Wisconsin's Governor Walker and the possibility of a recall
We're on the far side of the state Senate recalls, so it's probably time to create this thread.
Context:
In early February, newly-elected Governor Scott Walker put forward a bill intended to address Wisconsin's looming budgetary issues. It included salary and benefit cuts for public-sector employees, as well as provisions that eliminated the right to collective bargaining for some, and made it significantly harder for others (by declaring the state would no longer withhold union dues, mandating annual re-certification of union representation, declaring that unions could not negotiate for anything other than salary, and capping salary increases at cost-of-living unless expressly approved via referendum). The unions offered concessions of all requested financial components (salary and benefit-wise) in return for preserving the right to collectively bargain. Governor Walker and the Wisconsin GOP refused, and attempted to pass the bill without discussion or debate - even when it was discovered that the bill included odd provisions for no-bid sale of public assets).
Mass public protests erupted, and the passage of the bill was stymied by the departure of every Democratic member of the state Senate, preventing the necessary quorum. Though the Republicans had a comfortable majority in the state Assembly, they resorted to tricks like calling a vote before any Democrats were present to prevent amendments, and ultimately passed the bill on February 25th in an ambush vote (the floor was open to voting for a handful of seconds) while 15 Democrats were still on the docket to speak.
Eventually the Republicans in the state Senate moved the collective bargaining provisions into a separate bill, bypassing the quorum requirement. Less than two hours notice was given for the meeting where passage took place, which means the passage violated Wisconsin Law § 19.84. This violation was the subject of a lawsuit, which ended up at the state Supreme Court (who threw out the relevant statutes and found in favor of the Walker Administration).
In short, things have gotten acrimonious.
Other fun facts
Governor Walker won with 52% of the vote in an extremely low-turnout election. His margin of victory was 125,000 votes. Contrary to some claims made by the administration, Governor Walker also did not run on a platform of eviscerating labor rights (or many of the other things he fought to force through). Wisconsin, historically, has been a labor-friendly state. Public-sector unions first won legal recognition in the US here in Wisconsin (in 1959).
The net change in the state Senate from the recall elections was a Democratic gain of two seats. This puts the Democrats one vote shy of a majority in the Senate, but it's important to bear in mind that of the nine state Senate recalls this summer, Governor Walker carried every single one of those districts in the Fall of 2010. Additionally, the GOP majority now hinges on Senator Dale Schultz. Senator Schultz is a moderate who voted against the collective bargaining bill and may have been tricked into missing his opportunity to amend the bill by Governor Walker.
Wisconsin law mandates that an elected official serve a full year before facing a recall effort, and our entire Assembly was elected this past fall, as was Governor Walker. The earliest that can happen until January, since he was sworn in at the beginning of the year.
There was a previous thread about the actions by Governor Walker and our state GOP here. That one got sent to fat camp. Let's keep this one focused on the possibility of Governor Walker's recall - there are separate ones for the state Supreme Court election, the lawsuit over the status of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, and the recall elections for state Senate which have already occurred.
Also: I'd like to plead for us all to make room for dissenting opinions and reasonable debate.
Governor Walker has been talking up bipartisanship again, since the recalls, but it looks like he may not have support from the state GOP.
So Governor Walker holds a lunch to try to bridge the gaping partisan divide, and his party's most powerful members of the state legislature blow it off. That doesn't bode well.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Sounds to me like the GOP is trying to distance themselves in an effort to save their own asses. If they throw him under the bus it might appease the wolves!
“When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its
acquaintance and hear what it had to tell.” -- John Muir
Except for the fact that the Fitzgerald brothers have been equally active in pushing the radical legislative agenda. They'd both be eligible for recall in January, but Scott Fitzgerald is from the staunchly Republican 13th Senate District (Walker won the 13th by 24%, compared with his 4% margin statewide). I believe the 39th Assembly District represented by Jeff Fitzgerald is similarly Republican, though I'm not finding those numbers this morning.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
An interesting question has been put before the Government Accountability Board - namely, does recalling a governor also necessarily mean recalling the lieutenant governor, as well?
Given the recent collusion between our state GOP and the conservative majority on the state Supreme Court, I expect a lawsuit and decision in favor of whichever interpretation the Republican Party views as most favorable to Walker remaining in office.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
I'm a bit uncomfortable with the introductory write up as you have laid it out. The state supreme court ruled in favor of the Walker administration on whether the law as passed was valid but there seems to be a lot of grandstanding and finger pointing and unproven accusations on both sides. It seems to be as a non-wisconsinite that the republicans were set to vote on the bill and the democrats fled the state in order to take advantage of a parliamentary rule to prevent the vote. The republicans then turned around and massaged the bill in such a way that the quorum wasn't necessary.
It seems these actions and reactions caused a sort of "let's bend as many of the rules we can within a hair's breadth of the law" which eventually culminated in the state supreme court where the verdict was narrowly in favor of the Walker administration. Politics at its worst on both sides imho. It irritates the crap out of me when congress plays similar obstructionism games.
The statistics about walker's election numbers suggest that he is likely vulnerable to a recall, but a slim margin and low turnout don't invalidate the election process at all. Elections do have consequences and it's going to be up to the voters of Wisconsin to make their voices heard in any recall attempts. Unfortunately I'm not really sure how relevant the lost seats in the recall are. We're in a period of recession and low government approval ratings which leads to voters being "anti-incumbent" so I would expect swing districts to change hands again (as they did) and probably in 2012 as well.
No-bid sales are sleazy though. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
You need to be careful when you say there is collusion between Supreme Court justices and a politican. Collusion is illegal and you haven't posted any evidence to show that.
Tanglebones wrote:
I'd suggest you read the various Wisconsin threads for more detail. It's no small challenge to condense the various shenanigans into a (fairly) brief synopsis, but the short version is I stand by my writeup, and disagree fairly strongly that this is a case of equally poor behavior on both sides. When it was clear that the Walker administration was not going to take "yes" for an answer, and intended to ram through the bill before the public knew what was included, the Democratic members of the state Senate delayed it with the only tool at their disposal. Governor Walker, in a call he believed was with David Koch, said he considered planting violent agitators in the protest crowds (a plan dismissed only because he thought it might put pressure on him to negotiate), and discussed plans to trick the Democrats into returning
The margin of victory number was poached from one of the Wisconsin threads (sadly, my prediction on voter suppression turns out to have been spot on). A margin of 125,000 votes becomes awfully precarious, when you realize that there were nearly that many demonstrators at the capitol on a single day, in the middle of winter. That doesn't invalidate the election at all, but that (coupled with the fact that Walker didn't mention his radical legislative agenda until after the election) does show that any claims that there was a mandate for passing legislation like 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 are farcical at best.
I do agree that turnout will be key, and that successfully recalling Walker will be a tough fight.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Do you have separate votes for governor and lieutenant or is it all one ticket?
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Quintin_Stone wrote:
Psych wrote:
Fair enough. On Monday, June 13th, Jeff Fitzgerald said he hoped to have a decision from the state Supreme Court in the 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 case by mid-day Tuesday, and that if they didn't have a decision the Legislature would have to re-pass the bill (something the GOP had been fighting tooth and nail to avoid).
The state Supreme Court began hearings on the case just the previous Monday, so this was an extremely unusual turnaround.
The evening of the 13th, the conservative members of the state Supreme Court demanded a decision be rendered the next day. The argument was heated enough that one justice ended up with his hands on the throat of a colleague (note that while many aspects of this altercation are in dispute, Justice Prosser acknowledged this fact in his testimony to investigators).
The state Supreme Court delivered the verdict requested by the GOP, on the timeline they requested - ignoring relevant statutes like the very clearly-written and applicable Wisconsin §19.97, as well as the normal timeframe for deliberation and discussion.
I'm willing to call that collusion, but if you have a less-prejudicial word that still accurately describes that sequence of events, I'm open to suggestions.
[Edit to remove repetitive repetitive sentence]
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KrazyTaco wrote:
It's one ticket when we elect them, but that doesn't mean it's clear-cut for recalls.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Dimmer, it's really weird when you have two consecutive posts and your avatars are somehow out of sync.
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Quintin_Stone wrote:
Psych wrote:
Just as an aside, Dimmer, your analysis of all this is succinct and very well organized. I'm in awe of how you've tracked and presented all this over time. Not to mention your patience.
Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular. -- GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos
It's far more than I can keep track of (especially with my current impairment), but it's relatively easy at this point to search through the various Wisconsin threads to piece together whatever the relevant details are on a given issue.
I appreciate the kind words, though. I'd be doing this regardless, as I find it a helpful tool for processing all the stuff that's happening in my adoptive home state - but it's great to hear that it's useful in some small way for other folks, as well.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Lots of moving pieces here, so I apologize in advance for the long-winded post.
In May of 2010, Darlene Wink, a staffer for Scott Walker was found to be doing political astroturfing on her employer's behalf (at that point, Scott Walker was still serving as Milwaukee County Executive, though his gubernatorial campaign had begun). She was doing this using county equipment, from the office, and during business hours. That's a violation of campaign law, and Darlene Wink resigned two hours after local media requested her time cards to fact-check her assertion that these posts were being done on her own time, on her personal laptop.
At around this time, a "John Doe" investigation was begun in Milwaukee County, a secret judicial proceeding in which witnesses can be subpoenaed and required to testify under oath, but are forbidden from talking publicly about the probe or its target. It was broadly expected that the focus was on other instances of inappropriate campaigning on the taxpayer dime, but that appears to no longer be the case.
The dramatic early-morning raid of Cynthia Archer's home this month refocused attention on the "John Doe" investigation. Police and FBI were involved, and removed items from the home, including a computer she'd sold at a yard sale the previous week (a neighbor volunteered it to police after hearing what the raid was about). Cynthia Archer, who held the top staff position under Walker while he served as Milwaukee County executive, followed him to the state capitol as serve as Walker's deputy secretary of the Department of Administration. She went out on personal leave on August 16th, and resigned from the deputy secretary job on August 19th, stating in her resignation letter simply that she was done with her job that day. Curiously, records show Cynthia Archer was hired at the Department of Children and Families the day before that, on August 18th - for less money than her DoA job, though still at a 64% pay increase over her predecessor. Three days after Cynthia Archer was to begin her new hope at the DCF, Children and Families Secretary Eloise Anderson interviewed Republican fundraiser Heidi Green for the already-filled position. Secretary Anderson never interviewed Cynthia Archer, and though she knew the position was filled, claims that Heidi Green was being interviewed for an unspecified future opening (though this is at odds what Heidi Green has said).
This week came revelations that Gov. Walker's spokesman Cullen Werwie sought and received immunity from prosecutors in the John Doe case, back on April 14th, one of only three individuals to be granted immunity so far.
It's also been revealed that the prosecution of William Gardner earlier this year (you might remember him from this thread) for felony violations of campaign law may be related to the current John Doe investigation.
It's too soon to know, but it's starting to look likely that someone senior in the Walker administration may be facing charges in the not-too-distant future.
Also: for folks who want a more in-depth timeline, someone's put one together here (it's far too long to repost).
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KrazyTaco wrote:
J.B. Van Hollen, the state Attorney General appointed by Governor Walker, issued an opinion (warning, PDF) today that the petitions gathered to recall the Governor would not include Lieutenant Governor. Since AG Van Hollen was appointed by Governor Walker, and has been in lockstep with his wishes throughout this year's political upheaval, it's safe to assume this is the position of the Walker administration, as well. If the GAB (who has jurisdiction here) goes with along with this opinion, I think we're unlikely to see a legal challenge by either side.
In other news:
The effort to recall Governor Walker begins in earnest in less than two weeks, when petitions can begin to be circulated. Once that process starts, Governor Walker will be able to take advantage of a loophole in state law that will allow him unlimited fundraising.
In an attempt to make recall efforts harder, a bill proposed by state Senator Mary Lazich would have required all recall petitions to be notarized. The vote was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but was postponed indefinitely at the last moment. Since the vote still hasn't happened, and the legislature has now adjourned until January, it seems unlikely that this bill will impact the efforts to recall Governor Walker.
There was also a skirmish last month where the state GOP claimed that Governor Walker could potentially overrule any GAB decision he disagreed with, which would put him in the position to determine the rules under which any recall efforts against him could proceed. After the GAB capitulated to two GOP requests, plans to mandate gubernatorial oversight of the nonpartisan GAB were put on hold (for now, at least).
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Walker didn't appoint Van Hollen, he was elected. It should also be noted that he was a DA in the state while Democrat Jim Doyle was governor.
From wikipedia:
Thanks MattDaddy - I stand corrected about AG Van Hollen's appointment.
[Edit to add: he has been in lockstep with the Walker Administration, though - so I'd still be surprised if the state GOP appealed a GAB decision that followed Van Hollen's legal opinion.]
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KrazyTaco wrote:
A gentleman in Muskego, Wisconsin has pre-emptively filed recall papers against Scott Walker.
It's possible that this is a legitimate, if poorly-done, attempt to recall the Governor. Given that Mr. Brandt plans on not raising much money in his efforts, it seems more likely this is a political move like we saw in the state Senate recalls with the GOP sponsoring fake Democrats to force primary elections.
This doesn't pre-empt the actual recall efforts that will begin November 15th, though - those will still have the 60 days mandated by state law. It does muddy the waters, and also means that Governor Walker can now raise funds without any of the campaign-finance limitations that would normally apply.
[Edit to add: this is looking less like a legitimate recall effort]
[Edit (last one for this post, I swear) to add]
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Tens of thousands of folks were up at the Capitol this past Saturday for a big recall rally. (I've heard estimates as high as 40,000, but I'd say 25-30k is closer to the mark).
The PA system wasn't great, but one of the announcements I did hear was that organizers were already at 105,000 signatures (roughly 516,000 will be needed to trigger the recall). That's five days into the recall effort, and was not counting signatures collected at the rally.
Some photographic highlights from the rally:
This was the first big #wiunion rally since the Occupy Wall Street protests began, and it was interesting to see a lot of crossover.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
If this report is true, Walker is up for recall without a doubt:
I have also read reports that Walker is already running ads touting his accomplishments and what a great governor he has been.
“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” - St. John of the Cross
I don't think there's any doubt that Walker will face a recall election. For goodness' sake, his "big" rally scheduled for this weekend was looking so anemic that he suddenly discovered a scheduling conflict.
Winning it will still be a tough fight. It's a winnable one, but there's a lot of work to be done in the interim.
Meanwhile, the jobs that Walker said would magically appear by eliminating the right of public employees to collectively bargain? Not happening.
Wisconsin has lost over twenty-seven thousand jobs since Governor Walker signed 2011 Wisconsin Act 10. We lost nine thousand private sector jobs last month alone, at a time when unemployment is trending down nationally - making us the job-loss leader last month. This is also the fourth straight month we've lost jobs, on the heels of the Special Legislative session Governor Walker called to focus on jobs - a Special Session which created a single job, while pushing through legislation like:
* Protecting manufacturers of defective drugs and medical devices
* Capping attorneys fees to three times the amount of damages awarded, a sop to state Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington), who's being sued by former tenants
* Limiting the interest rates on lawsuits won by consumers
* Weakening the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and limiting public input regarding waterways permits in the guise of “streamlining” the permitting process
* Letting property owners off the hook if a trespasser is injured on their property
We had a nice state, once.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Governor Walker's Department of Administration (who you may remember from the grossly-inflated estimates of damage to the Capitol building by protestors which turned out to have been made up out of whole cloth and scribbled on a piece of notebook paper) today amended the rules governing political protests.
The goal is to make protests more difficult, but two clauses target specific elements of the #wiunion movement. The smaller and more transparently petty rule change bans helium balloons from the Capitol. This is a response to the heart balloon, which has become one of the informal symbols of the #wiunion protests.
The other target is the Solidarity Sing Along (@SolidaritySing) folks, who have been engaging in the most peaceful protests imaginable. They gather at noon, every weekday, and sing in the Capitol rotunda. Today was their 225th sing-along. Opponents have gotten bent out of shape, claiming that these gatherings require a permit - while the singers contend that individual citizens choosing to enter the state Capitol in order to sing is protected by Article 1, Section 4 of the Wisconsin Constitution:
The new DoA rules (warning, PDF) explicitly require a permit for holding any event (such as a performance, wedding ceremony, presentation, meeting or rally) in the interior of a building, including the State Capitol. The DoA have already announced that these changes will put the Solidarity Sing Along folks in non-compliance, unless they get permission from the Walker Administration every time they wish to sing.
This is what Governor Walker's DoA is trying to keep under their control (if you look closely, you may see a couple of those incredibly dangerous heart balloons):
Looks like I'll be dusting off my singing voice for tomorrow's edition.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
I don't understand why this one is bad.
Anyone who posted in this thread is a racist.*
*Except me. - Certis
Not inherently bad, though it is definitely unrelated to job creation.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Governor Walker has been making repeated claims that some of the folks circulating recall petitions are paid. Our local CBS affiliate called him out on it, and (surprisingly) he has no evidence to support this accusation.
Wisconsin does allow petition circulators to be paid. It also allows petition circulators to be from out of state.
We have, in fact, had paid petition circulators from out of state involved in the recall elections this year. They've all been Republicans, though.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
The only moral petition circulators are his party's petition circulators.
merphle wrote:
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Possibly off topic, but what tool across the lake thought it'd be cute to brand Wisconsin as The Mitten? Get your own ideas, jerks.
http://www.freep.com/article/20111207/NEWS06/111207010/Battle-mittens-Wi...
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Are we talking about the Castle Doctrine bill? The one that assumes that property owners that injure trespassers acted reasonably regardless if the trespasser was armed or not?
It's not that it's a bad piece of legislature. However, to me, it's just a solution in search of a problem and seems to be a gimme to the NRA lobby. And, as noted, unrelated to job creation.
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More developments broke late yesterday in the ongoing John Doe investigation into Governor Walker's administration. The first arrest has been made (of Andrew P. Jensen Jr. - former president of Commercial Association of Realtors-Wisconsin).
I'm actually far more intrigued by the revelation that a yet-unnamed person sought to cooperate with the investigation, but demanded the immunity grant be given in secret.
I agree with Judge Nettesheim and the appeals panel about there being a compelling public interest in knowing who receives immunity from prosecution, but am dying to know who is so afraid of Governor Walker's allies that they don't want that information available.
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KrazyTaco wrote:
Sounds like it could be Jensen himself...
Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular. -- GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos