Wisconsin's Governor Walker and the possibility of a recall

Robear wrote:

Sounds like it could be Jensen himself...

Great point. I'd assumed they had to be two separate people, and that investigators were still trying to find a way to work with the unnamed person.

I read it as "We can't name the unnamed person, but here are two seemingly unrelated events to think about."

http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml...

Most of the way there. Just over 500,000 signatures collected.

Trashie wrote:

http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml...

Most of the way there. Just over 500,000 signatures collected.

I kind of wish they hadn't announced.

My fear is that a lot of folks will decide to do less volunteer signature-gathering, thinking "we're most of the way there" is synonymous with "we're basically done".

Even once the signatures are gathered and approved by the GAB, there's a lot of work to do. (This will still be true even after we have a new Governor - the damage that's been done in the ~11 months of Walker's administration will take years to fix).


[Edit to add]
The earlier skirmish over our state's Government Accountability Board may not be done after all, as Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald now wants to overhaul the GAB before the recall elections. The GAB was created as a nonpartisan agency in 2007 with overwhelming support from both parties (including Speaker Fitzgerald).
Fitzgerald voted to create the board but he said Thursday he does not believe it is working as intended.

The Government Accountability Board replaced the elections board, which was comprised of partisan appointees, and the officially nonpartisan ethics board whose members were appointed by the governor.

Fitzgerald says he thought that previous system worked "fairly well."

Governor Walker seems determined to politicize the non-partisan GAB. Shortly after the 500k signature mark was announced, his campaign announced a lawsuit to have the GAB rules governing recount signatures declared unconstitutional.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in Waukesha County Circuit Court asks a judge to order that the Government Accountability Board look for and eliminate duplicative signatures, clearly fake names like Mickey Mouse and signatures with clearly illegible signatures.

The GAB has said it's up to challengers to point out problems like those and the board itself will not automatically toss the signatures for those reasons.

The lawsuit said allowing multiple signatures is a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution because it harms the rights of those not signing.

What the GAB will actually be doing is flagging any suspicious signatures, a move that will facilitate challenges by the appropriate parties. I agree that a recall effort should not succeed based on spurious / duplicative / illegitimate signatures, but I think the GAB is doing the right thing here. There's already a process in place for removing any bad signatures which get submitted, and their proper role is to enable that process where appropriate, not take action on behalf of an incumbent. I'm very wary about making assumptions about what a "valid" name is, ever since discovering that one of the Flickr co-founders was named Caterina Fake (yes, really). She wrote about it a couple of times, and I'd link to her site - except for the fact that Google is throwing malware warnings. Here's a re-hosted example of a common problem for Ms. Fake:
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/JmFb6.gif)

For what it's worth, I've done a bunch of volunteer shifts processing the recall petitions. There have been a handful (less than 10) signatures on petitions I handled that struck me as likely to be suspicious. In every case, I ran the signature up the flagpole, the response was to exclude the suspicious signatures. My impression is that the recall organizers are trying to ensure that they cull out as many "bad" signatures as possible, to pre-empt the inevitable GOP narrative about voter fraud.

Speaking of GOP narratives - remember the spurious refrain earlier in the year about the protestors' support coming primarily from out of state? The latest campaign finance documents filed with the GAB show that Governor Walker is raising huge amounts of money (far more than the recall effort so far), and that fully half of his fundraising is coming from

[size=6]wait for it...[/size]

out of state.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]Tim Russell, a former campaign and county aide to Gov. Scott Walker, was arrested by authorities on Thursday as part of the ongoing John Doe investigation into Walker staffers, sources said.

Charges to be announced at noon today.

I'm going to make a prediction here. If the John Doe investigation starts to look like it could result in charges against Governor Walker, he will resign, putting Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch in charge. The Wisconsin GOP will immediately sue to have all the recall petitions invalidated, since the ones being circulated specify recalling Governor Walker and Lt. Governor Kleefisch. Their argument will be that since Kleefisch is now Governor (not Lt. Governor), a new recall effort will have to be made. The case will go to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who will rule in the GOP's favor.

Spoiler:

I hope my prediction is wrong.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]Tim Russell, a former campaign and county aide to Gov. Scott Walker, was arrested by authorities on Thursday as part of the ongoing John Doe investigation into Walker staffers, sources said.

Charges to be announced at noon today.

I'm going to make a prediction here. If the John Doe investigation starts to look like it could result in charges against Governor Walker, he will resign, putting Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch in charge. The Wisconsin GOP will immediately sue to have all the recall petitions invalidated, since the ones being circulated specify recalling Governor Walker and Lt. Governor Kleefisch. Their argument will be that since Kleefisch is now Governor (not Lt. Governor), a new recall effort will have to be made. The case will go to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who will rule in the GOP's favor.

Spoiler:

I hope my prediction is wrong.

While a clever tactic, wouldn't a resignation in the Governor's Office be a huge political blow for the Wisconsin Republican party? Especially when it would result in a lightweight like Kleefisch in the office?

Efforts like running the Wisconsin GOP running fake Democrats in the State Senate recalls makes me think they are prioritizing hanging on to power for as long as possible, rather than any long-term planning.

Sadly, I'm not sure that's a bad strategy for them. Folks who still support Governor Walker at this point are very unlikely to defect unless Kleefisch defied conservative orthodoxy in a very public way, or tried something truly foolish like reinstating bipartisan, consensus-driven governance.

Update: Three individuals were charged today as part of the John Doe investigation (the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a weird practice of overwriting articles as more information comes out without preserving old text or noting the edits, so my link from upthread also has the latest details).

Tim Russell, mentioned above, was charged with three charges of embezzlement (two felony, one misdemeanor).

Also charged:

* Kevin Kavanaugh, a Walker supporter who was appointed to the Milwaukee County Veteran Service Commission (charged with five felonies, for theft and fraudulent writings as a corporate officer).
* Brian Pierick, Russell's boyfriend, who faces two felony charges of child enticement.

The brief press conference also disclosed that this is not the end of the John Doe investigation. Governor Walker's office has refused comment so far, but have stated they will be issuing a press release later today.

[Edit to add: lots of moving pieces in the John Doe case, but there's a reasonable overview here for anyone who's interested]

I missed this last week, but David Brandt (remember him?) quietly let his "recall" effort lapse last week.

Reid Magney, a spokesman for the state Government Accountability Board, said Wednesday that Brandt didn’t raise money or turn in any signatures as part of his recall effort and has formally ended it.

I'd love for someone to find out the real story behind this - bet it's plenty interesting.

Somebody figured out that maybe this particular dirty trick would not look as good as thought in the upcoming challenges.

Well, it's clear that Mr. Brandt's "recall" was never intended to gather signatures. It's much more likely that it was intended to sow confusion and open the gates for Governor Walker to do unlimited fundraising (due to a bug in our election laws, normal fundraising limits don't apply to incumbents once recall papers are filed).

In the article I posted yesterday, a Walker spokesperson said that the governor didn't do any unlimited fundraising until the real recall began on the 15th. Given that Governor Walker refuses to disclose any information about his out-of-state fundraising travels, I'm not sure the public has any way to determine whether that's true. Even if no laws were broken, and all checks for the unlimited fundraising are dated the 15th or later, it would be easy for an incumbent willing to shade the rules a bit to start hitting up donors on the 4th, and telling them the actual contributions couldn't show up until midway through November.

In any event, I expect the real story of David Brandt's recall (was there a dying request? was there even a friend?) would be an interesting read.

It just keeps coming.

Think Progress[/url]]Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) may have violated his state’s campaign finance law over 1,000 times in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign by failing to properly report contributions, according to a new report.

Wisconsin law requires gubernatorial campaigns to disclose information about contributors who give more than $100. Again and again, Walker appears to have skirted that requirement.

One Wisconsin Now examined the Walker for Governor’s finance records and found 1,115 instances where the campaign received contributions of more than $100 but did not properly disclose who gave the money. In total, “Walker has improperly reported well over $500,000 in contributions from inside and outside of Wisconsin,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. According to the group, which has filed a complaint with the state Government Accountability Board, Walker’s violations could result in a fine of $557,500

Yes, ThinkProgress is obviously a biased source, but there's not a lot of editorializing here.

I wonder whether this is what the John Doe investigation is really about.

No official number announcement until the filing on Tuesday, but just saw this come across Twitter.

Chris Liebenthal[/url]]On my way to the recall office to drop off the signatures that will put the total over a million. #wirecall #wiunion

Total number of votes cast for Scott Walker in the 2010 election: 1,128,941.

It's still gonna be a hard fight (especially since our election law gives Governor Walker unlimited funds), but that's a great milestone to clear.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

No official number announcement until the filing on Tuesday, but just saw this come across Twitter.

Chris Liebenthal[/url]]On my way to the recall office to drop off the signatures that will put the total over a million. #wirecall #wiunion

Total number of votes cast for Scott Walker in the 2010 election: 1,128,941.

It's still gonna be a hard fight (especially since our election law gives Governor Walker unlimited funds), but that's a great milestone to clear.

Official announcement.

Let the legal challenges begin!

IMAGE(https://p.twimg.com/AjYl7FoCMAEII_A.jpg)

The Wisconsin Democratic Party has asked for the GAB to call for elections as soon as they verify enough signatures to cross the 540k threshold set by law.

GAB Director Kevin Kennedy has said they are legally required to count all signatures prior to any elections being called, and will be doing their utmost to have all recall elections happen on the same day.

And, on the day that the petitions to recall him are filed, Governor Walker is in NYC for a fundraising dinner, hosted by the head of AIG.

Right -- while they're complaining about 'out of state money', Governor Walker is .... out of state, raising money.

hosted by the head of AIG.

AKA an arm of the Federal government.

Malor wrote:
hosted by the head of AIG.

AKA an arm of the Federal government.

They are a tail of the Federal government.

Which, for the purposes of this metaphor, is a dog.

During the 2010 Gubernatorial campaign, Governor Walker accused the outgoing administration (Jim Doyle) of playing accounting games in order to show a balanced budget (specifically, he accused Doyle of telling a "world champion" (warning, PDF) lie for claiming a balanced budget, when GAAP showed a $2.1 billion deficit). Then-candidate Walker pledged to use Generally-Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) for all state finances, and solve the budget deficit without raising taxes. Indeed, fixing the deficit was the big reason given by the Walker administration for forcing through 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 (even though Walker admitted under questioning that the anti-union provisions in that bill would produce zero savings).

Walker has since been widely praised in conservative circles for balancing Wisconsin's budget, and has said repeatedly that his budget was balanced.

Turns out that Walker's own administration admits that, using GAAP, Wisconsin will have a $3 billion deficit by June 2013. The sad part? We know this because Walker's DoA filed papers with the Federal Government admitting this fact, in order to cut healthcare for 53,000 needy Wisconsin residents.

So, Walker is managing to put the state deeper in debt, while eviscerating the middle class, destroying the right to collective bargaining, and slashing programs that help our citizens who are most in need.

Also, for anyone who's interested, our GAB has created a live webcam feed of the petition processing.

Hypnotic.

IMAGE(https://img.skitch.com/20120120-n8fpr25fc6eg1qhr86myn97cem.jpg)

Also, kudos for the GAB for aiming for as transparent a process as possible.

So, the big Walker rally in Wauwatosa yesterday? Over a thousand people showed up. Organizers claim three thousand, but that seems grossly inflated from the photos I've found. The biggest-looking crowd shot I could find was this one:

IMAGE(http://o3.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/PATCH/resize/600x450/http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/patch/44198de83008138fcd265c84bb31963f)

Now, it's possible to argue "it's winter and there's snow on the ground - even one thousand is pretty good".

Counterpoint: the anti-Walker rallies last February were in driving snow, and had upwards of one hundred thousand Wisconsinites.

IMAGE(http://newshour.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/2011/03/01/109460293_blog_main_horizontal.jpg)

[Edit to add: though Walker's spokespeople are trying to spin this rally as a huge success, I think it's very telling that the Governor found a schedule conflict and was "unable" to attend. That's two in a row now.]

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Hypnotic.

It's not supposed to be exciting--and no, not just because it's Wisconsin.

The John Doe investigation continues.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]A new round of criminal charges is coming soon against at least a couple of Gov. Scott Walker's former county staffers for doing extensive campaign activity while on the taxpayers' dime, sources say.

The charges - which should be filed by District Attorney John Chisholm's office in the next week or two - will be part of the long-running John Doe investigation of Walker's aides and associates during his tenure as Milwaukee County executive.

Governor Walker declined to answer the question of whether he's retained a criminal attorney, but his campaign did pay the firm of Michael Best & Friedrich over $100,000 for "compliance issues" in 2010. Astute readers may recall that Michael Best & Friedrich gave State Supreme Court Justice Gableman tens of thousands of dollars in free legal representation, only to have him rule in their favor more often than any other Justice. The Wisconsin State Journal has a good writeup of the surprising degree to which a single law firm is wrapped up in nearly every hot-button issue in Walker's radical agenda, including this spiffy chart.

IMAGE(http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/host.madison.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/b/da/bda1baf0-43d8-11e1-93a3-0019bb2963f4/4f1a24b523d6a.image.jpg)

Would be cool if they provided a live tally of "valid" signatures. Can't imagine how much traffic the site would get on the run up to the "magic number"

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

Would be cool if they provided a live tally of "valid" signatures. Can't imagine how much traffic the site would get on the run up to the "magic number"

That would be cool, but the current process doesn't lend itself to that.

Historically, the GAB (and its predecessor, the State Elections Board) were responsible for processing the petitions, tallying the signatures, and verifying addresses. While they would flag any suspicious signatures which had a valid address, all challenges had to come from campaign representatives of the elected official facing a recall. The lawsuit recently filed by the Wisconsin GOP sought to place the burden on the GAB to eliminate "obviously fake" names - Judge Davis found in their favor, ignoring Wisconsin State Law §9.10(2)(g) which clearly states the burden is on the challenger, not the GAB.

Wisconsin State Law §9.10(2)(g)[/url]]The burden of proof for any challenge rests with the individual bringing the challenge.

Judge Davis' ruling doesn't actually specify a process, but I expect that it will have to go something like this:

* GAB certifies that a signature is valid, according to their statutory requirements
* GAB attempts to rule out "fake" signatures that are otherwise valid (one would hope that Mr. Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop would not be inadvertently disenfranchised during this step)
* Wisconsin GOP challenges any signatures that make it past this point that they deem suspicious
* GAB rules out any otherwise-valid signatures which are successfully challenged

As a result, the numbers are going to be jumping around all over the place, and not a countdown timer like you might expect.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

* GAB attempts to rule out "fake" signatures that are otherwise valid (one would hope that Mr. Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop would not be inadvertently disenfranchised during this step)

Thank you so much, Dimmerswitch.

You know, Dimmer, between you and Phoenix Rev in the Gay Marriage thread, this has turned into a remarkably informative corner of the World Wide Web. Thanks for putting in the huge amounts of effort, to both of you.

Oh, and Edwin's an amazing resource, too, in the Occupy and Police State threads.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

* GAB attempts to rule out "fake" signatures that are otherwise valid (one would hope that Mr. Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop would not be inadvertently disenfranchised during this step)

Sheesh, no wonder he goes by Jack Sparrow.

I know the Goodjers in IRC have been reading, but I appreciate the kind words, folks - nice to know that folks are continuing to find these valuable (or entertaining, at the very least ).

I must admit that, without a reliable adversary in these threads, there's a temptation to fall into lazy argumentation. I do my best to continue citing sources, and noting bias where applicable, but I'm afraid I'll never be a great spokesperson for the things the Wisconsin GOP is doing to my adoptive home state (even in a devil's advocate role).

I read every post but I never have anything good to say.