Recall Effort Against Labor-Hating Governor Kicks Off This Week
Fresh off their victory in Ohio—where voters rejected an anti-collective bargaining law supported by their "reflective" Republican governor, John Kasich—the unions are now aiming to unseat Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker before he makes rank-and-file membership a criminal offense.
The unions' effort to recall Walker—scheduled to begin on Tuesday—is motivated mainly by his signing of a law that limits the bargaining rights of all public employees except firefighters and cops. The law, passed earlier this year, resembles the law that Ohioans just rejected. Nobody liked it except Walker, Walker's supporters, some guys in Sheboygan who were drunk and lying in a ditch when asked for their opinion, and the creepy Kochs.
Voters can't hold a referendum to scrap the law, so they're going to try scrapping Walker instead:
The groups start gathering petition signatures tomorrow, and they need more than 540,000 in 60 days to get the recall on the ballot in a state with a voting-age population of 4.3 million. Then they would probably have four to six months to get behind an alternative candidate and attempt to unseat a governor at the polls for the first time in state history.
The unions and their Democratic allies are shooting for a May recall vote. Wisconsinites are reacting to the campaign in a variety ways, but our favorite response comes from 23-year-old Margaux Meltzer, who told the Journal Times, "I have no opinion. Especially since I'm a cosmetologist ... I'd rather stay neutral." Cosmetologists are just like journalists, always having to remain as objective as possible in order to maintain their credibility.
