Thought you all might want to know this:
Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg declared victory Wednesday, based on results reported by the Associated Press.
The Associated Press shows Kloppenburg received 740,090 votes and incumbent David Prosser received 739,886 votes. The margin is 204 votes.
In a statement, Kloppenburg said:
“We owe Justice Prosser our gratitude for his more than 30 years of public service. Wisconsin voters have spoken and I am grateful for, and humbled by, their confidence and trust. I will be independent and impartial and I will decide cases based on the facts and the law. As I have traveled the State, people tell me they believe partisan politics do not belong in our Courts. I look forward to bringing new blood to the Supreme Court and focusing my energy on the important work Wisconsin residents elect Supreme Court justices to do.”
Without question, there will be a recount, but as we have seen, it is very important to be ahead when the recount begins. Public opinion begins to sour on the person who was behind at the end of the count yet continues to demand recounts and attempt legal maneuvers.
As to what this all means, well, I’m sure the charges of voter fraud, voter intimidation, and everything else can begin on Fox News, in the WSJ, and on Morning Joe. You can almost guarantee that the wingnut hacks at the Daily Caller are already working the New Black Panther Party angle, and will work it till it hurts. And Mr. Peak Wingnut himself knows who is to blame:
Gov. Scott Walker said this afternoon that the spring election results show there are “two very different worlds in this state.”
“You’ve got a world driven by Madison, and a world driven by everybody else out across the majority of the rest of the state of Wisconsin,” Walker said at a press conference in the Capitol.
Walker said he didn’t believe the election was a referendum on his policies, saying the results reinforce Wisconsin’s status as a “purple” state. He attributed other victories by Dem-backed candidates outstate to local factors, while noting that conservative candidates such as Jim Ladwig in Racine also emerged victorious Tuesday. In particular, he said the results in the race for his former post as Milwaukee County executive reflected its status as a “dark blue county.”
There’s Madison and Milwaukee, and then there’s real Wisconsin, with the Real Murrikans who live there.
trollhattan
i take this to mean Madison is outside flyover country(tm) whilst the other Smartypants portions of Wisconsin are just dandy for flying. Over. Flying over.
That’s a freakishly slender lead, does Wisconsin not do mail-in ballots for off-cycle elections? If it were California they’d have half the ballots mailed in.
Mattminus
I know Limbaugh said it first, but Walker’s right to bring it up again. If the votes of “them people” didn’t count, teh republicans would never lose.
Baud
As happy as I am at the outcome, this whole “voting for justices” thing rubs me the wrong way.
Midnight Marauder
You are late to the party.
An opponent’s action really should be this easy to predict. Every.single.time.
The Dangerman
Take out Los Angeles and San Francisco and CA is the reddest of states; too bad it doesn’t work that way.
freelancer
“If not for the fake Americans, everything I like would be unanimously approved!”
Way to go, Scott.
This has been my day scrolling through Google Reader.
Spaghetti Lee
In particular, he said the results in the race for his former post as Milwaukee County executive reflected its status as a “dark blue county.”
Oh yes, so very very dark, nudge nudge.
El Tiburon
How is this possible? ACORN was shut down, so who is doing all of this voter-frauding?
gnomedad
@freelancer:
Had a, um, eventful root canal earlier today. Thank you for making my laugh myself silly.
Dan
Sullivan is screaming for “the Democrat’s plan” like he screamed for Trig’s birth certificate.
priscianus jr
Linnaeus
@Spaghetti Lee:
I see I’m not the only one who noticed that.
Common Sense
@Baud:
same here. justice should be above campaigns.
Dave L
Douchey former Republican Governor Lee Dreyfus used to enjoy describing Wisconsin as “Madison, surrounded by 65,000 miles of reality”.
This, from a man who owned upwards of 50 identical red vests, and whose wife once revealed that she couldn’t stand the thought of eating honey because it was “bee poop”.
Linnaeus
I wonder if the “real ‘Murkin” talk isn’t going to be played out at some point soon. Because a lot of “real ‘Murkins” are now clearly in the GOP’s crosshairs.
fourlegsgood
Poor Scotty – I think he knows his days are numbered.
Linnaeus
@Dave L:
I think honey is more like bee vomit, but hey, it’s still good.
Brachiator
@Dan:
Wait a minute. Trig was born in Kenya?
Anyway, good news on the Wisconsin election. Now Walker is going to have to play catch-up.
Lolis
Well some Democrats are learning. Declaring victory is a smart move.
SteveinSC
There wasn’t enough kaopectate in the whole State of Wisconsin to stem the tide coming out of the republicans from purple-ish, recall targeted districts shitting themselves.
lllphd
what is it with the voter fraud angle anyway? why haven’t the dems put that nonsense in its place a long time ago?
i mean, what happens with voter fraud? maybe one person here (say, coulter) or one person there (say, charlie white of IN, just weeks ago) might get away with voting in the wrong place, or even (*gasp* the vapors!) twice, say in NY and FL (wonder which party benefits from those guys).
but enough to actually swing an election in a big way? a couple hundred votes? there would have to be some kind of conspiracy to do that, which is ludicrous as it would still be so damn complicated.
on the other hand, gosh the broad disenfranchisement that occurs for whole swaths of sub-groups like the elderly and the poor and those of color. well, we all know about that, in addition to the insane commandeering of the entire voting machinery in 2000 and 2004 – now THAT stuff shifts elections out of the voters’ hands and into the hands of those in power.
no wonder rove focused on getting repugs elected as sec of state in as many states as possible. how many kathleen harris’s and ken blackwell’s are still lurking about, doing their dutiful damage under the radar? while the noise up front is all about the new black panthers.
sheez.
singfoom
@lllphd: The voter fraud angle is someone, somewhere who is not white, male and heterosexual is voting. Therefore, their votes must be fraudulent.
Because only real ‘MURKINS should vote.
Shinobi
It turns out your vote counts the same no matter how many square miles you inhabit all by yourself.
JCJ
Well, the rest of Wisconsin may be where Real Murkins live (hey! that includes me! I’m so proud!) I think it is interesting that Madison often rates extremely high in those magazine surveys for quality of life.
@Spaghetti Lee – Nice. Glad you caught that.
priscianus jr
Most of the commenters on this thread seem to take Walker’s statement at face value but give it a positive spin. And it is true of course that without Madison and Milwaukee, Kloppenburg could not have won. However, in addition, MOST OF THE WESTERN HALF OF WISCONSIN — about 75% of the western counties — went for Kloppenburg. In my earlier comment I said “29 out of 42 counties,” but I should have said 29 out of 39 counties. In eastern WI, Menominee and Kenosha were the only counties, aside from Milwaukee, to go for Kloppenburg.
http://bluecheddar.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/kloppenburg-map.png
Gravenstone
@priscianus jr: Yeah, I was going to point this out. Cap’n Fucknuts seems to forget that there’s more than just the urban areas who dislike him. And he has to be particularly stinging from the facial his hand picked successor in Milwaukee county got, losing by 20 points.
Dave L
@Linnaeus: Hey, now — I know it’s not bee poop! That was Mrs. Governer. Biological illiteracy is part of what made it funny!
freelancer
@Shinobi:
Thank goodness Tunch can’t vote then.
Peter
Shit, that’s narrow. Hopefully it holds up on recount.
Spaghetti Lee
@SteveinSC:
I dunno. Watching Kapanke’s reaction to getting recalled, it was almost creepy how fatalistic he was. Like he’d done his job for his masters by helping the bill pass and now didn’t care what happened to him.
General Stuck
I’m pretty sure I saw a Black Panther prowling about in some video on a wingnut blog. There were palm trees in it, but spring is just around the corner in the land of many cheese,
Bubblegum Tate
@Mattminus:
There are gonna be endless accusations of Voting While Black. Milwaukee is the new Chicago!
And I think it goes without saying that everything Kloppenburg does from here on out is the most judiciously active judicial activism in the history of activist judges.
Joel
@The Dangerman: Not really true. From Monterey to Crescent City, you have fairly reliable blue territory.
Oakland leans blue these days, and El Centro (small as it may be) is also blue.
singfoom
@General Stuck: Well, as we all know, the liberal media is lying to us constantly, hiding the real truth.
So for every single Black Panther saying vaguely threatening things to himself near a polling place, there must be hundreds, even thousands intimidating voters all over the country.
Plus, they’ve spooked the free market unicorns. Free Market Unicons can sniff out a voter-intimidating Black Panther at a range of several miles.
joeyess
They know they’ve lost this race that’s why they’re now dispatching this particular right-wing troglodyte to dispense his voter fraud nonsense.
harokin
Kloppenburg has to acknowledge how close the vote was. In the interest of bringing Wisconsin together and healing this split, maybe she and Prosser could work out a deal to hear alternating cases. Or she could just commit to ruling in favor of corporations half the time. Clearly this is no mandate for Kloppenburg’s radical left agenda.
Chris
Has there been a recount in recent memory in which the Democratic candidate did not gain votes?
Linnaeus
@Dave L:
Oh, I know that you weren’t saying that you thought that. Should have made that clearer.
stuckinred
@harokin: you so funny
retr2327
“You’ve got a world driven by Madison, and a world driven by everybody else out across the majority of the rest of the state of Wisconsin,” Walker said”
He might want to take a look at the county-by-county map over at the great orange satan, showing — as you might expect — great swaths of blue all over Wisconsin.
It ain’t just Madison.
The Thin Black Duke
Cynical bastard that I am, I never expected Kloppenburg to win. Damn, it feels great to be wrong. Go Wisconsin!
kth
fix’d
JCJ
@Bubblegum Tate
I live in WingnutLand (Waukesha County) and I heard some of my neighbors talking about voting multiple times. When I mentioned Chicago they all said no, “those people” in Milwaukee do it every election.
I would love to move to Madison.
Zam
Well then Eau Claire county must be considered real Wisconsin and we didn’t vote for that asshole Prosser, or even Walker for that matter.
patroclus
Unfortunately, Kloppenburg the Lawgiver won’t be inaugurated until August 1 so FitzWalker still has a window to ram their stuff through despite her Overwhelming Mandate.
bemused
Walker forgot that there is a Madison north, Bayfield & area. WI is not quite as red as he thought.
priscianus jr
@Gravenstone:
doofus
Thank you voters of Wisconsin. I may have to always root against your sport teams, but you pulled through today. Also, thank you Omnes Omnibus for your posts so far on the Wisconsin union battle. Keep it up!
MikeJ
@joeyess: Fund seems to be “concerned” that in Dane Co., where over 180,000 votes were cast, 10,000 of those ballots only had votes for the most publicized and most important race. I wonder how many people in 2008 voted only in the presidential race?
If we were going to use fraud to win, wouldn’t we get our money’s worth and throw in votes on other races too?
Califlander
@Spaghetti Lee:
Soon, he’ll be calling the folks in the urban areas “darkies.”
As in dark blue, ofc.
John Emerson
The turnout in Milwaukee was noticeably poor. If Milwaukee voting had been as good as the rest of the state, the election wouldn’t have been close. That’s why they’re talking about Madison. But Madison is white people.
rikyrah
and the clown who was running for Walker’s old post that voted for the union-busting bill got his ass STOMPED.
kdaug
Where does Walker live?
General Stuck
Coolest wingnut spin of the day on the WI judge election. From Allahpundit, who I can’t help but still like, even though he turned full monty winger when Obama was elected.
Get that. It was the “outrageous outrage” by the left that was to blame. Not the fact the CB rights were nixed by Walker and his wrecking crew. And it all portends good news for wingnuts for 2012. Now they can get about pissing the rest of the country off and run against the left’s outrage. We will have our candidates run against the wingnuts, and it will all come out in the wash as good news for McCain.
El Tiburon
@Chris:
Has there been a recount in recent memory in which the Democratic candidate did not gain votes?
I seem to remember something about a recount, the Supreme Court, and eight years of complete ass-fuckery.
JCJ
@kdaug
He lives in Wauwatosa – in Milwaukee County but not City of Milwaukee.
cynickal
@kth:
WIN!
Mary Jane
@The Dangerman:
Not even close, Dangerman. True that CA has some extreme wingnuttery, but Obama took San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties, all considered very red areas. Even Orange County gave him 47%.
MikeJ
@El Tiburon: But they didn’t actually have a recount in Florida. The US Supreme Court overruled the state courts and stopped the counting so as not to embarrass Bush when he was declared the winner with fewer votes.
Bubblegum Tate
@lllphd:
Don’t you see? The fact that there would have to be some sort of conspiracy to pull off such a fraud PROVES that there IS some sort of conspiracy to pull of such a fraud.
That’s how the wingnut mind works, sadly.
Three-nineteen
@priscianus jr: I find it interesting that by following the path of blue counties (execept for Jefferson and Waukesha) you can pretty much trace I94 as it winds its way through Wisconsin from Chicago on its way to Minneapolis.
me
@Three-nineteen: and Racine, but really, who cares about Racine anyway?
jonno
That’s a strange bit of coincidence, what Walker’s saying is the same thing the GOP says every time they lose a statewide race in OR: “It’s that liberal Portland’s fault!” Multnomah county is true blue and the last to report in statewide races, and lately it’s always tipped the election to the Dem.
They howl about the fact that the map is red across most of the state, but the population centers are blue and acreage doesn’t vote. Congratulations Wisconsin! OR’s proud of you.
Progressive Elitist
Obviously we can take anything WSJ says and/or John Fund says as absolute BS on its face.
However, he says the Dane County Executive race was “an extremely close race.” The guy won it with 70% of the vote. 70%! And we are supposed to believe anything this guy says. Just keep pulling stuff out of you know where John Fund.
IndyLib
@priscianus jr:
I was extremely happy to see my county in the sane column (Kenosha). I hope the 6 pt. win for Kloppenburg in Kenosha county means that the recall of Bob Wirch will go nowhere.
There is something I am really puzzled over though. Why the hell did Racine county go for Prosser by 10 points?
Tara the antisocial social worker
They’re both kinda summed up by their most memorable lines.
Kloppenburg: “We owe Justice Prosser our gratitude for his more than 30 years of public service.”
Prosser: “B**ch.”
Barry
I just have to say two things:
Barry
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Barry
and
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-YOU WALKER!
me
@IndyLib: Burlington, Mt. Pleasant, and especially Caledonia.
Barry
Victory feels good!
guachi
There are the conservative exurbs of Milwaukee (Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha) and then there’s real Wisconsin, with the Real Murrikans who live there.
Fixed that for ya, John.
My brother-in-law lives in Waukesha county and, yes, he’s an ultra-conservative white dude.
themann1086
@priscianus jr: There you go, bringing “facts” into this conversation. Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Jay C
I really like like that Judge Jo – uhh, sorry, Madam Justice Kloppenburg – flat-out declared victory, with that really nice “thanks for your service” bit – Thanksgiving turkey at the Kloppenburgs must be paper-thin if she wields the knife: it’s not the sort of in-your-face stuff we’re used to from Democrats. But good: I could easily get used to some more….
IndyLib
@me:
That’s what I don’t get though, there’s very little difference that I can see in Caledonia and Mt. Pleasant in Racine county (Burlington is kind of in a world all it’s own, it wishes it was in Waukesha county) and a bunch of the little communities in Kenosha county like Somers, Silver Lake, Paddock Lake and Pleasant Prairie. Kenosha county won’t give me a breakdown of the vote by town like Racine county will, so maybe all of the smaller communities in Kenosha county voted overwhelmingly for Prosser too. But the city of Racine actually has a higher population than the city of Kenosha does, so it doesn’t seem like “city” voters in Kenosha county could make up for the rural voters to such an extent.
Kenosha county voted for Obama in ’08 by 19 points and Racine county voted for him by only 7 points which makes a case that Kenosha county is just more liberal, but I can’t figure out why.
Judas Escargot
@doofus:
Ditto on this.
And also… looks like I was wrong about how this would turn out (which, in this case, is an awesome thing!).
asiangrrlMN
So, now it’s counties that are real and not real along with cities and states? What next, streets? “I woulda won if only Main Street was allowed to vote. It’s the dratted Cul-de-Sacs that did me in!”
Whatever. Yay. Congrats Judge K. And, suck it, Prosser and Walker.
shortstop
Walker knows that plenty of Wisconsin voted for Kloppenburg. He’s just not going to pass up a chance to sow a little rural resentment for black–er, urban areas.
When Illinois barely rejected Brady as guv in November ( we dodged a Walkeresque bullet there), there was much shrieking about how “unfair” it was that Quinn should be reelected carrying only two counties — as though land mass were the appropriate measure of election returns. And as though Chicago weren’t the only thing keeping Illinois from being Alabama north. I exaggerate a bit, because I feel like being an ungracious victor.
buckyblue
If you look at the county election map there would appear to be about equal parts blue and red, with smatterings of dark red and deep blue. There’s more blue here than just Milwaukee and Madison. Obama won almost every county in 2008. We’re a blue state that at times has a senior moment. Get ready to get your ass recalled, Scooter.
Midnight Marauder
@asiangrrlMN:
I’m pretty sure we can safely declare that no Real Americans live on Martin Luther King Blvd.
Anywhere in the country.
me
@IndyLib: According to Wikipedia:
Racine County – 195,408
Racine City – 82,196 – 42%
Kenosha County – 166,426
Kenosha City – 97,856 – 58%
dollared
YOu gotta admit, Walker is pure Nixonland. You lose, you blame the darkies and the pinko students. It’s us agin them, I tells ya! Divide and divide again.
I’m still of the firm belief that while the Walker Revolution’s brief moment of glory was funded from outside, it’s core motivation is the resentment of suburban Milwaukee whites. Madison got the University, (they think) Milwaukees gets tons of welfare dollars, and what’s the True, Great, Monstrous Insult to Their Rightful Place as the Privileged of Wisconsin, those yahoos in Green Bay have the World Champion football team!
None of this would have happened if the Packers were still playing four home dates a year at County Stadium.
Blurkee
Bashing the latte drinking, arugula eating elites in the sophisticated and urbane enclaves of Milwaukee and Madison is a Wisconsin tradition. That’s how you get folks riled “Up North”.
Framing Milwaukee and Madison as the enemy is what got Walker elected. One of his key points, aided strongly by talk radio, was opposition to what he called “Milwaukee to Madison High Speed Rail”, neglecting the fact that it was part of a multi-state network. And his use of that sprang from his opposition to any kind of regional transit or light rail in Milwaukee County and the suburban counties. That is what gave him the traction to go state wide. The all white suburban counties ate that up.
So, he hasn’t changed his tune at all. I don’t think anything will change his tune. It’s the recall efforts that will turn things. The legislature will be more reluctant to go along if they see their fannies on the line.
IndyLib
@me:
You’re right, the city of Racine is smaller than Kenosha (I was looking at populations numbers from another source than the Census site and mistook county population for city population).
This difference might explain why Kenosha county voted for Obama by 12 points more than Racine county in ’08, but the difference in the Supreme court election still seems extreme. The difference was 19 frikkin’ points. Racine county, a county that voted for Obama by a good margin, voted for Prosser by 10 points.
I’ve been living here for 4 1/2 years now and I’m still trying to get a handle on the local and regional political streams. I mean for FSM sake, this is the same Congressional district represented by Count Chocula – aka Eddie Munster – aka Paul Ryan.
me
@IndyLib: Well, the not-so-great candidates who’ve run against him haven’t helped.
IndyLib
@me:
Unfortunately that’s true. My husband and I wandered into a restaurant in Kenosha one Sunday morning a couple of years ago where the local Dem group was having a breakfast meeting. The Dem candidate, Marge Krupp, I think, was speaking. She seemed like a really nice lady, but I wanted to bang my head on the table at the time because I knew there was no way she could beat Ryan. She was incredibly mild-mannered, had no fire, no rhetorical skills to speak of at all. I was not surprised she lost to Ryan by 30 points.
TooManyJens
@Midnight Marauder:
Meanwhile, in heavily-Prosser Waukesha County, there were 110,643 votes cast in the Supreme Court race. The race with the next largest number of ballots cast was for Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge, Branch 4 with 94,575 votes. That race, by the way, was closer than the Dane County Executive race.
John Fund is a fucking hack.
themann1086
@TooManyJens: “John Fund is a fucking hack”; News at 11!
TooManyJens
@themann1086: Well, yes. But it made me feel better to say it.
me
@IndyLib: She’s a chemical engineer as I recall. Not a group of people known for their charisma (as a programmer I shouldn’t talk I guess).
honus
@Dave L: Madison, Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, Berkley; why does it always seem to bother republicans so much that the most intelligent, best informed populaces overwhelmingly vote democrat?
Greg Joseph
You know what I would really love to see. I wish that the teachers would act just like the Florida Republicans did when the Bush Gore re-count took place. (Almost took place.) Act like a crazy mob, keep raising your fists in the air and keep repeating “Stop the Count” at all the voter registration offices. I wonder how Fox would re-act. And would the Supreme Court get involved? Greg Joseph
dollared
@TooManyJens: Nice data! I love that!
priscianus jr
@Three-nineteen: