Democratic Recall Candidates Win Over Fake Republican Challengers; Let the Campaigning Begin

I’ve seen the Luther Olson and Fred Clark campaign ads already. (The one above is an earlier ad from June.) Nasty as hell and hard-hitting respectively, but I’m sure that I haven’t seen anything yet. It wasn’t clear that Clark was going to be Olson’s challenger at all, but there it was, the ad running the same day as the primary. And then, Clark gave his upper cut. Ol’ Olson wasn’t going to waste any time, but Clark shouldn’t worry. All six Democratic candidates who won yesterday have six-figure war chests, according to Daily Kos via the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, while the Repubs have been struggling to come up even.

Hell no, the summer has not mollified the outrage of every voter who has been suffering buyer’s remorse over the GOP ascendancy in the statehouse and legislature. People are still simmering and smoking, and they are going to use the ballot box.

Charles Franklin, a UW-Madison political science professor, said that if any of the fake candidates had won Tuesday, it “would have been huge.”

For the most part, they weren’t even close. Five of six won 30 to 36 percent of the vote according to results presented by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, though even that was significant, Franklin said.

In an interview prior to the close of the polls, he said any fake candidate capturing 20-30 percent of the vote was an indication that Republicans crossed over to vote in the Democratic primary.

“That’s a sign Republican voters are energized,” Franklin said.

But there are also plenty of signs that Democratic voters are energized.

Turnout in the recall primaries was enormous by primary election standards and not that bad compared to even fall general elections. Former Oshkosh Deputy Mayor Jessica King, for example, received just under 20,000 votes Tuesday against fake candidate John Buckstaff. When she ran for Senate in 2008, there were only 1,849 votes cast in the Democratic primary.

That was an uncontested vote, but her general election total in a very close race against Hopper was 41,668, and that was during a presidential election year that saw enormous turnout statewide.

Daily Kos reported this morning that this ad is already running against Randy Hopper, but it is not about his marital woes and his conflict of interest with his current amour. At least, not yet. They’re taking the high road. And yeah, I think that I’ve seen this one too on the Madison airwaves. Undoubtedly, there are more to come.

Up next is the July 19 Republican primary which will feature five challengers to three members of the Fabulous 14 who are up for recall, Jim Holperin, Robert Wirch, and Dave Hansen. There is a primary for Holperin’s District 12, and for Wirch’s District 22. Holperin’s Republican challengers are Kim Simac and Robert Lussow; Wirch’s contenders are Fred Ekornaas and Jonathan Steitz. Hansen’s District 30 lone challenger is David Vanderleest, so this is considered a general election. Holperin, Wirch and Hansen don’t appear to be in trouble with their constituents and are considered to be shoe-ins.

Clay Barbour of the Wisconsin State Journal thinks, in his July 10 article, that it is highly unlikely that the Democrats will win all six elections.

Nevertheless, Democrats will certainly do their damnedest to make it happen.