In the very different presidential race of a year ago, Scott Walker was a front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination and Bernie Sanders was an asterisk in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Back then, Walker paid little attention to Sanders but the senator from Vermont said he relished the notion of running against the governor of Wisconsin — especially if it involved debating about labor rights.

A year on, Walker is a footnote who quit the Republican competition before it really began and Sanders is an insurgent contender who has won 15 primaries and caucuses and secured more than 1,000 pledged delegates. He’s still in an uphill race — Hillary Clinton has won more states and more delegates — but he’s a contender on his side of a race where Walker is history.

As the presidential race veers into Wisconsin for the April 5 primary, however, Sanders is still running against Walker — and against the anti-labor, anti-public education, anti-public services austerity agenda of a Republican Party so toxic that it has become a host for the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

“I think that Scott Walker is a symbol of almost everything that we are opposing,” Sanders told The Capital Times in an interview before his big rally last Saturday at the Alliant Energy Center's Exposition Hall.