TPM Reader EA writes in …
I can certainly understand how the actions of Scott Walker and his allies in the Wisconsin Senate rankled working Wisconsinites and the larger union community around the country. I’m certainly glad that it activated what seemed like it had become a quite complacent movement. But was the recall movement worth it? More specifically, was it worth the incredible investment from outside non-union progressive groups? I swear I received an ungodly amount of email about Wisconsin but none about other states with threatening union-busting legislation that matter to me more, like PA or NJ.
For someone who hates federal spending, Bachmann sure does ask for a lot of it.
Pressure grows to create debt commission panel reality show.
The “major announcement” the Huntsman campaign was heralding turns out to be the endorsement of Jeb Bush’s son.
Democrats picked up two Senate seats in Wisconsin recall elections last night, but needed three to regain control of the chamber. They have dropped their initial claims of voting irregularities in Waukesha County. Our Wisconsin politics guru Eric Kleefeld has the full story.
As of just after 12:30 on the east coast it’s looking like Sen. Alberta Darling (R) is pulling out a win in Wisconsin’s 8th senate district. If so, that means that state Democrats picked up two recall victories but fell short of the three needed to take control of the senate.
We should have official word shortly.
11:58 PM: 5 races called, 3 GOP, 2 Dems, all down to Darling (R) v. Pasch (D) in senate district 18. And that one is way too close to call.
11:59 PM: A BIG chunk of Republican votes just came in from Waukesha County. Big pick up for Darling (R). That will put Darling into a clear lead and then it’s going to be down to remaining votes in Milwaukee.
12:10 AM: Milwaukee County will reportedly have their final results reported in about 10 minutes. That should tell us the story.
12:11 AM: With 79% reporting, Darling (R) moves into 4% point lead. In raw totals about 2500 votes.
12:16 AM: State Dem chair Mike Tate claims “tampering” in Waukesha vote count reports that put Darling (R) over the top. This is the same county and clerk who generated such controversy in the recent Supreme Court election in Wisconsin. And she does seem to have some very archaic methods of reporting votes. But I have yet to see any evidence of irregularities tonight. The state party says in a press release that “in the next hours we will determine our next course of action.”
12:22 AM: With 80% reporting, Darling (R) moves into 53-47 lead. That’s about 3100 votes, a sizable margin.
11:35 PM: King (D) moves back into narrow lead in 18th district, but now with 97% reporting. Looking more like the second Dem pick-up.
11:39 PM: I said earlier in the evening that it looked like district 18 was going to be the down to the wire one. Now that’s looking like 8. I’m watching various folks crunching the numbers for the remaining precincts. And they’re all coming up with extremely close numbers. Close enough that extrapolations don’t tell us much.
11:41 PM: AP calls 18th District race for Jessica King (D). Second Dem pick up of the evening.
11:42 PM: I see Republicans claiming they’ve got district 8 wrapped up. But the non-partisan number counters I’m watching see no such clarity.
11:53 PM: Crack Madison reporter Jessica Arp notes that “The Waukesha Co. numbers are all from Village of Menominee Falls”.
11:54: Again from Arp: “Waukesha Co Clerk’s office says 9 of 10 precincts will be on the web in 5 minutes”
10:52 PM: We’re coming up on our third hour of vote counting. And the picture is pretty clear: Republicans have all but certainly won three of the six races of the evening. To retake the state senate Dems have to win all three remaining races. And at the moment they’re leading in all three. Just not by big margins or with too little of the vote in to have a clear sense of the final result. Got that? Good.
10:57 PM: More news out of district 18. The Republican Hopper has just reclaimed a narrow 2 point lead, now with a big 79% reporting. However, all the remaining votes appear to be in a county the Democrat King has been winning. Simply too close to call.
11:22 PM: We’ve finally gotten the call for Olsen (R) in the 14th district. So GOP holds three or six.
11:06 PM: Dem King retakes nominal lead (just over 100 votes) in 18th district. It’s starting to look like district 18 is where this is all going to come down to.
11:07 PM: AP calls district 32 as Dem pick up.
11:13 PM: As noted above, looks like this comes down to district 18 — Hopper (R), King (D). Right now essentially tied with 87% reporting. But the remaining vote is in a county King has been winning.
11:21 PM: The race in District 8 has just tightened up big time. Now a two point race after a bunch chunk of Republican votes came in. But that county is now tapped out and the remaining votes are from counties where the race has been close.
10:22 PM: We’re almost 90 minutes into the counting. And the picture is starting to get clearer. We have two Republican incumbents who have clearly held on — Cowles and Harsdorf, though the later hasn’t been called yet. Another Republican, Olsen, has a 10 pt margin with 71% of the vote in. That’s looking fairly solid in the GOP column, but far from a sure thing. After that you have three races where the Dems are either ahead or very close. But these all have very few or relatively few precincts reporting. Big picture is that Dems can still get the 3 seats but they need everything to fall their way. No margin for error. Latest results here.
10:32 PM: Dems now tied or ahead in three races. But with very lower totals reporting in 2 of the 3.
10:36 PM: Unless returns speed up in districts 8 and 18 this could be a pretty long evening.
10:39 PM: We must be close to seeing a call for Republican Olsen in district 14, 8 point spread with 86% reporting.
10:44 PM: Olsen (R) now up by 8 points with 94% in. A bit surprised we haven’t seen a call there yet. Should happen momentarily.
10: 49 PM: Have an unconfirmed report that the reason for the odd lack of a call in the Olsen race is that a lot of the remaining vote is in the challengers hometown. That’s a helluva deficit to make up. But the folks at AP are understandably reluctant to call it.