Dan Bice had a great piece in the JS about RPW putting up phony candidates to run in Dem primaries to stretch out the election cycle.
It’s unfortunate the paper didn’t ask if there was a side benefit to this strategy: Winning redistricting too.
Let’s be honest – it’s totally consistent for the party of Voter ID and phony candidates to be playing some pretty serious games with redistricting. There seems to be some consensus that redistricting in Wisconsin won’t shake up the house districts too much. But what about in the State Senate and State Assembly?
Say for the sake of argument that RPW feels certain they will lose two races and there is a third that is too close to call.
Dan Bice’s piece highlights two races where the RPW is seeking fake candidates to create a primary for the Dems, but the JS also reported last week on RPW trying to put up a straw person for Kapanke. That brings the total to three — exactly what is needed to flip control of the Senate to the Democrats.
The new name is Olsen – maybe their numbers are showing them trouble there too and it would be too suspicious if another Dem came out of the woodwork in Milwaukee to challenge Sandy Pasch in a 60 percent plus Dem county where recall enthusiasm is high.
Let’s not forget that Hopper, Kapanke and Olsen have also launched another delaying tactic – taking their challenges which have already been struck down by GAB to court.
So perhaps the way RPW sees it, Hopper, Kapanke and Olsen may all lose. Who knows, maybe others will too.
RPW thinks, time to make the best of a bad situation. If there is a primary election in these races, they’d likely be July 12 with a general on Aug. 9. But that’s before the legal challenge noted above.
So what if the GOP holds onto the Senate majority until Aug 9 – or even Sept 12? You can be certain the GOP will push ahead with redistricting under that scenario one way or another.
And here is what Swing State found about a new State Senate map after crunching the data:
So, unless we actually manage to recall Hopper, Darling, Kapanke, et al., the census numbers don’t necessarily indicate any help to come from Senate redistricting…especially not with an unfriendly legislature drawing the maps.
By all accounts the state budget will be done on time.
JFC co-chair Robin Vos has pointedly left the door open for redistricting to be crammed into the budget on the floor of the Senate or Assembly once it leaves JFC.
Yes, it’s all conjecture, but it’s also not impossible given all the dirty tricks right now. The budget and collective bargaining are certainly distractions for the media that could let this slide by until the ball is rolling along.
Speaking of redistricting…there is a continuing push in Milwaukee county to shrink the board further than the one seat being considered for consolidation. Why isn’t there a similar concern with out state government? Do we really need 99 representatives and 33 senators? Just asking!
Why are you comparing county board with state government? There are most certainly other county boards in the state trying to reduce their overhead – it’s not a Milwaukee issue alone. And certainly nothing you can blame us “out staters” for – we couldn’t care less about how you run your county board.
And why refer to the state legislature as “out state”? Do you believe that Milwaukee County is not fairly represented in State Assembly and Senate? 7 Senators and 21 Assembly seats isn’t enough?
All that being said – as a practical matter, I think that the number of state legislators is about right, especially if we are to stick with the State Constitutionally installed bicameral legislature. That said, I’m 100% in support of reducing the pay so that we don’t have a full-time legislators. Though, honestly, salary cuts really don’t save that much money. Now, term limits and eliminating their pensions, that’s a different story. Make it so state legislature is no longer a life-long career. More turnover – something more like a citizen legislature that James Madison envisioned. And just to be clear – I only talking about elected legislators, not the policy-wonks & workers.
that was a typo…it should have read OUR state govt.
Many counties in Wisconsin have more than the 19 supervisors (soon to be 18) that Milwaukee county currently has. Yet Milwaukee county is far denser in population than most of those counties.
But for a second realize that the number of Wisconsin legislators is 23% of the US House of Representatives…we need that level of reprentation? And our Senate is 33 of the US Senate…hell there are WI counties approaching 33 supervisors…we need that many?
Ed, I won’t disagree that we certainly don’t need quite as many elected officials (whether state, county, or local). Personally, I’d like to see the County Board reduced to 15 (or even 13) seats.
as long as robin vos is in the legislature we have one seat too many
i am a proponent of a larger governing body. I think it allows for more accountability when they have less people they represent.
I don’t disagree Jeff…I am just asking why we need to shrink one for the sake of saving money (and the same plaint is starting to be raised for the aldermanic districts in Milwaukee too) but why not a word about the state…which is openly bragging that it’s broke.
I think the county’s redistricting “plan” is an absolute farce. Who reduces a voting body down to an even number? Why not reduce the size of the board by two seats?
The plan supported by the majority on the County Board makes little to no sense.
dude…the US Senate is always an even number
wit hthe VP there to break ties….so technically they have 101
Which doesn’t matter because you need 60 to accomplish anything really, so there you have it.
Sure, but it’s always been an even number, unlike the County Board.
Im sorry I must of mis read you Ed. Are you looking for consistency and logic from the republican party of WI?
Honestly I’m wondering how this got out in the first place.This is definitely not uncommon, as you can see in highly urban areas or in the souther states. I’m just wondering who got this inside information since the Republican Party is extremely secretive.
It’s making me wonder if the GOP is as closely tied together as they let on and if it’s not causing a rift of some members in their party.
I think we’re going to see them in every race. I mean, Shelly Moore just sent out a release saying they’ve recruited failed Assembly Candidate Isaac Weix. (funny story, the seat Weix ran for is not in Harsdorf’s senate district. Weix ran in the 93rd in a primary against now Rep. Warren Petryk who fell ass backwards into beating Jeff Smith.)
And don’t let any of this fool you. They’re going to be doing redistricting in June. That’s happening. If they don’t do it, they truly are daft.
Pretty much my prediction, they at this point realize they have nothing left to lose so they’re going to ram everything in so that they can keep everything to their advantage – even if it ends up hurting their own in the process and may make Wisconsin uneasy towards the Republican Party for years to come. They’re going in a different direction from what I see in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida – all who have very similar things happening but are trying to step off. The Republican Party here is going down swinging by trying to do as much damage as possible so that when the damage can be seen – it will be blamed on the Democrats. Rinse and repeat.
Yeah, they’re doubling down on extreme.
The issue I am seeing for them is, however, they’ve got too many members, and you can’t save them all.
You can finagle around the edges on redistricting, but the map it is now is pretty friendly to them (on an assembly level).
You can’t make democrats go away, and there are places that they will always have troubles. They can try to lock up a few more districts, but it could mess them up in other districts.
After the Doyle election, Barca was saying there are 22 seats that have better numbers than Doyle in the 94th. Can they make all of those seats better for them without harming some of their more safe seats putting them close to in play?
That’s pretty much it — I think it’s guaranteed no matter what they’re going to lose members after this fiasco even with redistricting because they may end up hurting themselves in the process by weakening one of their solid red districts.
Personally, I think Gerrymandering is disgusting no matter the side. This should be judged by a neutral party, not by the party that is in control at the time because you know both won’t have have a problem repressing the vote in such a way that it means your vote doesn’t matter.
In addition: The only solid red districts are the Milwaukee Suburbs. So just watch and keep a close eye on them – I bet they’re going to stick as many redistricting lines into Waukesha County, Washington County, and Ozaukee County as much as possible but not without getting rid of it’s core.
The problem you are going to get with slicing into the base like that is a lot of those areas didn’t actually grow as much as much of the rest of the state, this is the same as what happened in Milwaukee Proper (however not as acute).
You’ve got 3 assembly districts that have such a rate of growth that it will take a seat away from waukesha county proper and from MKE proper, as well as one from Northern Wisconsin.
Hudson, Verona and Appleton. That plus the growth just generally in Erpenbach’s District (Growth surpassing the mean in all 3 of his districts 2 of which have over 20,000 too many people in it)
Plus you’re going to delude the base. Chuck Chvala proposed that wth dane county in one of their redistricting talks, and it didn’t go over very well in the Assembly (With democrats or republicans for that matter) In the end of the day, the courts will likely draw any map because they’re going to gerrymander illegally (I mean they haven’t done anything close to that yet. right?)
Yes the Republicans ‘delude’ (sic) the base with aplomb.
Good work on connecting the dots with the fake candidates being used to buy time to redistrict and other shenaningans. That, and it open up the chance to try some possible funny business with the ballots in any Dem primary (think Alvin Green in S. Carolina last year).
If I was DPW, I’d have observers at EVERY county courthouse making damn sure there are no more Kathy Nicklaus’ lurking around trying to make a name for themselves.