignited a furor by cutting collective bargaining rights for most of the state’s public workers. It is a rematch of the 2010 governor’s race, which Mr. Barrett lost to Mr. Walker. 
   
   The White House has showed tepid support for the recall. Democratic advisers thought the effort would take time and money away from the presidential campaign and poison the pool of independent voters who were a key part of Mr. Obama’s success here four years ago, when he carried the state by 14 points and swept 59 of 72 counties. 
   
   The president, who campaigned for Mr. Barrett two years ago, has been conspicuously absent this time. His aides argued that he had a full plate and did not have time to come. But Republicans were quick to point out that Mr. Obama was only a helicopter ride on Marine One away from the state on Friday when he visited Minneapolis, and again on Saturday after spending the morning in his old neighborhood in Chicago. 
   
   “He couldn’t drive 15 miles and show his face here?” said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, who spent the weekend in his native Wisconsin to stir the pot and campaign for Mr. Walker. “There are going to be a lot of Democrats in Wisconsin who are going to be pretty disappointed with their president who did not come in and help out.” 
   
   While there was more talk of Mr. Obama’s absence among Republicans than Democrats here, several Democratic officials said the president was wise to stay away. 
   
   “He’s got a very big job as president,” said former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat and one of Mr. Obama’s earliest supporters four years ago. “As important as the recall is, in the big picture, it’s much more important to get Barack Obama re-elected.” 
   
   The recall election has created bruised feelings and deepened the partisan divide in the state, which was on full display Sunday at the Zirbel Dairy Farms near De Pere, in northeast Wisconsin, where both candidates in the recall race crossed paths as they courted voters. 
   
   At the Brown County Dairy Breakfast, a celebration that drew hundreds of people here on a sun-splashed morning, Laurie Gilson groaned aloud from her spot in line when she looked up and saw that Mr. Walker was dishing out scrambled eggs and conversation. She snapped to her sister: “I just can’t look at him. He’d better not say hi to me.”
target: – Tomorrow, Wisconsinites will decide whether to keep Gov. Scott Walker or boot him in favor of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, in what Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post is calling "the second most important and influential race of 2012 aside from the presidential," with "absolutely massive" stakes. Here's what you need to know as the clock ticks down: Two polls released yesterday show the race virtually tied—Walker leads in each, but by thin margins. He's up 50-47 in one, 53-47 in the other, but both are within the margin of error, Reuters reports. It's all about turnout now: "If Democrats turn out in the numbers they did in 2008, Tom Barrett will win a surprise victory. If they don't, Walker will survive," the head of Public Policy Polling says. The agency managing the election is predicting turnout somewhere between 60% and 65%—above 2010's 49.7%, but below 2008's 69.2% "If there's any state that epitomizes what the permanent campaign feels like, it's this one," observes David Catanese of Politico. This will be the seventh time Wisconsin has gone to the polls in the last 14 months, thanks to various recalls. All those campaigns are expensive: Through May 21, $110 million had been spent on political ads. President Obama will be closely watching the results, because he's counting on Wisconsin in November, the New York Times points out. "A Republican victory here could set off a wave of adjustments in the lineup of swing states." If Scott Walker wins, Cillizza expects to hear presidential rumblings surrounding him. A lot is on the line for Barrett, too; this would be his third gubernatorial defeat, likely ending his statewide ambitions. Organized labor has a lot to lose, too. A Walker win would be both an affirmation of his anti-union policies, and a signal that unions have lost their political juice; they opposed Barrett in the primary, and lost there, too.