“It’s been full-tilt boogie here for the last two weeks. It’s like Santa’s political workshop,” said volunteer Alan Ginsberg, a retired Madison teacher. By TODD RICHMOND ADVERTISING Associated Press MILWAUKEE — Sonja O’Brien heard from the hecklers outside the Potawatomi
By TODD RICHMOND
Associated Press
MILWAUKEE — Sonja O’Brien heard from the hecklers outside the Potawatomi casino as she collected signatures in a final push to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
One man yelled at her for forcing the state to spend millions on a recall election. A woman told her she was annoying. And Jack Bublitz, a 75-year-old retired banker, said Democrats would never collect enough names.
“You’re not going to do it! You’re not going to do it!” Bublitz yelled at her.
But O’Brien figured these naysayers were relatively civil compared to most days over the past two months in what has become a bitter brawl to oust Walker from office. Now the fight is about to move from the streets to the courtroom.
Democrats want to wind up the signature drive this weekend and get the names to state election officials by Tuesday’s deadline. GOP legal challenges are almost certain to follow.
The signature campaign has been a microcosm of a political landscape that remains toxic and highly divided a year after the Republican governor introduced his plan to strip almost all public workers of their collective bargaining rights.
“These people are being ridiculous,” Bublitz said as he hurried inside the casino. “We elected Walker. Let him serve out his term.”
O’Brien, a 57-year-old data technician, shrugged it off.
“We’re making history,” she said, clad in boots and a parka and armed with two homemade “Recall Walker” signs and a pair of clipboards. “It feels good to empower the people.”
Walker argued he had to crack down on unions to balance the state’s $3.6 billion budget deficit. But Democrats saw it as a doomsday attack on unions, one of their crucial constituencies.
Thousands of demonstrators protested at the Capitol around the clock for three weeks. The Senate’s 14 minority Democrats fled the state in a futile attempt to block a vote on the plan, which Walker eventually signed into law last March.
Democrats have been itching for payback ever since. They ousted two Republican state senators in recall elections last summer, narrowing the GOP’s edge in that chamber to just one vote. Now they’ve set their sights on Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and four more Republican state senators. They need 540,208 signatures against Walker and the same against Kleefisch to trigger separate recall elections.
“It’s been full-tilt boogie here for the last two weeks. It’s like Santa’s political workshop,” said volunteer Alan Ginsberg, a retired Madison teacher.
