GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Unions’ “Eye-opening Stumble” in Wisconsin

by

A few days before last fall’s election, I knew that despite her high unfavorable ratings, California’s junior Senator Barbara “Ma’am” Boxer was likely to win re-election. While doing cardio at the gym, I looked up to see the career politician rallying union employees at a very professional phone bank.

Each paid staffer sported telephone headsets, while working at a computer in separate cubicles.  By contrast, I had just come from spending the afternoon phone banking with other volunteers for the Republican tickets. We used cheap cell phones, lacked headsets, had no computer monitors and worked off printouts.

Thanks to the unions (many with funding directly from the state’s coffers), California Democrats had a more professional Get Out the Vote (GOTV) effort than did Republicans. And in a state where that party has a decided registration edge, such efforts tend to reap rewards come Election Day.

Given unions’ determination to oust Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice David Prosser–and the resources they were pouring into their effort–I was all but certain they would succeed. Those defending the relatively conservative justice were not nearly as fired up as were his opponents. They weren’t pouring the resources into his defense. And they didn’t have, as the unions did, a organization already in place. As Ed Morrissey put it:

Given the usual lack of turnout for April elections in off years, the organizing power of the unions should have been overwhelming, and Prosser should have been toast even in less-progressive areas of the state.  Instead, Wisconsin voters thundered to the polls to support Prosser, and Kloppenburg turned out to do poorly outside of Dane and Milwaukee counties — and even in Milwaukee, Kloppenburg led by just a 57/43 margin.

What should have been a slam-dunk if Walker’s proposal was really as extreme and disaffecting as unions claim turned out to be an even split.  Given their power and the investment of time and money by the unions, this is an eye-opening stumble.

The latest returns show Prosser with a 40-vote lead.  For “all that it invested in this contest,” F. Vincent Vernuccio writes, “big labor was unable to secure a decisive win.”

Perhaps, in a deep blue state like California, unions still have the muscle they once had, but in light blue Wisconsin, their resources no longer give them a decisive advantage.

Comments

  1. Reports of fraud… no surprise, if true.

    But I’m not holding my breath over this one. The fate of WI is up to the people of WI. Not much I can do.

  4. Is it the cardio that addles your brain and makes you demand respect for cons, while you continuously demonstrate your lack of respect for liberals?

    >>>“big labor was unable to secure a decisive win.”

    So it’s actually not a win for labor unless it’s a “decisive” win?

    You cons have the most amazing double standards. It certainly explains a lot.

    200 mystery ballots show up out of the blue and Prosser gets a teensy, weensy 40 vote lead (out of 1.5 million votes). Hmmm. The Lard sure works in mysterious ways. GOP election fraud seems to be one of them.

  7. Hey Auntie Dogma…

    In fact, thanks to the suburban town of Brookfield Wisconsin, Judge Prosser is now up by 7,381 votes. Now what was that you were saying Miss Woman????

  9. Well it’s kind of nice – as it turns out; NOT that it should become a regular thing! – because there seems to be an honest reason for it, and now it’s too late for a Democratic town to plausibly come up with 10,000 new votes.

  11. Hi Dan.
    “–I was all but certain they would succeed.”
    Interesting, because ahead of the election, I was hearing that news pundits thought that the Republican nominee should have been a shoe-in for a reliably conservative seat. It wasn’t. Turnout was 35% rather than the normal 20%. Maybe those folks were late Republican voters outraged by union efforts to ouster a good and decent man. I don’t know. Still, gives food for thought.

  13. Press conference here: http://www.jsonline.com/general/37714089.html?bcpid=8725036001&bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAGgk8Us~,dLqgruaIT6rTqyyEHVUdSjL5KQ9h61sv&bctid=895391546001

    For which I hat tip HotAir: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/04/07/video-the-greatest-press-conference-of-all-time/

    Blame Microsoft! 4:33, “This was a Access database file, that was on our regular system, and it was just a matter of the Save [crashing Windows]…” Haha, no seriously, she stresses that it was human error. “It was just a matter of the Save [not having been done right on election night, because]… it was just human error.”

  14. I’ve been following MM’s hysterical tweets. He’s now deep into tinfoil-beanie land, insisting that there is a conspiracy, and that the Republican county clerk is corrupt.

    Expect Auntie NAMBLA and the usual suspects to start banging away on that.

  15. The louder they get, the dumber they look. I will go on a limb on that. Watching and hearing the conference, either she is an actress of rare quality (unlikely), or she is truly embarassed and sorry at her error.

  16. Normal Waukesha county turnout in a Spring election was 32%… on election night, she detected 42% and hence didn’t leap to think anything was wrong… under the corrected total, turnout was 47% and she has a brief moment of pride in that, as a Waukesha resident.

  18. I hope that they have a very transparent review process to ensure that everything is above board. Though I can sympathize with those who are disappointed by the outcome, I think it is way to early to be throwing around barely hidden claims of a rigged election (MM). It might behoove WI officials to recount in this rather extraordinary circumstance, to stop rumour-mongering in its tracks. Assuming everything is above board, I feel for both candidates–one would like to win without the possible taint caused by this unfortunate incident; the other to have victory snatched by an accounting error.

  19. I think the WI repubs realized that in a very close election the dems would find a way to cheat. I suspect the failure to report the results of a heavily republican town was intentional: Dane County, heavily demo, was holding its final results until all the repub strongholds reported, then they found JUST enough votes for Kloppenwhatever to win. It seemed very odd that she declared victory with only a 200 vote margin and when questioned about it, she exuded nothing but confidence. I suspect she was told the fix was in. Then today, OMG, we forgot to report one whole town! No fraud necessary, valid votes, simple clerical error. Brilliant. Rove must have been in WI. Just my supposing, but you never know.

  20. I suspect the failure to report the results of a heavily republican town was intentional

    John, have you watched the lady’s presser? Is she that good an actress?

  21. I watched the presser, and there was simply no reason for her to be so overwhelmingly confident that a 200 vote margin out of what? 1.7 million votes? was going to hold up. Something was just wrong with that entire victory speech. As a commentator over at Instapundit said: “My suspicious, cynical side says that the Republicans delayed the full count to flush out any Democrat tricks. God bless ‘em, I hope they’re just that smart.” I think that commentator got it right.

  24. “… God bless ‘em, I hope they’re just that smart.”

    Again, not to knock anybody, but… Doubtful.

    Never invoke conspiracy as an explanation, when simple human incompetence has it covered. 😉

  25. That presser I did not see, so you may very well be right, but as I said initially, I was just supposing.

    But one would think that one would not go so far out on a limb to declare victory with such a small margin, risking making one’s self a total ass, unless one had some “special” knowledge.

    In any event, there are some real blue heads exploding all over the country as we discuss this. I know my sister, the NJNEA queen fleabagger, is probably riding the procelain pony tonight, and that just warms my cynical little heart.

  26. John, I can give you some room on that. Kloppenberg may have been told the fix was in. Maybe. Hell, it might still be in: we might wake up tomorrow to discover 10,000 new Democrat votes.

    My only claim is that IMO, Nickolaus really blew it, is really sorry, so perhaps Prosser/GOP really lucked out.

  27. Schadenfreude Update – We can watch as the short-bus Kos Kidz struggle to grasp the situation:

    Local clerk ‘finds’ over 7,000 votes for Prosser… The latest, and by far most disturbing, development is that a clerk in Wisconsin’s biggest conservative country has suddenly “found” a huge amount of votes for Prosser…

    Poor saps! The votes weren’t ‘found’, they were there all along, just not reported to the media (until today).

    And BTW, what about absentee ballots? Don’t they still need counting, and don’t they usually trend a bit Republican? It *is* astounding that Kloppenberg would have claimed victory so quickly on a 200-vote lead. Perhaps she was merely trying to drive The Narrative. And perhaps, when your beliefs/wishes tell you that The Narrative trumps reality, The Narrative is all – then you may be prone to delusional outbursts, or slow to grasp facts.

  30. Hi ILC,
    “It *is* astounding that Kloppenberg would have claimed victory so quickly on a 200-vote lead.”
    Why? Politicians of both colours do this all the time–I vaguely remember Minnesota and Alaskan senators, a a presidential election where something similar went down…

  31. Why?

    Because we have this system, Cas, where *the votes are real, and you actually have to count them* to determine who the winner is. The votes decide; not the politician’s announcement of victory, nor the media’s. I think we call it “democracy” or something.

    I vaguely remember… a presidential election where something similar went down…

    Then you remember wrong, Cas.

    In the 2000 election, Bush did not declare victory until December 13. December 13! You can see his speech here, if you want: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush2000victoryspeech.htm

    The media may have declared him the victor sooner, but that’s not his fault. Also, the real story was that they tried to declare Gore the winner. Perhaps the following account from Wikipedia will help to correct your memory:

    At approximately 7:50 p.m. EST on election day, 10 minutes before the polls closed in the largely Republican Florida panhandle, which is in the Central time zone, some television news networks declared that Gore had carried Florida’s 25 electoral votes. They based this prediction substantially on exit polls. However, in the actual vote tally Bush began to take a wide lead early in Florida, and by 10 p.m. EST those networks had retracted that prediction and placed Florida back into the “undecided” column. At approximately 2:30 a.m., with some 85% of the votes counted in Florida and Bush leading Gore by more than 100,000 votes, the networks declared that Bush had carried Florida and therefore had been elected President. However, most of the remaining votes to be counted in Florida were located in three heavily Democratic counties – Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach – and as their votes were reported Gore began to gain on Bush. By 4:30 a.m., after all votes were counted, Gore had narrowed Bush’s margin to just over 2,000 votes, and the networks retracted their predictions that Bush had won Florida and the presidency. Gore, who had privately conceded the election to Bush, withdrew his concession. The final result in Florida was slim enough to require a mandatory recount (by machine) under state law; Bush’s lead had dwindled to about 300 votes by the time it was completed later that week. A count of overseas military ballots later boosted his margin to about 900 votes…

  32. BTW, the idea that Bush and FOXNEWS!!! declared his victory early, in cahoots together to push The Narrative his way – The Narrative having, you see, a magical power to alter reality (at least in the minds of left-wingers) – was a myth promoted heavily by … that dirtbag waste-of-oxygen mentioned previously at comments #10 and #14.

  33. Finally: Kloppenberg, in particular, is supposed to be a justice, not a politician. I.e., someone who cares about facts and procedures: being slow and deliberate with them, *not pre-judging* matters. “Supposed to be.”

  34. Each paid staffer sported telephone headsets, while working at a computer in separate cubicles. By contrast, I had just come from spending the afternoon phone banking with other volunteers for the Republican tickets. We used cheap cell phones, lacked headsets, had no computer monitors and worked off printouts.

    In my time, I’ve done “cold calling” as a temp, working both with automated systems where the computer does the dialing for the script-reading schlub in the headset, with phone numbers auto-pulled from an existing database, and with manual systems where you’re punching in the numbers yourself, working from a printout.

    And without question, I found the manual approach to be much easier on the poor sucker who’s doing the cold-calls, because despite the minor nuisance of punching in the digits manually (instead of just hitting “Tab” to advance to the Tel. field in the database table), the pace is set by the caller rather than the computer, so you could take a breath and also rehearse your spiel in between calls.

    Of course, with the manual system there are going to be fewer outgoing calls placed per workstation per hour. However, I suspect this may be offset significantly by the fact that the automatic systems produce the characteristic two-second delay between the time the phone is picked up and the time that a live connection is established between the person calling and the person being called. (“Yes, hello? [silence] Hello?!” [more silence] — “Hi, good evening, is this Mr. or Mrs… uh… Mack-Jee?”) Thus, the automatic system is likely to result in more instant hang-ups than the manual system.

    (I’m just mentioning all this because of the irony that a union-bankrolled call effort would be using the automated Veal Pen approach!)

  35. Kloppenberg’s ill-advised, possibly illegitimate rush to declare victory on a margin of 200 votes contrasts all the more poorly with Prosser’s classy way of handling things:

    April 8, 2011 7:19 a.m.

    Madison – Justice David Prosser appeared on Fox News Thursday night and told host Greta Van Sustern, “I’m not conceding, and I’m not congratulating. And I’m not claiming victory.”

    “We’re simply waiting out the process,” Prosser added.

    Prosser gained 7,582 votes over challenger JoAnne Kloppenberg after a canvass of votes in Waukesha County.

    Prosser also continued to make the case that the state Supreme Court race “should not be a referendum” on Gov. Scott Walker “or any piece of legislation that may end up in the court.”

    “Some people have insisted that it was,” he said. “And they take either comfort or displeasure in what they see as the ever changing results of the election.”

  36. Hi ILC,
    You are right, and I was faulty in my memory of things–thanks for the correction.
    “Because we have this system, Cas, where *the votes are real, and you actually have to count them* to determine who the winner is.”
    Not to rehash the 2000 election result, but again, I remember a whole lot of aggravation about votes that were not re-counted, stopped/hindered by various actors including the Supreme Court, so, although I sympathize with your claim, it ran into a real life buzz-saw. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000; http://www.uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/ARTICLES/pe2000timeline.php

  37. Wrong again, Hi Cas. The votes in Florida were counted.

    They just weren’t re-counted, and re-counted, and re-counted again, until finally the count came out the way you (and at the time, I) wanted.

    This could go on a long time, if you’re after that.

  38. Hi ILC,
    “Wrong again, Hi Cas. The votes in Florida were counted.
    They just weren’t re-counted,”

    You need to read my post more carefully:
    “I remember a whole lot of aggravation about votes that were not re-counted,”

  39. Under the recounts requested by Gore, AND under those ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, AND under several (but not all) possible state-wide recount standards that would have made sense but that Gore was never interested in despite his talk of “counting all votes”, Bush still would have won:
    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html
    http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/when_the_votes_were_recounted_in_florida.html

    There’s your buzzsaw of reality, Hi Cas. And that’s even with the known discouragement of Florida panhandle voting (noted in the Wiki extract above; Republican-leaning), and the well-known efforts to have felons (Democrat-leaning) kept on the voter rolls while excluding many absentee ballots of Florida’s overseas military personnel (Republican-leaning): http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2008/05/27/election-2000-media-continue-downplay-fls-military-ballots-controversy

    At this point, Hi Cas, you could try to fall back on the butterfly ballot (put in place by Democrat county officials), blah blah blah. But you know what? I’ll probably drop out after this, having made my point.

  40. ILC,
    You raise an interesting point, but it is different to the original point of “recount”. By all means drop this, but it is OK to say that you misread my post, honestly.

    As for: “Bush still would have won:”
    Who knows. You mention stats, you could be right, being hypothetical and all; then of course there is this:

    “Ultimately, the Media Consortium hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago[52] to examine 175,010 ballots that were collected from the entire state not just the disputed counties that were discounted; these ballots contained under-votes (votes with no choice made for president) and over-votes (votes made with more than one choice marked). Their goal was to determine the reliability and accuracy of the systems used for the voting process. The NORC concluded that if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots statewide in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 107-115 votes.”

  41. Slight correction – In the November election, Bush declared victory on Nov. 26 – upon receiving the formal certification from the State of Florida that he won there: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2000/11/27/bush-declares-victory-as-gore-challenges/

    My points stand:
    – That it took weeks for Bush to declare victory. The notion that he had somehow rushed to declare victory (to force the process or something) is just another left-wing myth.
    – That for “Justice” Kloppenberg to have declared victory on a lead of 200 votes out of 1.5 million cast, after a day with no State certification to back her up, is surprising and blameworthy enough to call her judicial character into question.

  43. Prosser has got this in the bag. Now it’s just a matter of making his life hell and keeping the anit-Walker crew fired up for the recall races…The next couple on months will be very interesting here in Wisconsin. I think Kapanke (sp) is going down though…more’s the pitty