[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
politics and politicians Title: Wisconsin Recall Wars Kick Off 2012 MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin is under siege. Direct mail pieces and television ads are flooding the state. Outside interest group spending in Tuesday’s recall elections is shattering campaign finance records. Voter interest is running so high that a few local officials are predicting presidential-election level turnout. If it seems like overkill for a mid-August, off-year election for six state Senate seats, that’s because it is. The recall contests have been thoroughly nationalized, accompanied by the total war ethos and scorched earth tactics that typically mark national races. The reason? Both sides view Tuesday as the first major battle of the 2012 election. “Clearly, the eyes of the nation are on the recalls,” said Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat who has done events for all six of the Democrats seeking to oust GOP incumbents. “I know because I get asked from my colleagues in D.C. who want updates. Obviously, these same battles are being fought in other states. Some of these issues are being fought in Washington.” The results of the state Senate matchups will have a significant impact in Madison: If Democrats can pick off at least three of the six seats, they can capture control of the state’s upper chamber, placing a formidable obstacle in GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s path. A successful night would enable them to point to their victories at unequivocal repudiation of the governor’s ambitious conservative agenda and also create momentum for the next step — an attempted 2012 recall of Walker. Yet the ripples from Tuesday’s election will reach well beyond Wisconsin’s borders. Successfully recalling even half of the six senators who voted with Walker would invigorate the liberal base both within the key battleground state and outside it just as the 2012 presidential campaign begins to heat up. It would also send a powerful message to Republicans about the risks of a head-on confrontation with labor. For the GOP, a successful defense of the seats would serve as a validation of their bold statehouse agenda in the aftermath of the 2010 elections. While the backlash from Walker’s successful attempt to curtail collective-bargaining rights for public employees forced the GOP state legislators onto the ballot in the dog days of August, that legislation is no longer the single flash point here. National interest groups on both sides of the ideological divide are using Wisconsin as a test case for issues ranging from taxes and spending to the looming entitlement crisis. “Collective bargaining’s not a winner for them at the polls, so it’s back to personal attacks. It’s Alberta Darling cut education, and Luther Olsen tried to have an effect on Medicare. They want to talk about everything else now,” GOP state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said, referring to two of his most vulnerable colleagues facing voters. “I always thought this was more linked directly to 2012.” Conservative groups like the Tea Party Express — which wound up a nine-city statewide tour Monday on behalf of the endangered Republican incumbents — believe the act of staving off the recalls would serve as a devastating blow to organized labor nationally and further demoralize progressives in the wake of the 2010 elections. “If these conservatives lose on Tuesday, it is only going to embolden the left, and this is ground zero for the 2012 campaign, and we cannot let that happen,” Tea Party Express Chairwoman Amy Kremer told a few hundred supporters during a Saturday stop in Thiensville, an affluent northern Milwaukee suburb. Ozaukee Patriot tea party group leader Vince Schmuki said it is imperative that they defeat the “unions and liberal left wing interests” to stifle their ambitions elsewhere. “Because if we can do it here, we can do it anywhere in the 50 states, and they know it,” he said. For Democrats, there is a personal element to the Wisconsin recall wars. They’ve been energized by the seemingly declining fortunes of Walker, the nationally celebrated, first-term conservative whose approval rating sank to 37 percent in July, according to a University of Wisconsin Badger Poll. They also cherish the opportunity to embarrass Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on his home turf — the former Wisconsin state party chairman’s declaration in late July that he’s “not nervous” about the outcomes has become bulletin board material for Democratic field workers. “This will be the symbol of the buyer’s remorse of voters and the progressive voter being more energized after seeing these policies that came out of 2010. Wisconsin will be the first chance to repudiate all of that,” said Phil Walzak, a longtime Democratic operative in the state who served as state spokesperson for President Barack Obama in 2008 and gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett in 2010. The two national parties aren’t the only ones to recognize the high stakes in Wisconsin. The state parties are boasting more than 3 million voter contacts between them. Democrats claim they’ve enlisted 10,000 volunteers — creeping close to the 15,000 they were able to draw for the 2010 statewide gubernatorial contest. “I have never seen the type of volunteers across the state as I’ve seen in this election,” said Baldwin, who has spoken with elections clerks forecasting presidential-like turnout. “The intensity is off the charts in these races,” said Republican National Committee political director Rick Wiley. Then there are the third party groups, which are far outspending the candidates. They’ve poured in more than $30 million , according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks political spending. That’s just shy of the $37 million total spent on last year’s governor’s race. From the left, it’s the Progressive Change Campaign Committee; Howard Dean’s Democracy for America; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union. On the right, it’s Tea Party Express, Americans for Prosperity and the Club for Growth. The pivotal seat that could determine whether Democrats take control of the state Senate is a northern Milwaukee-area seat occupied by a 20-year incumbent who helped shepherd Walker’s budget. Observers will be closely tracking the returns between Sen. Alberta Darling and Rep. Sandy Pasch because it’s a quintessential bellwether district that will offer early clues to the 2012 landscape. The winner there can claim victory in a suburban battleground rich with independent voters in the state’s largest media market. In 2008, Obama won it with 52 percent. In 2010, Walker carried it with 54 percent. Both sides will be previewing themes that are likely to be revisited in the presidential election. Darling is attempting to turn the race into a referendum on Obama and the notion of a “socialistic state,” while Pasch is portraying her opponent as having moved too far to the right to appease her base, proof positive that Republicans misread the mandate they were given in 2010. Madison-based Democratic pollster Nathan Henry said even if Democrats like Pasch fall short Tuesday, they will have motivated and consolidated their base for the coming battle. “It’s going to pay dividends in 2012, and blood’s in the water,” he said. “But it’ll show whether [2010] was a trend or whether it was anomaly.”
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
|
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|