Sorry Tom.

You were wrong.

(Hell, at least our side was expect­ing none of the Democ­rats to be charge with any­thing.  This is Mil­wau­kee County after all.)

No charges will be brought against two groups that were accused of elec­tion law vio­la­tions in the run-up to the August recall elec­tion of Sen. Alberta Dar­ling, accord­ing to a state­ment released this morning.

“It is unclear, at best, whether an offer to pay per­sons to gath­ers absen­tee bal­lot appli­ca­tions on a quota basis comes within the scope of the Elec­tion Bribery statute,” wrote Asst. Dist. Atty. Bruce Land­graf, the lead pros­e­cu­tor on the case for Mil­wau­kee County. “The statute as cur­rently writ­ten does not give much guid­ance to those who wish to fol­low the dic­tates of the law, espe­cially in the area of absen­tee voting.”

Wis­con­sin Right to Life gave cam­paign work­ers $25 gift cards for every 15 vot­ers sym­pa­thetic to the anti-abortion cause that were enlisted for absen­tee voting.

Wis­con­sin Jobs Now, a com­mu­nity and labor group, held five block par­ties on the north­west side of Mil­wau­kee. They pro­vided food, prizes and a lift to Mil­wau­kee City Hall where vot­ers could cast absen­tee ballots.

In a 14-page let­ter to Mil­wau­kee County Judge Kevin Martens, Land­graf said he was influ­enced by the fact that both groups were act­ing in good faith to max­i­mize voter participation.

“Put another way, there was no evi­dence that these groups were act­ing in bad faith or with motives sug­gest­ing any form of cor­rup­tion,” he wrote.

No won­der I don’t go to Tom for legal advice.  Besides he’s gone all crazy after the Fein­gold loss.

I hon­estly don’t expect the Left in this state to heed this advice; espe­cially from peo­ple as far away as Cal­i­for­nia, but I pass this along anyway.

Hon­estly, the only thing Wis­con­sin lib­er­als want from Cal­i­for­nia these days are the warm weather and any loose change they could spare to help in the recall efforts.  (I hear after he’s done being all bat-$#!+ crazy like and pre­tend­ing his pay­check from The Avengers doesn’t dis­qual­ify him as part of “The 99%,” Kenosha native Mark Ruf­falo will prob­a­bly show up like he always does.)

Wis­con­sinites may not have much use for advice from an out-of-state news orga­ni­za­tion, but com­ing from a place that has under­gone its own share of polit­i­cal trou­bles as a result of recall elec­tions, we humbly sub­mit this coun­sel to Bad­ger State Democ­rats who are launch­ing a recall drive against Gov. Scott Walker: Don’t do it.

Walker’s elec­tion in 2010 was among the most polar­iz­ing of the polit­i­cal shifts of that tumul­tuous year, when anger over the strug­gling econ­omy fueled the tea party move­ment and Repub­li­cans pushed out Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bents nation­wide. His attempt to destroy pub­lic employee unions rather than nego­ti­ate with them to reduce his state’s bud­get deficit were unnec­es­sary and extreme, and under­stand­ably prompted a furi­ous response from unions and Demo­c­ra­tic Party lead­ers. But tar­get­ing a gov­er­nor for recall just because you dis­agree with his poli­cies is a ter­ri­ble idea. We know.

When Cal­i­for­nia expe­ri­enced seri­ous bud­get prob­lems in 2003, Repub­li­cans mounted a recall drive against Demo­c­ra­tic Gov. Gray Davis. He was guilty of no mis­con­duct and had done noth­ing to betray the pub­lic trust, yet Davis failed to pro­vide much lead­er­ship dur­ing tough finan­cial times and, fatally, he allowed the state’s vehi­cle license fee (bet­ter known as the “car tax”), which had been slashed in 1999, to revert to its for­mer level, irk­ing Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers who saw this as a tax hike. Davis was recalled and vot­ers elected Repub­li­can Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, a pop­u­lar movie star with no gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence who imme­di­ately ended the car tax increase while propos­ing noth­ing to make up for the lost revenue.

Recall dri­ves like California’s, and the one Wis­con­sin Democ­rats plan to start cir­cu­lat­ing peti­tions for on Nov. 15, ren­der mean­ing­less the notion that vot­ers elect gov­er­nors to serve a set term. Recalls make it nearly impos­si­ble for state lead­ers to get any­thing done because they go into cam­paign mode rather than leg­is­lat­ing mode. They worsen par­ti­san­ship and, Davis’ recall notwith­stand­ing, they are usu­ally a waste of time and money (an effort by Wis­con­sin Democ­rats to end the Repub­li­can major­ity in the state Sen­ate via recall has already failed, with four of six GOP incum­bents keep­ing their seats). And pop­ulist out­rage doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily lead to pos­i­tive reform. Schwarzeneg­ger may not have been a worse gov­er­nor than Davis, but he was hardly a bet­ter one, with his tenure marked by polit­i­cal paral­y­sis and con­tin­ual bud­get deficits stem­ming from the loss of $4 bil­lion in annual car-tax revenue.

Elec­tions have con­se­quences, and some­times your side loses. Recalls are a use­ful tool when a politi­cian com­mits mis­con­duct, but that’s not the case in Wis­con­sin. Democ­rats should accept that and move on.

The fact we’re even in this recall hell to begin with is a sign that most Wis­con­sin Democ­rats still haven’t accepted last November’s elec­tion results and are fail­ing to move on.

Frankly the whole party needs more time on the couch than on the cam­paign trail in my opinion…

Amaz­ing what one bad night will do, isn’t it?

Buried in an arti­cle from the Hill about last night’s two GOP vic­to­ries in spe­cial elec­tions for House seats in New York and Nevada.

Polling lead­ing up to the race indi­cated Obama was drag­ging down the Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date. Demo­c­ra­tic poll­ster Tom Jensen of Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling said that a Turner win would be “largely due to the incred­i­ble unpop­u­lar­ity of Barack Obama drag­ging his party down in the dis­trict” after PPP’s polling found Obama with just 31 per­cent approval in a dis­trict he won with 55 per­cent of the vote in 2008.

A Demo­c­ra­tic strate­gist said Obama has become such a prob­lem for down-ticket Democ­rats that he was wary of encour­ag­ing can­di­dates to run next year. “I’m warn­ing my clients — ‘Don’t run in 2012.’ I don’t want to see good can­di­dates lose by 12 to 15 points because of the pres­i­dent,” said the strategist.

National Democ­rats expected early on that they would have no prob­lems hold­ing the dis­trict, even though it has trended Repub­li­can over the last decade. But when the race tight­ened the Demo­c­ra­tic Con­gres­sional Cam­paign Com­mit­tee decided to spend $500,000 on tele­vi­sion ads in the highly expen­sive media mar­ket, while the Demo­c­ra­tic out­side group House Major­ity PAC has spent an addi­tional $100,000. Repub­li­cans were badly out­spent in the race, but it didn’t matter.

I think it’s a lit­tle too early to say if this unnamed Demo­c­ra­tic strate­gist is going to be right or not.  But I haven’t heard of such an idea being tossed around since 2008, when senior GOP con­sul­tants were said to be telling would-be can­di­dates the same thing.

We’ll know for cer­tain on Tues­day, but it’s start­ing to look like a real possibility.

Pan­icked Democ­rats are releas­ing a bar­rage of neg­a­tive tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing, turn­ing to the national party for a cash infu­sion and plead­ing with Pres­i­dent Obama’s net­work of sup­port­ers for help as they con­front what seemed impos­si­ble two months ago: defeat in the heav­ily Demo­c­ra­tic House dis­trict last rep­re­sented by Anthony D. Weiner.

Party lead­ers say the president’s flag­ging pop­u­lar­ity and defec­tions among Jew­ish vot­ers have left them fac­ing the embar­rass­ing pos­si­bil­ity that their can­di­date, Assem­bly­man David I. Weprin, could lose New York’s Ninth Con­gres­sional Dis­trict to a little-known Repub­li­can busi­ness­man who has never held elected office.

A new poll released on Fri­day showed Bob Turner, the Repub­li­can, with a six-point lead over Mr. Weprin. The elec­tion is on Tues­day, and even though law­mak­ers have dis­cussed elim­i­nat­ing the dis­trict in redis­trict­ing next year, the race has become sym­bol­i­cally impor­tant as an indi­ca­tion of how much Mr. Obama’s unpop­u­lar­ity might affect other Demo­c­ra­tic candidates.

“This has been a dif­fi­cult cam­paign, and this cam­paign has had some major oper­a­tional prob­lems,” said Assem­bly­man Vito J. Lopez, chair­man of the Brook­lyn Demo­c­ra­tic Party.

Mr. Lopez said that he expected Mr. Weprin to win, but that the cam­paign needed to become much more aggres­sive in the final days.

Steven A. Green­berg, a poll­ster from Siena Col­lege, which con­ducted the sur­vey, said the spe­cial elec­tion, though it was tak­ing place in a tra­di­tion­ally Demo­c­ra­tic sec­tion of Brook­lyn and Queens, had become a chance for vot­ers to reg­is­ter their unhap­pi­ness with the national eco­nomic and polit­i­cal cli­mate. The poll, which had a mar­gin of sam­pling error of plus or minus three per­cent­age points, found that 54 per­cent of likely vot­ers in the dis­trict had an unfa­vor­able view of Mr. Obama, and nearly three quar­ters said the coun­try was headed in the wrong direction.

“You have the poten­tial per­fect storm for the Repub­li­cans,” Mr. Green­berg said. “When the coun­try is headed in the wrong direc­tion, you want to blame the peo­ple who are there. And who are in charge? The Democrats.”

While the Siena Col­lege poll is say­ing Turner is up, report­edly, what really has Democ­rats wor­ried are a string of inter­nal polling from the Demo­c­ra­tic Con­gres­sional Cam­paign Com­mit­tee which appar­ently has Weprin los­ing out­side the mar­gin of error.  What really has the “Net­roots” at Kos wor­ried is appar­ently Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling (PPP) is in the field and Tom Jensen has stated on Twit­ter the Dems are going to lose the race ‘BIG.’

He even said the all-caps of “BIG” was justified.

PPP has yet to release the poll, and is expected to do so on Mon­day.  Since it’s now car­ry­ing a rep­u­ta­tion of being the most accu­rate poll­ster so far for 2011 with its record in the Wis­con­sin Recalls and other spe­cial elec­tions, it’s results have lib­er­als on edge.

What’s caus­ing this reli­ably Demo­c­ra­tic dis­trict to pos­si­bly flip?  Well, there’s a num­ber of reasons.

The Pres­i­dent is a Demo­c­rat, so that tends to mean inde­pen­dents are more likely to vote against his party in a spe­cial elec­tion if things are lousy…and well, things are lousy.  Sec­ondly, Weprin’s a hor­ri­ble can­di­date.  Even typ­i­cally, reli­able press out­lets for the Demo­c­ra­tic Party like Talk­ing Points Memo have called him a gaffe machine, and even bet­ter, he won’t be able to vote for him­self on Tues­day since he doesn’t even live in the District.

(His mother does though, and he’ll be escort­ing her to the polls like a good son.)

Then of course, there’s the old lib­eral standby…Koch!

Oh, I’m sorry.  That’s the right spelling, wrong pro­noun­ci­a­tion.  It’s not Koch (Coke), it’s Koch (Kaach), as in for­mer NYC Mayor Ed Koch.

Koch has backed the Repub­li­can Turner and has made no secret he’s been try­ing to make the race a ref­er­en­dum on the Obama Administration’s pol­icy towards Israel.  Polling among Jew­ish vot­ers in the dis­trict shows he may have been successful.

What’s going to hap­pen on Tues­day?  I have no idea.  I quit pre­dict­ing spe­cial elec­tions in New York State years ago and won’t bother with one on this one; espe­cially one that will prob­a­bly be redis­tricted out of exis­tence in the com­ing months.

That being said, it sure would be nice to think a Repub­li­can is sit­ting in Chuck Schumer’s old House seat.

Inter­est­ing screed (Yes, the jury okays the use of the word) by Kevin Steven­son, the Lin­coln County GOP Chair­man in the Wausau Daily Her­ald on ‘Why” exactly North­woods Patri­ots leader Kim Simac lost to Jim Holperin in the August 16th recall election.

Steven­son pretty much nar­rows it down to two things, none of which related to Simac as a can­di­date.  His rea­sons are:

1) RPW gave Kimac an inex­pe­ri­enced cam­paign staff:

The RPW then rec­om­mends cam­paign staff to Kim Simac. One would assume that it would rec­om­mend only the best and bright­est in an elec­tion of this impor­tance, and that every effort would be made to run an aggres­sive cam­paign to unseat Holperin. Wrong!

[…]

The RPW will tell you that the staff was young and had never run such a cam­paign before. They are right. That’s why it is not right to blame the staff alone. The Repub­li­can Party of Wis­con­sin took con­trol of this cam­paign and deserves the lion’s share of blame.

2) The Cam­paign staff “hide” Simac from the press.

The staff decided that all “main­stream” media would be biased against them. Rather than sim­ply leave it at this, they went fur­ther and insulted and demeaned the media. Now, the media should not feel spe­cial in this area, because it is hard to find any­one who did not feel this way after deal­ing with the staff. People-friendly this staff was not.

Most cam­paigns strug­gling with cash flow issues would wel­come debates and forums with the incum­bent. Again, the staff sur­prised every­one. Rather than accept these oppor­tu­ni­ties to reach large num­bers of vot­ers to share Kim’s back­ground, ideas and goals, they instead chose to hide. This just inten­si­fied the claims: “You just can’t trust Kim Simac.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing.

For issue 1, I don’t think Steven­son is off by much, but there are a num­ber of rea­sons for it.  For starters, most of the expe­ri­enced staff is usu­ally going to go to incum­bents.  Always has, always will, and hap­pens regard­less of party.

Take for exam­ple Alberta Darling’s cam­paign.  She insisted on get­ting the very team she had in 2008 back for her recall, and pretty much got it. (But no doubt she had to pay a pre­mium to get them too.)

Sec­ondly, most of the expe­ri­enced cam­paign staff for Repub­li­cans State Sen­ate from 2010 likely got jobs inside the Walker admin­is­tra­tion or any of the then 19 Repub­li­can State Sen­ate staffs.  In order to work on a cam­paign, they would have had to take leave of absences from their reg­u­lar jobs.

Democ­rats prob­a­bly didn’t have those prob­lems.  The mass lay­off pro­gram in Madi­son known as “Elec­tion 2010″ had prob­a­bly left more than a few of the best and bright­est cam­paign oper­a­tives float­ing around, look­ing for work, and will­ing to do it at cheaper rates.

Thirdly, as I wrote here at the Wis­con­sin Reporter and has been men­tioned else where, it seems quite likely that RPW and CERS (Com­mit­tee to Elect a Repub­li­can Sen­ate) decided play­ing defense in the recalls made much more sense than play­ing offense dur­ing them.  That’s going to lead to the bet­ter cam­paign oper­a­tives going to where they appear to be needed, not where party chair­men might wish them to be.

Finally, it’s the North­woods.  I don’t know many folks who will­ingly want to go up there in the sum­mer to run a cam­paign.  Fish and sit out on a lake pier?  Sure!

But not the former.

As for point 2, I don’t know what the hell Steven­son is think­ing there.  Simac was a mixed-bag at best with the media and it depended on where you put her.  From the two radio inter­views I did hear her on, she sounded fine on Char­lie Sykes, but came off as a train wreck on Vicki McKenna in Madison.

I’ve heard much the same from others.

So why is Steven­son doing this?  Well, he might be legit­i­mately upset with RPW and CERS, he wouldn’t be the first guy, and frankly he wouldn’t be far off. (SEE: Nygren, Fail­ure to get on Ballot)

Another might be that he’s try­ing to cover for his own county’s under-performance in the race itself.

Accord­ing to the AP, Holperin won Lin­coln County 5,994 to Simac’s 3,919.  Roughly a 60 per­cent to 40 per­cent margin.

Does that make Lin­coln Co. a Demo­c­ra­tic County?  Hardly, and recent elec­tions show it.

In the Prosser — Klop­pen­burg race, Lin­coln County was barely car­ried by Prosser 3,578 (50.2%) to Kloppenburg’s 3,549 (49.8%) — post recount fig­ures.

When tak­ing the 2010 fall state wide elec­tions (Gov­er­nor, U.S. Sen­ate) into account, Lin­coln Co. went 54.8 per­cent to Walker and 54.5 per­cent to Johnson.

So, it is pos­si­ble Steven­son could also doing a bit of CYA in terms of his county’s per­for­mance last week.

There’s enough blame to go around for what hap­pened in the recalls of Hansen and Holperin and hope­fully over the next 15 months, all folks involved, from the teams at CERS, RPW, the county par­ties, and even activists need to assess what hap­pened, quit point­ing the fin­gers, and then reload in the redrawn dis­tricts for the 2012 elections.

Both state sen­ate dis­tricts are very winnable for the GOP in 2012, and both sides of the aisle know that even after the “Sum­mer of Recalls” in Wisconsin.

Real pity the Sandy Pasch cam­paign and Cit­i­zen Action of Wis­con­sin never thought about doing this, huh?

No joke: Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rick Perry and come­dian Stephen Col­bert, who last week bar­raged Iowa vot­ers with adver­tise­ments urg­ing vot­ers to sup­port “Rick Parry,” shared the same polit­i­cal com­mit­tee trea­surer – until they didn’t.

Sal­va­tore Pur­pura, who has rep­re­sented numer­ous polit­i­cal com­mit­tees as trea­surer over the years, told POLITICO that he resigned on Thurs­day as trea­surer of Colbert’s super PAC, Amer­i­cans for a Bet­ter Tomor­row, Tomorrow.

Then, on Mon­day, Perry — not Parry — for­mally filed paper­work with the Fed­eral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion list­ing Pur­pura as his cam­paign treasurer.

“Obvi­ously, there was a poten­tial con­flict of inter­est,” Pur­pura said. “I told [Col­bert lawyer] Trevor [Pot­ter] on Thurs­day I would not be able to be trea­surer any­more.” Pot­ter could not imme­di­ately be reached for comment.

To date, Pur­pura remains listed as trea­surer in FEC doc­u­ments for both Perry’s pres­i­den­tial com­mit­tee and Colbert’s super PAC, which Pur­pura attrib­uted to a paper­work lag time. Shauna Polk, an offi­cial at Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based law firm Caplin & Drys­dale, has assumed trea­surer duties for Colbert’s super PAC, Pur­pura said.

The Atlantic orig­i­nally reported that Purpura’s name appeared on both com­mit­tees’ paperwork.

Purpura’s online LinkedIn resume indi­cates he’s served as trea­surer or “direc­tor of trea­sury” for George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election cam­paign, John McCain 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, the U.S. Sen­ate cam­paign of Carly Fio­r­ina in Cal­i­for­nia and the cam­paign of Sen. John Booz­man (R-Ark.), among others.

Trea­sur­ers often do not have lead­er­ship and decision-making roles in polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, more often serv­ing in a finan­cial capac­i­ties depend­ing on the com­mit­tee. For Perry, Pur­pura says he’ll work as “CFO – man­ag­ing accounting.”

Trea­sur­ers are pretty much just over-glorified accoun­tants of polit­i­cal com­mit­tees.  In fact, dur­ing for the Ron John­son Sen­ate cam­paign, Ron actu­ally had a num­ber of accoun­tants act as his cam­paign trea­surer and deputy treasurer.

Inter­est­ing exchange in the JSOn­line arti­cle regard­ing yesterday’s release of polling from PPP and Dai­lyKos in the final two recall elec­tions tak­ing place today.

In new polling num­bers released Mon­day by the lib­eral blog Daily Kos, both Democ­rats held double-digit leads in their races. The results, from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, a firm that typ­i­cally polls for Democ­rats, showed Holperin lead­ing Simac 55% to 41%, with 4% unde­cided, and Wirch lead­ing Steitz 55% to 42%, with 3% unde­cided. The firm released poll results last week that came quite close to the actual results in the Aug. 9 elec­tion.

The new polling was done over the week­end; the mar­gins of error were 2.6% in Holperin’s dis­trict, 2.9% in Wirch’s; and the sam­ple sizes were 1,387 and 1,130, respectively.

Repub­li­cans weren’t impressed with the num­bers. Dan Hunt, the Steitz cam­paign spokesman who headed the sig­na­ture cam­paign last spring to recall Wirch, said both races were “too close to call,” adding that “it comes down to turnout.” And John Hogan, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Com­mit­tee to Elect a Repub­li­can Sen­ate, said the results were based on “a hor­ri­bly slanted sample.”

Gillian Mor­ris, a spokes­woman for the state Demo­c­ra­tic Party, said Mon­day in an email: “The poll released today reflects what we have seen on the ground in these last cou­ple days.”

But Kelly Steele, spokesman for We Are Wis­con­sin, a coali­tion of labor groups that has been active through­out the recalls on the Demo­c­ra­tic side, wasn’t buy­ing the big leads in the PPP polling.

“Polls sug­gest­ing these races will be easy are wrong,” he said in an email. “The Holperin race is a tossup, and the activ­ity on the ground — as well as the huge TV dump on the Repub­li­can side — shows our oppo­nents are pulling out all the stops.”

Holperin has long con­ceded that he’s the Demo­c­ra­tic sen­a­tor most vul­ner­a­ble to being defeated in a recall elec­tion. Con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court Jus­tice David Prosser won 10 of the 11 coun­ties in the dis­trict in April, and Walker took it with 57.4% of the vote in November.

Empha­sis mine.

I don’t fault the DPW flack for whole­sale buy­ing the num­bers.  Part of any party’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tion is to say things are going great (until they aren’t) and when things aren’t going great to say they are.

It’s a bit like being the one at the Vat­i­can who has to tell Ital­ian press that the Pope is in good health.  (Because the Pope is always in good health…until he is dead.)  Besides, the way things are going with Zielinski’s out­bursts, Mor­ris will be run­ning the shop in Madi­son soon enough.

Steele at We Are Wis­con­sin isn’t bound by such laws of polit­i­cal dis­course.  He might actu­ally be telling the truth.  And con­sid­er­ing how DPW’s polling num­bers seemed to burn every­one last week on the Left, I frankly don’t blame the guy for being cautious.

Who’s right?  I guess we’ll know tonight.

Yeah, this sums it up quite well from the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s Joe Heller.

From JSOnline’s “Poli­ti­FACT” on the accu­sa­tion by DPW on Wauke­sha Co. Clerk Kathy Nick­o­laus “hold­ing votes.”

Two Wauke­sha County com­mu­ni­ties are in the 8th Sen­ate Dis­trict: But­ler and Menomonee Falls. But­ler sent in totals within 35 min­utes of close of polls at 8 p.m., and those were posted early in the evening.

But Menomonee Falls Clerk Jan­ice Moyer told us that heavy turnout there pre­vented tab­u­la­tion of absen­tee bal­lots in some cases until after polls closed.

“It takes time, and we want them to do it cor­rectly,” Moyer said of poll workers.

Nick­o­laus did not get most of the Menomonee Falls count until 10:36 p.m., accord­ing to Moyer. Nick­o­laus said results were posted on the county’s web site by 10:47 p.m. The last batch came in an hour later, and Nick­o­laus said she posted them within six minutes.

So the gap in report­ing Wauke­sha County results was not due to Nick­o­laus, who posts and tal­lies the totals but does not count the votes.

What hap­pened in April is well known, she didn’t post the tal­lies from Brook­field. Even though they were avail­able on other sources of media if you looked for them.

Like the Brook­field Patch for instance.

You know, it used to be said that polit­i­cal oper­a­tives say the cra­zi­est crap out there to keep the unin­tel­li­gent of us riled up and angry at the oppo­si­tion.  “Con­fuse the Rubes” is what it’s been called in the past.

After years of this from Tate and Zielin­ski, I’m seri­ously begin­ning to believe the rubes are run­ning the show.

My apolo­gies to the crew at Monty Python, but the shoe fits.

Yes, Democ­rats are “The Black Knight” in this example.