Cullen Bolts on Wisconsin Dem Senate Caucus

Good to see Mark Miller’s peo­ple skills are just a good as they’ve always been rumored to be.

State Sen. Tim Cullen, D-Janesville, said Tues­day he plans to leave the Demo­c­ra­tic cau­cus and may become an independent.

Cullen made the com­ments in a press conference.

Democ­rats just gained con­trol of the Sen­ate 17–16 with Sen. John Lehman’s vic­tory over Van Wang­gaard in a recall.

It’s unclear imme­di­ately what the impli­ca­tions are of Cullen’s announcement.

Cullen, who was among the 14 Demo­c­ra­tic sen­a­tors who left the state dur­ing the his­toric protests at the Capi­tol in 2011 but had sought com­pro­mise with GOP gov­er­nor Scott Walker on col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, said he was insulted by not being named chair­man of any Sen­ate com­mit­tees after the Democ­rats regain con­trol of that chamber.

You can read Cullen’s email announc­ing his deci­sion here.

Impli­ca­tions are pretty moot at this point.   With Brook­field Repub­li­can state Sen­a­tor Rich Zip­perer going off to join the Walker Admin­is­tra­tion at the start of next month, the Democ­rats main­tain an utterly point­less 16 — 15 — 1 Major­ity which is likely to flip in November.

But what it does show is just how ideologically-minded the new Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­ate Major­ity is.  For all the talk about “reach­ing across the aisle” after get­ting the major­ity last week, Miller shows in one swift action that he will pun­ish those who do not bow to the party line he is keeping.

For bet­ter or worse, Cullen is to Democ­rats what Dale Schultz is to Repub­li­cans, the bridge-maker who annoys the party faith­ful, but is needed nonetheless.

Miller just threw his bridge-maker out.  For all the scream­ing and name-calling at Schultz, no one in the GOP cau­cus has ever con­sid­ered doing that.

What does that say about the new Demo­c­ra­tic Major­ity?  Volumes.

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