I know, the election technically isn’t over, and there’s certainly a recount coming. But we know the general outlines of what happened (i.e. really close). I think Koppenburg’s lead is too high to overcome in a recount, but this analysis doesn’t really depend on her winning.
Overall, so I don’t bury the lead, I feel pretty good about what happened, despite the fact that I thought Kloppenburg would win it in a walk because of the heightened interest of Democrats in the race and the Milwaukee and Madison county executive races. But there was a little disappointment for me as well. Anyway, here are my thoughts.
So first, I have to address something that was said by several of the best commentators (including David NYC and DCCyclone) that I think, at best, is a half truth – the idea that its really hard to beat an incumbent judge, and therefore it would be amazing if we even came close in this race. That’s true with the vast majority of judicial races, but only because there’s generally no controversy with those races. Two years ago, Wisconsin ousted a sitting judge, and just last year we saw three Iowa judges on the Supreme Court ousted. This was a race where millions of dollars were spent on behalf of both candidate, and there was such heightned awareness that turnout was almost double what the state predicted. When a judicial election involves some sort of widely publicized controversy, there is much more of a chance at ousting a sitting judge. Had Kloppenburg lost, I would not have bought this line as any excuse for losing.
To get it out of the way, here’s the one piece of bad news. When I made my prediction of a big Kloppenburg win, I was hoping the conditions of 2010 would exist, only in reverse. That is, the Republicans wouldn’t turn out, since it was the Dems energized by the issues, and Repubs, either having gotten what they wanted or unhappy with the final results, would not show up. Sort of a reverse of what we saw with HCR last year. I’m here to tell you I was obviously wrong. Republicans were still pretty energized. They turned out in far higher numbers than I would have predicted, and they were able to outspend the Dems.
But, despite this, I find myself a happy man today: Dems are back. The party faithful are finally energized enough to win a major contested election (albeit a close one) and they did it without the help of a tea party candidate or any other third party. To me, this bodes well for 2012, because I think economic conditions are going to continue getting better, and combine that with the weak Republican presidential field I think we are in good shape. Dems have come a long way in the six months following the 2010 debacle.
Also, Koppenburg (likely) won – which is huge, given the role the Supreme Court will play in helping to turn back Walker’s odious agenda. A win is a win, no matter how close.
What this means for the recall, I can’t say. Someone soon will do the analysis and show which Senators are in districts Prosser won and which were in districts Koppenburg won. I firmly believe the Republicans have already spotted us two seats in the upcoming recall election, so we just need to win one more. Two things these results say to me: Dems should pick targets wisely – no resources should be wasted on the two Republican Senators least likely to be ousted, and we might want to further triage, and we also need to pay attention to any Dems that are being recalled – if they are in Prosser districts, their victories are not assured.
But overall, a pretty good night for Team Blue.
Are the votes in 2007 and 2008 for Wisconsin Supreme Court. In 2007, when Democrats were high from the 2006 election, Ziegler blew Clifford out 59-41. In 2008, the incumbent Judge Butler was supposed to have been a strong incumbent, but still fell when Democrats were sky-high, 51-49. The fact that we won this race at all, where we’re pretty structurally favored against (especially with the big money), against a 20something year incumbent, I think is pretty surprising and gratifying. I did not expect to win this.
I think this bodes quite ill for the senate special elections for the GOP.
eyeing it, it looks like Sheila Harsdorf’s district only voted for Prosser very, very narrowly.
We got the turnout among the groups we need to win the recalls. Turnout among college students, union members, and white liberals in Madison and elsewhere was undoubtedly strong, but the race was close because turnout among minorities in Milwaukee was pretty weak. The problem for Republicans is that in the districts where GOP senators are facing recalls, the Democratic base is much more composed of liberal whites than minorities (with the partial exception of Alberta Darling’s 8th district which contains a few African-American precincts in Milwaukee). The GOP won’t be able to rely on low minority turnout to save their senate majority.
To say that it’s hard to beat an incumbent judge when you get outspent. The forces behind Gabelman and the Iowa ouster – and Prosser – were far, far better equipped than our team was. Big business has very wisely been investing in judicial elections for many years, and as a result, progressives are even more outgunned in this arena than we are in regular elections.
When your a news junkie like we all are, it’s easy to absorb all the free media while soaking up almost none of the paid media. Indeed, even if you’re looking at links to ads that we provide on SSP, we seldom know the size of the buy. And even if we could tell you that, it’s hard to viscerally understand the impact that, say, X amount of ad money has.
But if you’re an average voter in Wisconsin, the situation is reversed. You’re mostly experiencing paid media, and maybe a little to no free media. And in the paid media universe, Prosser was way, way ahead.
In 2010, it looked like the Democrats were done in the rural Midwest with the Wisconsin map looking mostly red while Democrats do well in rural Wisconsin. It appears that the rural areas in Wisconsin are coming back though because the Prosser vs. Kloppenburg map is more blue than the Kerry vs. Bush map despite a really close election. Here’s a map of the Kloppenburg vs. Prosser race that I just colored in. The map of Wisconsin is from US Census quick facts.
Dark blue: K 60% +
Blue: K 55%-59%
Light Blue: K 50.01%-54%
Light Red: P 50.01%-54%
Red: P 55%-59%
Dark Red: P 60%+
More needs to be done in future to get out the inner-city Milwaukee vote; if turnout had been as high among minorities in Milwaukee County as it was among blue-collar Democrats in Dane County, Kloppenburg would have cleared the finish with a few thousand votes to spare at least.
I do think Justice Prosser’s numbers were likely bolstered by the fact that not all voters are willing to vote against an incumbent judge who hasn’t actually done anything unethical or illegal, as well as the fact that it was ostensibly a nonpartisan election. They certainly didn’t track with Gov. Walker’s underwater approvals.
Overall, this was a heavy lift, and I’m impressed with the Democrats’ strength. I don’t know if it’s safe to call Kloppenburg the justice-elect yet, but she does appear to have won the election, and that should really come as some affirmation to Democratic activists around the country.
The good guys are back.
It’s as simple at looking at what is the starting point.
If you’re starting point is that you’re waaaaaay down just a couple months out, you’ve got a very heavy lift. That’s true to some extent in any election, but moreso in judicial races.
Yes Prosser became controversial, that’s true, and it’s why we won. But to think we “should’ve” won by more is unrealistic because, ultimately, Prosser only arguably had a fireable offense.
And this is where the reluctance to fire a judge, as opposed to a legislator or an executive, comes in. Everyone knows a state legislator or a Governor can raise or cut their taxes, bolster or slash their schools and public safety services, regulate everything under the sun, and so on. So there are always more reasons to fire those people. But a judge just doesn’t do much, certainly far less than a legislator or executive, that ordinary voters perceive as directly affecting their lives. So it’s harder to find reasons to fire a judge.
The Iowa judges, there was the ready-made that they legalized gay marriage, which a majority of Iowans (sadly) oppose even in a normal turnout environment, and with last year’s turnout the opposition had to be heavy. Everyone can digest that.
Other times you might have a judge obviously guilty of serious ethical or moral transgressions that ordinary people can understand.
But what did Prosser do? Foul language, an ill temper, friend of Walker, that’s about it. I can easily see a lot of swing voters just shrugging off that stuff. The attack ad about Prosser letting loose a sex offending priest was completely neutralized by, and maybe even backfired as the result of, the response ad featuring a victim defending Prosser and attacking his attackers. No controversial rulings, no corruption.
You’re ultimately right that it came down to turnout, that the GOP turnout showed up. But that’s normal for a special election, Democrats always have to work twice as hard as Republicans.
And another very important factor that has been little mentioned except for one or two comments I’ve seen this week: Kloppenburg ran a poor campaign. One commenter here on the ground in WI reported that a Kloppenburg campaign staffer didn’t know what “GOTV” means, that overall the staff basically didn’t know what they were doing. It was a small operation fit for a sacrificial lamb. And that made perfect sense because a sacrificial lamb is all Kloppenburg was until less than 2 months ago. I don’t know what Prosser did for a campaign, but the guy in his past had been an elected D.A. and state legislator, so he knew the nuts and bolts of a winning campaign.
I echo also what David said in his reply, assuming he’s right that the wingnut groups overwhelmed us in TV ads. I didn’t actually know that, I had not kept track of the ad wars except to believe both sides had ads in heavy rotation.
My bottom line is that we’re going to have an easier time with swing voters in the recalls than we had against Prosser, and yes that’s significantly because it’s harder to convince swing voters to fire a judge because there are simply fewer reasons to do so.
While I’m glad she was elected (maybe) and I think she will do a good job for Wisconsin a year from now I probably won’t remember Kloppenburg’s name. If the Wisco Supreme Court can stop the union busting legislation from becoming law great, but that is a longshot from what I have read. IMHO the greatest value of last night’s election is that it is a horses head in the bed of any elected Republican who is thinking about carrying out a radical anti worker agenda.
What I would be suggesting if I was helping organize for the recalls is to look carefully at the results for the court race and build some of the strategy on that. It can help a lot with giving an idea where GOTV is really needed.
For Democrats and especially the unions. Everything the party stands for was being deimated by the Republicans in WI. Excitement was supposed to be sky high. Republicans were as excited as they would be for an ordinary school budget vote. Unions dumped millions and millions of dollars into the race. There were 300,000 highly-motivated public sector employees running to the polls. Prosser not only is tied to Walker, but also suffers from being gaffe-prone. Democrats had everything to lose and Republicans had not much to gain. Yet the best result that could be mustered was a 50-50 tie. Ouch. Does not bode well for the recalls, 2012, and beyond.