Nullary Sources

The big news out of Wisconsin today is that the state Supreme Court reinstated the anti-union bill. Six Republican state Senators are facing recall elections because of their support of the bill, and three Democratic ones are facing recalls because of their opposition.

Last week, the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel obtained letters encouraging Republicans to support “protest candidacies” of additional Democrats in two of the Republican recall elections. The elections mentioned in the letters are those of Senator Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac and Senator Luther Olsen of Ripon. The inclusion of another Democrat would cause a July 12 recall election to be a primary, delaying the final recall election to August 9. The letters admit that this is purely a stalling tactic:

We need to make sure Democrat challengers face primaries to allow our Republicans time to mount a campaign. The GAB is delaying Democrat elections to give them more time to organize. We need the same! A Democratic primary will push the general election back by one month, so that Senator Hopper can have more time to organize a campaign against his liberal challenger.

Daniel Bice of the Journal Sentinel reviewed the political donations of the two “protest” candidates mentioned in the letters, John Buckstaff and Rol Church, and discovered they both have histories of donating to Republicans. In 2008, Buckstaff even donated money to Sen. Hopper, whom he would face if he won the primary. The pejorative name given to these men by the paper is “fake Democrats.”

Since the plan was outed, Republicans have been disavowing involvement and pointing fingers at colleagues while also claiming there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Emma Roller and Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel wrote a piece yesterday on the current state of affairs.

The campaigns for the Republican senators tried to distance themselves Monday from the plan to run fake Democrats, saying it was orchestrated by Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and the state Republican Party. Fitzgerald has said all the Republicans facing recalls were informed of the plan in advance.

…

Republican Party spokeswoman Katie McCallum in a statement defended the plan for primaries as a way to give Republicans time to campaign.

“These protest candidates have a right to have their voices heard; they believe it’s ridiculous for Republican senators to be recalled for doing their jobs…,” her statement said.

The article also contains estimates from clerks of what the additional costs of the primary elections would be:

Election clerks estimate the cost of a Democratic primary in the districts of the recalled GOP lawmakers as follows: Sen. Rob Cowles of Allouez, $86,000; Sen. Alberta Darling of River Hills, $69,700; Sen. Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls, $27,000; Sen. Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac, $84,200; Sen. Dan Kapanke of LaCrosse, $101,000; and Sen. Luther Olsen of Ripon, $60,200.

Those are only partial figures. Two counties in Harsdorf’s district, two counties in Olsen’s district and one county in Kapanke’s district did not provide estimates. The figures also do not include the costs for some of the municipalities within those counties.

The total estimate for the two races mention in the letters is $144,400. If primary elections are forced in all six, the total of all the estimates is $428,100.

This is in a state where today an anti-union bill went into effect. A bill ostensibly passed for budget-balancing purposes.

“Knobgobblers” is all I really have to say.