Organizers of petition drives to force recall elections against a two more Repub state senators in Wisconsin claimed Monday and today to have collected well over the required number of signatures. The signatures have not been checked and certified, but if four recall elections are held, that would equal the number of legislative recall elections in Wisconsin history before this year.
In all, petition drives are under way to force recall elections against 12 senators, six from each party. But so far, none of the petitions targeting Dem senators have reached the point where the organizers are claiming success and time is running. Likewise, recall petitions against two more Repub senators are still being circulated.
Repubs currently control the Wisconsin Senate by 19-14, so majority control of the body will be at stake if at least three Repub senators are subject to recall.
Obviously, this is all happening in the aftermath of the big brouhaha over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget and especially its treatment of collective bargaining for public employees.
The Cap Times of Madison reported yesterday that organizers had reached their signature goal in the drive to recall Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon. Petition organizers had earlier turned in what they said was an adequate number of signatures to force recall elections against Sens. Dan Kapanke of La Crosse and Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac.
Now today, the Pioneer Press reports a fourth claim, this one by the organizers of the recall petition against Sen. Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls.
If the elections are deemed valid and sufficient in number, recall elections will be held this summer. Dems will need to put up a candidate to oppose each of the targeted Repubs, and primaries may be necessary in some of the instances to produce a Dem nominee.
This will be interesting to watch from a safe distance. I have three sisters who live in southern Wisconsin, one of whom is a state employee, one a lawyer and one a doctor. They all loathe Scott Walker, but for different reasons. I’d love to be a fly on the wall listening to their conversation over dinner some night in Madison…
If our “conservative” Republican friends in Wisconsin were psychologically functional, they would realize that they have gone far beyond what the public thought they were electing them to do and change course to more closely match the ideas and ideals of those who elected them, but…
I suspect that, because of their dysfunctions, they will continue to believe that what they’ve done…
offering a human sacrifice of the well being of their state’s citizens on the altar of the fabulously wealthy – the Koch bros., et al, presumably in the hopes of winning the favor of and preferential treatment from their one true God: MONEY…
was and is completely right and good and true,
and that the public supports them absolutely (despite polls clearly showing the opposite to be true).
They will, of course, credit their upcoming loss of control of the Wisconsin state senate to undefined and untraceable skullduggery on the part of their “enemies”…
And NEVER EVER see themselves for what they are – the arch enemies of “the common good” whose policies would accomplish nothing but giving even more to those who have no need of anything more while destroying the lives of their state’s average citizens by taking from them much of what they have left after these past many months of the Big Recession.