Payback Time: Polls Promising as Wis. Unions Ready for GOP Recall Elections Monday Aug 1, 2011 4:02 pm .. By Roger Bybee
Wis. Democrats are leading GOP opponents in some of the recall races, but those opponents have erected some barriers to victory: namely, a new voter ID law and redefined districts. (midwestdemocracynetwork.org)
Heading toward eight remaining recall elections, Wisconsin labor and Democrats gained critical momentum on July 19 as they scored an overwhelming 66-31 percent victory in Green Bay against GOP efforts to punish Democratic State Sen. Dave Hansen, a friend of labor. The remaining elections—called for after the GOP stripped public employees of virtually all bargaining rights this winter and activists occupied the Madison Capitol in protest—will be held August 9 (when six Republicans are up) and August 16 (when two other Democrats face recall efforts).
Over the past two months, Republicans’ claims to be guided solely by budgetary concerns and taxpayer needs have been tainted by their participation in a set of undemocratic measures, including partisan gerrymandering of state legislative districts, and what Common Cause of Wisconsin director Jay Heck called .. http://www.commoncausewisconsin.org/.../most-restrictive-voter-id-legisla .. “the most restrictive, blatantly partisan and ill-conceived voter identification legislation in the nation” (details on these measures below).
Taken in concert with our last round of polling (conducted a month ago), PPP shows Democrats with a big lead in one race, narrow leads in two races, and trailing by five points or less in three races. In this newest batch, Democratic state Rep. Fred Clark has a small edge against Luther Olsen, which makes this race one of our three best pickup opportunities. Clark's own internal polling confirms this, showing him ahead as well (by an even larger margin).
In one of the hottest and most closely-watched recall elections (in a northern Milwaukee suburban area that includes many of the area’s super-rich as well as teachers and other public employees and an African-American neighborhood), Daily Kos noted that Democratic challenger Sandy Pasch is probably running a much tighter race than it first appears against GOP Senator Alberta Darling.
Darling formerly posed as a pro-choice “moderate” before guzzling the entire right-wing Kool-Aid pitcher to gain power as co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee which rammed though the Republcians' worst excesses.
Yesterday on Kos there was a new new PPP [Public Policy Polling] poll for the WI recall election in Senate District 8 between Republican Alberta Darling and Democrat Sandy Pasch. It has Darling up 5 points with almost no undecideds. Since a recent Dem poll had Sandy up one, this is a disappointment. At least at first glance. However, a closer look reveals the same concerns that were raised with the previous PPP poll in SD 8. It appears that this poll also under-represents the strongest Pasch voters in the district: non-whites from the City of Milwaukee.
Moreover, while the polling result is among “likely voters,” the pro-labor, pro-Democratic side has displayed far more intensity in seeking to reverse the course of Wisconsin politics.
GOP'S UNPOPULAR BAGGAGE
Further, with the Republican-contrived primaries over (they recruited fellow Republicans to run against Democrats in order to delay and sow considerable confusion about recall process), the public can now focus on clear-cut choices between Democratic candidates with demonstrated followings and Republican senators whose reputations have been tarnished.
The Republican baggage includes:
their extraordinary anti-union votes, their support for an exceptionally punitive budget toward local public education and services, and their collaboration with the most dictatorial procedures and anti-democratic legislation that the Wisconsin Legislature has witnessed in more than a century.
In the southeastern industrail area around Kenosha, the Republicans are trying to recall popular State Sen. Bob Wirch, a former United Steelworkers union local president, with corporate lawyer Jonathan Seitz, whose efforts in behalf of his clients are likely to yield some interesting revelations.
THREE CHALLENGES: GERRYMANDERING, VOTER ID LAW, TV AD BOMBARDMENT
The redistricting plan is perceived as a nakedly partisan power grab by the Republicans. Although Democrats have won the last five presidential elections in Wisconsin by a 53.4 percent margin, according to State Rep. Fred Kessler (D-Milwaukee), an expert on re-districting, the GOP plan—which would go into effect next year—would establish between 57 and 59 safe Republican seats in the 99-member State Assembly, with just 40 to 42 safe Democratic seats.
For Bob Turner, my longtime friend, staunch labor advocate and Democratic representative from Racine, the plan is reminiscent of the kind of the corrupt politics he saw growing up in Mississippi as an African-American:
I grew up in Mississippi where access to the ballot and redistricting was a problem. I never thought we would be dealing with this in Wisconsin. In all my years I have never seen a redistricting process go so poorly. So many people have given their lives, have marched, protested for rights to the ballot and fair representation.
Good-government groups, normally a bit cautious in their rhetoric about possible partisan motivations in legislative proposals, were absolutely scathing in denouncing .. http://www.progressive.org/kemble071511.html .. the Republican plan. Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign similarly pointed to the Republicans’ naked self-interest evident in the plan. McCabe declared: .. http://www.progressive.org/kemble071511.html ..
In a democracy voters are supposed to choose their representatives, not the other way around. This does violence to this basic principle of democracy... “You are only here because you are under orders to get this completed ahead of the recall elections in August, because you know you could lose total control over the way these maps are redrawn after those recall elections occur.
Former Wisconsin Democratic Congressman David Obey, with his characteristic directness, labeled .. http://www.progressive.org/kemble071511.html .. the plan as “a raw manipulation of power in defiance of the public interest.”
The voter ID plan has been denounced in similar terms by labor and progressives for adding barriers to voting for the poor, people of color and the low-income elderly. (See my article in In These Times' September issue, which will appear at InTheseTimes.com next week). And its credibility is fast disappearing with media reports that the Walker administration is considering closing down or reducing hours at Department of Motor Vehicle offices in Democratic districts.
Finally, the money question: Labor and its allies must be prepared for a last-minute aerial bombardment of TV ads launched by the Club for Growth and other corporate-funded entities who have been freed of almost all constraints on disclosure and size of donations by the 2010 Citizens United decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which opened .. http://www.inthesetimes.com/.../the_corporate_takeover_of_u.s._democra .. the door for “a corporate takeover of U.S. democracy,” in the words of scholar Noam Chomsky.
While the left is at a financial disadvantage, it has managed to maintain a strong presence with TV ads contrasting the Republicans’ attacks on middle-class living standards, public education and tax justice with the Democrats advocacy in behalf of working people (although the explicitly pro-collective-bargaining edge of most ads has been a bit fuzzy).
dbleagl, GOOD LUCK .. Recall elections are set to begin in Wisconsin ..
good luck good luck good luck .. :)
The schoolhouse where the Republican Party was founded is one of the polling sites in a Wisconsin Senate district where there is a recall election tomorrow. (Scott Bauer/ Associated Press)
Associated Press / August 8, 2011
RIPON, Wis. - In the building where the modern Republican Party was founded more than 150 years ago, the worker collecting the entry fee from tourists said that he, for one, has had enough of what the party is up to these days.
And he says he plans to show it when he goes to the polls there tomorrow in a legislative recall election that will help determine the fate of the conservative revolution in Wisconsin.
New Republican Governor Scott Walker’s aggressive agenda, especially his move to strip public employees’ unions of most collective bargaining rights, has “kind of jump-started a lot of people’s awareness of what’s going on in the state,’’ said Brian Reilly, 28, who said he intends to vote against the Republican state senator he supported in the past.
Over the next two weeks, eight Wisconsin state lawmakers will face recall elections that are part of the political backlash from Walker’s confrontation with Democrats last winter.
Protests and a boycott by Democratic state senators effectively shut down the state Capitol for weeks. The GOP must win at least half the races or it will lose sole control of the Legislature and the ability to continue advancing its policies.
The votes will provide a new gauge of the public mood about the direction of government eight months after unhappy voters ousted incumbent Democrats and gave conservative Republicans control of the governor’s office and the Legislature. The GOP made similar sweeping gains in other states in the midterm election.
For Republicans, victory in the recall campaign would vindicate their spending cuts and new business-friendly policies, while raising hopes of President Obama losing next year in a swing state he won by 14 points in 2008. Democrats hope voters believe Republicans have gone too far, especially in attacking workers’ rights.
“It’s not clear whether the mood has shifted dramatically enough to recall Republicans, but it’s certainly shifted enough to make some tight races,’’ said Katherine Cramer Walsh, a University of Wisconsin political science professor who directed a recent poll that found dissatisfaction with both Democrats and Republicans.
The poll, conducted statewide last month, showed 59 percent of voters disapproved of the job Walker was doing. But 48 percent also disapproved of the Democratic state senators who left the state for three weeks to prevent the Legislature from acting. Fifty-six percent said they disapproved of the Republican-controlled Legislature’s actions. The survey did not address the opinions of voters in the districts with recall elections.
The significance of the recall ballots is reflected by the fact that national conservative groups and national unions have spent millions of dollars in the contested districts, six of which are held by Republicans. Two of the Republicans appear vulnerable, and three face tight races. If Democrats win five of the eight seats, control of the Legislature will be divided, producing a deadlock until the 2012 elections.
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