Both sides see victories in hard-fought contests
Democrats won two state Senate seats in Tuesday's historic recall elections, but failed to capture a third seat that would have given them control of the chamber.
By keeping a majority in the Senate, Republicans retained their monopoly on state government because they also hold the Assembly and governor's office. Tuesday's elections narrowed their majority - at least for now - from 19-14 to a razor-thin 17-16.
Republicans may be able to gain back some of the losses next week, when two Democrats face recall elections.
Democrats had hoped to block the Republican agenda by taking control of the Senate in the recall elections, but the GOP should be able to continue to advance its agenda.
"I think it's a huge victory for us," said John Hogan, director of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate. "Voters gave us a mandate last fall. . . . They backed us up again (Tuesday). Voters told us loud and clear, 'Stay the course. Things are working.'"
But Democrats claimed victory for the two seats they captured from Republicans.
"We went on their turf and we won on Republican turf," said Mike Tate, chairman of the state Democratic Party. "We will not stop, we will not rest . . . until we recall (Gov.) Scott Walker."
Republican Sens. Dan Kapanke (R-La Crosse) and Randy Hopper (R-Empire) were both defeated by their Democratic challengers, Rep. Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse) and Democrat Jessica King of Oshkosh.
"I look forward to going to Madison to stand up for the working families, seniors and students of Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, Blackwolf, Waupun and all across the 18th district," King said in a statement. "Their voices will be once again heard."
Three other Republicans held onto their seats, despite aggressive campaigns put up by their Democratic foes and outside groups backed by unions. Surviving the recalls were Republican Sens. Alberta Darling of River Hills, Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls, Luther Olsen of Ripon and Rob Cowles of Allouez.
Darling was declared the winner over Rep. Sandy Pasch (D-Whitefish Bay) late Tuesday.
Democrats called for the recalls after Walker launched his plan to eliminate most collective bargaining for public workers, and Tuesday's races were seen as a preview of a plan to force a recall of Walker next year.
Tuesday's recalls were launched in March, during the turmoil in Madison over Walker's plan, ultimately successful, to curtail collective bargaining by most public employees. Democrats tried to recall Republicans for that vote, while Republicans tried to recall Democrats for leaving the state for three weeks to block a vote on the issue.
Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) was the first to face a recall election, and he easily survived the challenge last month.
Attention now turns to next week's recall elections, against Democratic Sens. Jim Holperin of Conover and Bob Wirch of Pleasant Prairie.
"It's encouraging to see, even though a couple Republicans lost their seats, the recall process holds as a check for those who disrespect their office and not simply do their job and take a vote," said a statement from Holperin's challenger, Kim Simac. "Next week we will recall a senator who was actually derelict in his duty by failing to represent his district when he fled to Illinois."
Turnout levels in Tuesday's elections were substantial, approaching those of last fall's governor's race - a striking testimony to the extreme passions, money and attention these contests have attracted this summer.
In one contest, for the 10th district seat won Tuesday by GOP incumbent Harsdorf, the total vote exceeded that of the race for governor last fall.
Voters were mobilized by massive get-out-the-vote efforts on both sides, and by expensive television and radio advertising campaigns that flooded the airwaves in all six districts. At least five of the elections broke the $3 million spending record, set in 2000, for money spent by all parties in a Senate race.
Expensive campaigns
So far more than $35 million has been spent on the recall races, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks political money. The spending on the nine races dwarfs the $19.3 million spent in last year's 115 legislative races, and approaches the $37.4 million spent in the race for governor.
The flow of money came as unions saw the recall elections as the best way to halt Walker's agenda and to send a message to other states considering changing their collective bargaining laws. Political observers are watching Wisconsin to see what the results say about the mood of the electorate leading up to next year's elections for president and Congress.
Unions played a huge role for Democrats by spending vast sums of money on advertising, and supplying manpower in all the Senate districts. Conservative groups have parried with their own influx of cash.
But the Democrats' argument in the recalls morphed over time from concerns over collective bargaining to objections to a number of GOP initiatives - most notably cuts to education and tax breaks for the wealthy - and the complaint that the changes were pushed through without enough public discussion.
Republicans countered that argument by insisting that voters - who just last November flipped both houses of the Legislature and the governor's office from blue to red - had sent them to Madison to balance the budget and get control of state spending. "Elections have consequences," was the often-repeated slogan.
The wave of recall elections is unparalleled in the nation's history. Before this year, there had been just four recall elections of Wisconsin lawmakers. Two incumbents were recalled, while two survived the efforts. One of those who won his recall election was Holperin, who was in the Assembly in 1990 when a recall effort was launched because of his stance on Indian fishing rights.
Democrats cried foul over returns that came in late from Waukesha County in the Darling-Pasch matchup. Tate, the party official, alleged Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus was "sitting on ballots" and "tampering with the results." Later, though, he said he would not pursue questions of irregularities.
Nickolaus enraged Democrats in April when she discovered votes from Brookfield that helped Supreme Court Justice David Prosser win re-election.
Here's how the races played out:
32nd District: From the beginning of the state Senate recalls that have preoccupied Wisconsin politics for the past five months, Kapanke, 63, had been identified as the Republican most likely to be thrown out of office, and he was Tuesday.
Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) said Shilling's victory was a rebuke to Republicans.
"The people of the 32nd Senate District sent Gov. Walker and his legislative Republicans rubber-stamps a clear message today: they've had enough of the GOP's extreme agenda that favors wealthy special interests and large out-of-state corporations at the expense of Wisconsin's working, middle class families," read a statement Barca issued.
Kapanke's district has been trending increasingly Democratic, including a win by President Barack Obama with 61% of the vote in 2008. .
18th District: Hopper had been considered, with Kapanke, the other most vulnerable of the six Republicans to being defeated.
Voters in his public-employee-heavy district quickly gathered 22,500 signatures to force the recall.
His opponent, lawyer King, had lost by just 163 votes when they faced off for the open seat in 2008. On top of that, Hopper has had to deal with questions about an ugly divorce, where he lives and a state job for his 26-year-old girlfriend.
But Hopper, 45, a radio station owner, said his two years in office had proved that he and Walker have Wisconsin on the right track to fiscal health, and he was confident about his chances.
"It will be close," he said in recent weeks, "but I've always said, 'more important to do my job than keep my job.' "
That turned out to be true. With just three precincts still out, and those in King's home county of Winnebago, she was up by more than 1,100 votes, and the Associated Press called the race for her.
King, 36, a former Oshkosh alderman and deputy mayor, had predicted that the momentum of dissatisfied workers would put her in office.
14th District: Olsen's district came to be considered the Democrats' best chance to pick up a third Republican seat to give them control of the Senate. But Olsen, 60, held on to squeak by his opponent, Rep. Fred Clark (D-Baraboo).
Clark, 52, was the first Democrat Olsen's ever faced in the 16 ½ years he's been in office - an indication of how Republican his district has been over the years.
Still, spending in the race was second only to that in Darling's 8th District, according to the Democracy Campaign, which estimated last week that $5.5 million was spent in total, both by candidates and outside parties.
The largely rural central Wisconsin district stretches from Wisconsin Dells to Waupaca County. It is traditionally considered GOP turf, with Olsen's home of Ripon laying claim as the birthplace of the Republican Party.
Clark's Assembly district is in the southwestern corner of Olsen's Senate district, and until 2008 had been in Republican hands.
Clark and Olsen often told voters during the campaign that they like each other, turning the race into one that pitted a nice guy against a nice guy. In more than a dozen interviews with voters in Portage and Ripon, few were critical of the candidates personally. The voters had clear views on where the two stood and said they planned to vote even though the election was occurring at the height of summer.
8th District: In by far the most expensive recall race, Darling, 67, was the victor in a tight race with Pasch. Mike Tate, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, had called this seat the "crown jewel" of the recalls, because Darling, as co-chairwoman of the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee, had helped push through Walker's budget initiatives.
Darling raised well over $1 million for the race, the all-time record for a state Senate candidate in Wisconsin, and the nonprofit Wisconsin Democracy Campaign last week estimated $7.9 million had been spent by both candidates, plus all outside groups - nearly triple the $3 million record for spending on a state Senate race.
Besides Darling's key legislative role, the campaign was made more expensive by the higher advertising rates in the Milwaukee television market. Pasch, 57, was first elected to the Legislature in 2008.
2nd Senate District: Cowles easily defeated Nancy Nusbaum, the former De Pere mayor and Brown County executive. From the first, Cowles had been considered the GOP senator safest from being defeated. He was the final senator to have recall signatures filed against him, and a recent report by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimated just $750,000 was spent by all parties on both sides of the race - the smallest amount on any of nine Senate districts with recalls.
Nusbaum, 65, argued that Cowles had changed his political spots to fall into line with Walker's conservative agenda, switching from the moderate image Cowles, 61, had cultivated over 28 years in the Legislature. Cowles said he had not changed and was running on his record as a fiscal conservative who had worked in a bipartisan way on such issues as renewable energy and energy conservation.
10th District: Republican Harsdorf easily beat Democratic challenger Shelly Moore.
Early on, Harsdorf had been considered somewhat vulnerable, but lately she'd been seen as well ahead of Moore, who was making her first run for office.
During the campaign, Moore, 37, of River Falls accused Harsdorf, 55, of betraying working families, public employees, students and seniors. Moore is an English teacher at Ellsworth High School and a member of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union..
Emma Roller and Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report
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