Recall Elections Of Six Republicans Go Forward In Wisconsin

Public sector union supporters have successfully gathered enough signatures to force six Wisconsin legislators to face recall elections triggered by the controversial effort of Wisconsin legislators to deny public employees unions in the state collective bargaining rights. Notably, form a political perspective, Republicans has not made eliminating meaningful public sector unions a major point in their 2010 campaign effort which had focused on budget cutting measures, so it isn't unreasonable to expect that independents and Republicans who have some sympathy with the cause of public sector union workers or aren't happy with the fact that Republicans have pushed such a controversial issue in a way that created a media circus could vote to recall Republican state legislators whom they voted for last November.

A state judge in Wisconsin has also ruled that the public employee union law was passed in violation of the state's open meetings law and hence is void.

Thus, while Republicans won the battle to bust public sector unions in Wisconsin, they risk losing the war if voters use the recall elections to hand control of the state legislature, which Republicans won in November's election, back to Democrats. Another fight brought to the voters that was colored by the union busting legislation was, an electoral fight between a conservative and liberal candidate for the state supreme court that had previously been a non-issue that almost assured the incumbent conservative judge's re-election was won by the incumbent by only by a nose after a recount. The recall fights, however, are more directly related to the union busting legislation which they personally voted to enact.

The amount of grass roots support for a recall necessary to get one on the ballot in Wisconsin is suggestive of the amount of political energy and momentum that recall supporters have in this fight:

At no time in U.S. history have attempts been made to recall so many legislators at the same time over the same issue. To recall a senator in Wisconsin, recall organizers had to gather signatures from voters in each district equivalent to 25% of the number of people who voted for governor in November. That meant staff for the board had to review more than 18,000 signatures for each recall attempt.

Keep in mind that these signatures are being gathered in state legislative districts that elected Republicans within the last year, not safe Democratic seats. Also, the level of organization and political intensity displayed by union supporters against Republicans now may decisively influence Wisconsin's vote in the 2012 Presidential elections in favor of Democrats. The union busting move of Wisconsin's Republican leadership has activated vast numbers of otherwise apathetic or only slightly active union members and union supporters in the state, turning them into a political force to be reckoned with, regardless of the outcome of these particular recall efforts. And, if many of the recall elections are successful, it would also pop the balloon of any mandate in popular opinion that Republicans could have claimed based upon their 2010 electoral sweep, only about a year before the next state legislative and Presidential election. Voters, campaign contributors and political campaign volunteers don't like political losers; they want to vote for someone who can win and may lose faith when a candidate's prospects seem diminished.

The Wisconsin legislation inspired copycat efforts in a number of other states, some successful, that face a less imminent threat of being overturned after the fact than the Wisconsin legislation.

READ MORE - Recall Elections Of Six Republicans Go Forward In Wisconsin

Wisconsin and 2012

Democratic partisans are fond of saying that anti-immigrant measures advanced by Republicans are good for Democrats because they alienate a large Latino population that would otherwise be inclined to vote Republican (see e.g. "Even More Opportunities for GOP Latino Alienation").

The Republican anti-union showdown with public employees unions playing out at the moment in Wisconsin (and the Denver Post's AP story advises me in other states across the country like Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Nevada and Florida) may have a similar effect.

One of the crucial sources of the big Tea Party wins in 2010 was union member ambivalence about voting for Democrats. While Democrats have near unanimous support from the leadership of organized labor, union members themselves barely favored Democrats more often than Republicans in 2010 election in many key races.

But, the current multi-state Republican jihad against labor unions, whether or not it is successful, may change that in 2012. By reminding the public that the Republican brand hates unions and favors making deep spending budget cuts substantially on the back of union member compensation, the Tea Party union members of 2010 may return to the Democratic fold in 2012.

Half of union members in the United States are public employees who are directly affected by the stance Republicans have taken in Wisconsin, and the other half don't have to be particularly prescient to see Republican attacks on public sector unions translating into attacks on their economic interests should Republicans gain control of the federal government as well.

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Hungry Kids Not Fair Game, Who Knew?

Hungry Colorado Kids Make Poor Political Targets

Republican State Representatives Cheri Gerou of Evergreen and Jon Becker of Fort Morgan, two of the three Republicans in the Colorado General Assembly's Joint Budget Committee, have thought better of their decision to follow the mean spirited lead of Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, who really does think that hungry poor kids should be denied free school breakfasts.

Apparently, Gerou and Becker lacked the common sense on their own to know that picking on hungry little children who benefit from the free breakfast program should not suffer because an anonymous state bureaucrat made an accounting error that left the program overbudget. But, they did have the political sense to realize that almost everyone else in the State of Colorado, even in conservative strongholds like Grand Junction, Colorado did realize this point and retreated from their hardline stance.

The Gessler Drama

Newly sworn in Secretary of State Scott Gessler, meanwhile, who outrageously announced last week that he is can't survive on the pay of the office he campaigned to win and secured, and wants to work part-time at his old election law firm, despite the obvious conflicts of interest and appearance of impropriety this creates, hasn't backed down, despite strong editorials from both the Denver Post's right wing editorial board and its token liberal commentator today, explaining just how off base he is for trying to do so. The fact that he can't see why this is a problem is itself troubling.

Equally amusing is his fall back position. He has know made clear that he will look to the Attorney General's office for ethical guidance on the issue. And, who in the Attorney General's office has been appointed to handle that task? Bernie Buescher, the Democrat whom he defeated for the Secretary of State post this past November. It has been a long time since Bernie Buescher actively practiced law, but his four years of experience as Colorado's Secretary of State, many years representing a conservative Grand Junction district as a Democrat in the State House, and abundant common sense, make him well qualified for the task.

Equally disturbing, Gessler claims to have raise the part-time job issue during the campaign, even though no one anywhere can be produced to say that he actually did. Making shit up is a standard part of the Republcan play book, but this blantant instance of it by Gessler is particularly galling, because everyone who is listening knows that it isn't true.

The Denver Post, to give it credit, endorsed Buescher, who was clearly the better man, and to anyone familiar with the two candidates, the choice was clear. But, of course, most people know little about candidates for the Secretary of State's post, which only involves real power when close call election issues come up, and voted based on party labels rather than individual qualifications in a year when Red rather than Blue was the hot political color.

What Next?

It took less than two weeks for the new Republican majority in the state house, and the new Republican Secretary of State to thoroughly embarass themselves by taking stances that even died in wool conservatives can't stomach. Walker Stapleton, our new Republican State Treasurer, hasn't made a miscue yet, but still has plenty of time to allow voters to regret their choices last November.

READ MORE - Hungry Kids Not Fair Game, Who Knew?

So Much For A Less Violent American Politics?

I recently made a couple of posts on the relative non-violence of American politics and labor relations compared to the European (and to some extent world) alternative.

Then, there was the attempted assassination of a Democratic Congresswoman in Arizona this weekend that resulted in the death of the chief judge of Arizona's federal trial court and five others, in addition to a dozen plus other gunshot wounds. The event was cited by many as a symptom of the violent political rhetoric by the Tea Party movement (including Sarah Palin, in particular) in the 2010 election. We a little of that climate in Colorado, but it was probably more intense in Arizona. The Congresswoman who was shot suffered a bullet shot through the brain and miraculously lives at the moment, but there is no telling if she will be able to continue to carry out the duties of her office, and certainly, her life will never be the same again.

I wasn't specifically contradicted by this event; I've never argued that there is never political violence in the United States, just that it is comparatively rare. But, was I fundamentally wrong? Is this a case of American politics turning a corner in the wrong direction after a low point that my post captured? Or, is this simply one more mass murder by a mentally ill person whose political character is really no more relevant than any other of these periodic mass murder outbursts?

We really won't know until time tells us if this was a freak event or the start of a trend. The arrest of a man for threatening U.S. Senator Michael Bennet isn't encouraging, of course, and this incident does remind us the outgoing Governor Ritter survived an assassination attempt by a mentally ill young man during his four year term of office. It also casts a different light on the act of animal rights terrorism involved in the burning down of the Sheepskin factory in Glendale, Colorado, a stone's throw from my office.

The fact that the killer was off his rocker (although quite possibly still legally culpable for his crime) doesn't necessarily mean that the political climate wasn't a factor. Extreme acts are committed by extreme people. Even in street gangs, the people who actually kill other people in gang crimes are not typical of the average street gang member from a mental health perspective. But, the fact that this most recent shooting does not appear to have involved an organized conspiracy, at least, is encouraging. Others may not have been attuned enough to the risk to take some sort of action before he struck, but they might be now and certainly the people who might have had a clue that the killer was dangerous but failed to stop him, had no desire to further his murderous plans.

(As an aside, while there is little doubt that the attempted murder of a Congresswoman took place here, the federal death penalty for murder of a federal official required an actual death, and it isn't clear whether or not one can be guilty of that crime if one did not know that one of the bystanders killed was a federal judge, or if the doctrine of transferred intent (i.e. that an intent to kill one federal official suffices to show intent even if a different federal official ends up being the one who dies) applies to that offense. Arizona's death penalty surely applies to this case at any rate.)

The man who committed the crime was caught and he will probably never be in a position to threaten anyone else ever again. The politicians and spinmeisters have been chastened, for a little while at least, about the perils of engaging in violent rhetoric, politically even if there is no causal link to this event. There is little one can do to prevent a single deranged individual from sometime, somewhere doing something horrible. But, if the causes are larger, there is something that can be done.

Gun control will be debated, and it just might just happen that some tangentially related legislation to limit the access of mentally ill people with criminal records (as the perpetrator apparently had) might advance just a little, or it might not. The bill most on point will probably be rechristened with the name of Gabrielle Giffords, who was the target of the attack (a la the Brady Bill).

In isolation, events like these are tragedies, but don't change the larger course of our lives. But, when they impact the rarified world of our modest community of high elected officials and judges, the potential for an event like this to change who choses to participate in politics and how they choose to do so is real. The fear that a comment will draw a violent attack from a crazy person can change how politicians act, mostly for the worse. This is particularly true when the deadly violent crazies who are our domestic terrorists seem to have a conservative partisan bias.

READ MORE - So Much For A Less Violent American Politics?

Good Riddance 2010

As the year of record unemployment and a stagnant economy comes to a close, it is fifty degrees colder here in Denver than it is in Buffalo, New York. In Colorado Springs, fireworks had to be cancelled because it was 25 degrees below on Pike's Peak with 70 mile an hour winds. People lost homes to foreclosures and fires. Low interest rates are irrelvant because no one seems to be lending. The crazy people have taken the reins in Colorado's House of Representatives and the United States House of Representatives.

Maybe we'll do better in 2011.

READ MORE - Good Riddance 2010

Make It Official

The Tea Party faction is the reason that the Republican party made as much progress as it did in the 2010 midterm elections at both the state and federal levels. Their candidates are putting their stamp on the GOP at the legislative party level.

It would be an opportune time for Republicans to officially change their party's name. After all, this is no longer the party of Lincoln. The strongholds of the modern Republican party are overwhelmingly places that shunned the GOP for a century because it was the party of the North in the Civil War and Reconstruction. They are the direct political descendants of the Dixiecrats and the segregationists. A significant share of Republicans still think secession is a good idea, and many would like to repeal all or most of the Civil Rights Act. The Republican party was invented as a party in favor of a strong federal government, yet the modern Republican party is the party of state's rights. Lincoln and other early Republicans were in favor of constitutionally questionable taxes.

Why should Republicans continue to carry all that historical baggage that causes them such cognitive dissonance? Why not admit that there is nothing "Grand Old" about their party and that they have nothing whatsoever in common with the pro-tax, anti-states rights, socially liberal, culturally Yankee party that the Republicans were for their first couple of generations? Why not cast that all aside and replace it with the mantle of the Tea Party.

This would leave the people who put them in power, who happen to care a lot about symbolism, tickled pink. And, rebranding every once and a while is often a good thing for just about any organization. It would also be more honest, and crazy as it seems, a little honesty in politics, even once in a while, is appreciated by just about everyone. So, make it official. For 2011, the major political party that is not the Democratic party in the United States should cast aside the "Republican" and "GOP" names and become the "Tea Party".

Then, maybe the Democrats could follow suit and rename itself, honestly and in a way that reclaims a label that many in the base would like to rehabilitate, the "Liberal Party."

READ MORE - Make It Official