No Runny Eggs

(H/T – Owen)

On Thursday, via a secret ballot and with no public meeting, the Committee on Assembly Organization unanimously made several changes to the per-diem and mileage reimbursement system for the Assembly. The media reporting of this, both traditional and new, has been a bit of a hash, with no one source having the entire story, so allow me to summarize everything that is known:

• The per-diem for Assembly members who set up a temporary residence in Madison (e.g., stay at a hotel overnight) has been raised from $88 per day, where it has been since 2001 to $137.70 (incorrectly reported in most reports as $138) per day. That raise is in accordance with state law also passed in 2001 setting the maximum per diem at 90% of the federal per diem for federal employees traveling to Madison, which the $88/night was at least close to at the time.
• The per-diem for Assembly members who do not set up a temporary residence in Madison, including by rule all those who live in Dane County, has been raised from $44 per day to $68.85 per day (half that of those who do set up a temporary residence).
• Instead of receiving mileage compensation for one round trip to the Capitol per week, those living at least 25 miles from the Capitol will receive mileage compensation for two round trips per week, while those living within 25 miles of the Capitol will receive none.
• Instead of receiving a per diem for every weekday spent in Madison on official business, and every weekend day spent in Madison when either the Legislature is in session or a committee a legislator is a part of is in session, Assembly members will receive only either a maximum of two “day-trip” per diems or one “overnight” per diem per week when in Madison on official business.

I do appreciate that the hotels that offer special “legislator” rates in an attempt to allow the $88/night “overnight” per diem to be close to break-even may well be losing money in doing so, and that even with said special rates, it isn’t quite enough to cover anything more than staying at a somewhat-remote Motel 6 and eating McDonald’s food. I even applaud the slight modernization of the mileage reimbursement, especially because it is rather easy to commute from, say, Milwaukee on a normal legislative day (though the all-night sessions do put a crimp in that plan).

However, I do have a couple of issues with the new system. First, even though Speaker Robin Vos, chair of the organization committee, did eventually say that every member of the committee voted for the new rule, the fact that it was a secret ballot and not conducted as part of a public meeting of the committee is quite troubling.

Second, the “day-trip” per diem, even though it is still at the traditional half of the “overnight” per diem, is incredibly high. As Captain Ned points out in the comments at Boots and Sabers, the federal per diem for meals in Madison is only $56 per day. To be within the spirit of the law, the “day-trip” per diem should be $50.40 per day. Owen points out in said comments that many private companies have per-meal per diems, and gave an example of $10 per breakfast, $15 per lunch and $25 per dinner (which conveniently adds up to $50 for the three meals).

Still, that last item, which I only saw covered by the Wisconsin State Journal (which is why I linked to their story) and mentioned in Owen’s excerpt of same, is quite positive. In fact, that hard cap of $137.70 per representative per week should prove to be a money-saver, even with a second round trip to the Capitol per week being reimbursed.

Mark Belling pointed out something astonishing earlier this afternoon – every Demcorat nominee for governor since 1964 has run from either the city of Milwaukee or Dane County. It turns out the Milwaukee/Madison wings have had an even stronger stranglehold on the Democrat US Senator nominee. Since Francis Ryan Duffy (D-Fond du Lac) lost his re-election bid in 1938, every candidate has called Milwaukee, Madison or Madison’s suburbs home during their campaigns and, for the successful, their tenures:

1944 – Howard McMurray (D-Milwaukee), lost
1946 – McMurray, lost
1950 – Thomas Fairchild (D-Verona), lost
1952 – Fairchild, lost (and returned to his regular home of Milwaukee after the 1952 election)
1956 – Henry Maier (D-Milwaukee), lost
1957 – William Proxmire (D-Madison), won a special election
1962 – Gaylord Nelson (D-Madison), won (yes, he was originally from Clear Lake, but he called Madison his Wisconsin home throughout his tenure as Senator)
1964 – Proxmire, won
1968 – Nelson, won
1970 – Proxmire, won
1974 – Nelson, won
1976 – Proxmire, won
1980 – Nelson, lost
1982 – Proxmire, won
1986 – Ed Garvey (D-Madison), lost
1988 – Herb Kohl (D-Milwaukee), won
1992 – Russ Feingold (D-Middleton), won (yes, he was originally from Janesville, but he called Middleton his Wisconsin home throughout his tenure as Senator)
1994 – Kohl, won
1998 – Feingold, won
2000 – Kohl, won
2004 – Feingold, won
2006 – Kohl, won
2010 – Feingold, lost
2012 – Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison), won

What are the odds that the only person left on the DPW bench, state senator Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse), or the one-time hope of the “moderate” Democrats, Rep. Ron Kind (D-La Crosse), will be either the next Democrat gubernatorial candidate or the next Democrat US Senate candidate? Even though Shilling IS the DPW bench, would fit nicely in Round 3 of Teh War On Wymynz!!1!!!EleVeNTy!~!@ scheduled for 2016, and was deftly maneuvered to the Senate Dem leader position to give her “experience” by Chris “Puppet Master” Larson (D-Milwaukee), I’d bet against her if doing so wouldn’t disqualify me from voting. For similar reasons, plus the fact that he has turned down the chance at a “promotion” from the House of Representatives multiple times, I’d bet against Kind as well if doing so didn’t disqualify me from voting.

I did say when I came back that I would be writing in more places. One of those is RightWisconsin, a venture started up early this year by Charlie Sykes. I sent my analysis of the latest Marquette Law School’s poll over there, and it hit the digital press early this morning.

One item I did not include was an analysis of the shocking reversal of opinion on gay “marriage”. Less than 7 years after Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment reserving marriage to one-man/one-woman couples in an electorate the exit polls said had a built-in 4-point advantage for Democrats, a majority now say that gay couples should be recognized as “married” by the state.

Even though the half of the sample that was asked this, as well as abortion on demand, citizenship for illegal aliens and pot, was skewed even more-heavily Democrat than the half that was asked their opinion of Sen. Ron Johnson (with a D/R/I of 35.0% D/23.0% R/37.5% I), that radical undersampling of Republicans, one not seen even in 2008, did not matter – the liberal position on all of those issues would have carried the day even with the “natural” D+2.4 advantage.

I really should have done this sooner, but you have, as of this writing, a bit less than 12 hours to vote if you are in South Milwaukee, Oak Creek, or the half-mile wide strip of Franklin between Central and Drexel. Because former Assemblyman Mark Honadel resigned to return to the private sector, there are 5 people running for the Republican nomination for his seat – Jason Red Arnold, Larry Gamble, Ken Gehl, Chris Kujawa, and Jessie Rodriguez. Each of them would be better than the singular Democrat candidate put out there, Elizabeth Coppola, but as always, the primaries are the time of choosing the direction of the Not-Democrat candidate.

I honestly know nothing, other than the videos he put out there and his campaign website, about Arnold. Worse, for the most part, he’s running an issue-free campaign, which in the absense of prior knowledge of his stands on the issues is a red flag. What little there is out there does mitigate against the red flag.

Gamble’s reputation with the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty precedes him. In many ways, he’s a more-fleshed-out version of Arnold, with an emphasis on shrinking government.

Gehl’s greatest strength is that he is a good at “retail politics”. He was the only person who actually caught me at home, though a couple others left flyers on my door. Unfortunately, the politics part of that is his greatest weakness – his major differentiation from the other 4 candidates is that he promises to bring more state money into the district. Though state general finances are pretty close to healthy, half of all state spending is financed by a federal government that is anything but healthy.

Kujawa is the closest thing to Honadel in this race. Indeed, his relationship with Gov. Scott Walker goes back to Walker’s days as county executive.

Rodriguez is starting to grow from being just a school-choice advocate. That growth is in a small-government direction.

So, who did I vote for? I’ll need a couple beers for you to find out.

In the proverbial case of a flashing VCR being right exactly once a year, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (via the Captial Times) looked through the electronic versions of campaign finance records for the 6 current Justices who raised enough money to be required to file their campaign contribution records electonically to try to determine who was most-influenced by donations from lawyers with immediate business before the Court. That look excludes Justice Patrick Crooks as he did not raise enough money in his 2006 unopposed election bid. Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson was easily the biggest recipient of the current Court members of campaign contributions from “donor attorneys” appearing to seek influence on cases they had before the Court at the time of donation, pulling in $188,650 from “donor lawyers” between July 2002 and June 2013. That was well ahead of second-place Justice Annette Ziegler’s $8,300.

Notably, Abrahamson was more likely to side with “donor attorneys” when they gave her campaign more money – while she sided with donors 58% of the time overall, “big-money” donors who gave her at least $1,500 just before or just after their cases were heard won her support 71% of the time.

Meanwhile, the Left’s favorite whipping boy, Justice Michael Gabelman, who took in $2,350 from “donor attorneys”, sided with them twice in four cases. That amount is just over half of what just one attorney who appeared to rent-seek from Abrahamson donated to his opponent, then-Justice Louis Butler.

The only current Justice, other than the unchecked Crooks, who took in less than Gabelman was Justice David Prosser, who received $225 from “donor attorneys”. While the WCIJ didn’t note this, his campaign was the only one hamstrung by the since-eliminated limits on fundraising and spending on judicial campaigns imposed right after Abrahamson won re-election.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be using CoverItLive as they’re transitioning to an almost-mandatory monthly fee starting in July, but as long as they’re still available, let’s roll. Besides, I need the practice again.

The debate will be at 9 pm, hosted by WISN-TV, so tune in to that, find it on your TV dial if you’re not in southeast Wisconsin, or mash here for a livestream from WISN-TV. Come on and chime in in the CiL iframe below:

While it appears that Governor Scott Walker will walk away with a relatively-easy victory come Tuesday, June 5 in his recall, things are quite a bit tighter, both in polls and in money, in the recall election between Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch and Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin president Mahlon Mitchell. I have focused on this “undercard” before, but allow me to reiterate the point now as part of the day-long fundraising drive launched by Dana Loesch, Michelle Malkin, and Teri Christoph. Donate here.

In a normal election cycle, once the separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor are held, the winners of the same party run on a unified ticket, complete with shared campaign finances. However, due to the unique nature of the recall elections, the governor’s recall and lieutenant governor’s recall are entirely different elections. One of the consequences is Kleefisch’s campaign doesn’t have access to the millions of dollars raised by Walker.

Kleefisch has done yeoman’s (or should that be yeowoman’s) work being what she promised during the 2010 lieutenant governor’s primary campaign – be an saleswoman of Wisconsin to businesses. In addition to the well-publicized “cold calls” to out-of-state businesses to try to get them to relocate to Wisconsin, she launched the Small Business Roundtable to get input from small businesses across Wisconsin on how to improve the business climate.

What are the consequences of a split decision on June 5? Let’s first start out with the “minor” detail pointed out by WDJT-TV. Whenever Walker departs Wisconsin, the lieutenant governor constitutionally assumes the duties of the office, including the power to issue executive orders.

Considering that Mitchell, in his capacity as president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, signed letters demanding public opposition to what became Act 10 upon threat of public boycott to M&I Bank (then the largest Wisconsin-based bank) and Kwik Trip (the largest Wisconsin-based convenience store chain), one can only guess what kind of executive orders he would issue if given a chance.

That split decision would also put Mitchell a heartbeat, or a felony criminal conviction on a trumped-up charge, away from the governor’s office. If you are doubting that the Left using the criminal court system as their last stab from Hell’s heart is possible, I present today’s column from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice, who has served as the press organ of a very-leaky 2-year-long “John Doe” fishing expediti…er, investigation by Democrat Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s office headed by an investigator who has a Recall Walker sign in his yard (blamed on his wife) and a history of donating to pro-union Democrats. Bice’s sources are insinuating that a potential relocation of the offices of Milwaukee County’s Department on Aging to a location a longtime Walker political adviser was representing while Walker was Milwaukee County Executive could be “bid-rigging”.

A Mitchell win, even if the other 5 recalls fall short, would be an unequivocal win for the unionistas. Don’t let that happen. Donate to Kleefisch’s campaign, and if you are a Wisconsin resident, remember to vote for her (and Walker) in the recall election on June 5.

In case you missed the toplines from yesterday, I’ll restate them quickly:

• Governor Scott Walker crushed “protest ‘Republican'” candidate (and semi-pro protestor) Arthur Kohl-Riggs 626,538-19,920 in the Republican gubernatorial recall primary.
• In the Democrat gubernatorial recall primary, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett easily outpaced former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk, state Senator Kathleen Vinehout, secretary of state Doug La Follette, and “protest ‘Democrat'” candidate Gladys Huber 390,109-228,940-26,926-19,461-4,842.
• Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin president Mahlon Mitchell won the Democrat lieutenant governor primary, beating “protest ‘Democrat'” Issac Weix and private investigator Ira Robbins 384,208-192,207-159,762. There was only a Democrat recall primary for lieutenant governor.
• “Real” Democrats Lori Compas, former state Senator John Lehman, Kristen Dexter, and state Representative Donna Seidel easily bested the “protest ‘Democrats'” to earn the right to take on (respectively) Republican state Senators Scott Fitzgerald, Van Wanggaard and Terry Moulton and state Representative Jerry Petrowski (who was the only Republican to file to replace retired state Senator Pam Galloway). Much like the lieutenant governor race, there were only Democrat recall primaries, all triggered by the presence of “protest ‘Democrats'”.

Let’s dig a bit beyond the raw numbers:

Governor’s race:

As noted by Allahpundit last night and Ed Morrissey this morning, Walker got more votes than the two major Democrat candidates, and came close to equaling all five of the Democrats (including Kohl-Riggs). How odd is this? Let Christian Schneider explain:

A bit of context: Traditionally, vote totals in contested primaries vastly exceed vote totals in corresponding primaries that are essentially uncontested. Take, for instance, the 2010 gubernatorial election, when Walker faced off against former congressman Mark Neumann, and Barrett ran for his party’s nomination essentially unopposed. Over 618,000 people voted in the GOP primary, while only 236,000 voters cast ballots in the Dem primary, where there was nothing at stake. That same year, Ron Johnson ran in a U.S. Senate GOP primary against several other candidates, while incumbent Russ Feingold was unopposed. The GOP primary drew 596,000 voters, while Feingold garnered only 224,000 votes. The Republican gubernatorial and Senate primaries drew 263 percent and 266 percent more voters, respectively, than the Democrats.

The same effect traditionally occurs for Democratic primaries. In 2002, a Democratic gubernatorial primary featuring, coincidentally, Tom Barrett, Kathleen Falk, and eventual winner Jim Doyle, drew 554,000 votes. Incumbent Republican governor Scott McCallum, running virtually unopposed, saw 230,000 votes in his primary — giving Democrats a 241 percent vote advantage.

This came despite the only effort to get the Walker vote out coming from talk radio, and at least some efforts at something resembling what Rush Limbaugh once termed Operation Chaos. Unlike the typical partisan primary, the only prohibition against participating in multiple partyies’ primaries was against participating in multiple parties’ primaries for the same office. Indeed, there were two mentions that one could only vote for one candidate per office for each of the offices on the ballot instead of the usual one.

On the Democrat side, Barrett’s win was essentially inevitable once Public Policy Polling and Daily Kos released polls taken in mid-April that had him well ahead of the early union favorite, Falk. Even with that said, there was a giant surprise – Barrett carried Falk’s home county, Dane, where she was county executive for 14 years before retiring in 2011, by 31 percentage points. In addition to the fact that Falk was the only Democrat in the country to lose a contested “major” statewide or Congressional office held by Democrats in the 2006 election (Wisconsin attorney general), the folks at the Republican Party of Dane County offered up another reason – she barely survived a debacle in the Dane County 911 Center that was a key miss that led to the murder of a UW student.

Given that almost 901,000 recall signatures were certified by the Government Accountability Board against Walker, the weak total rung up by the Democrats has to be disappointing. The total 1.32 million turnout, on the other hand, was significantly over the 1.08 million who turned out for the Presidential primaries in April (785,167 on the Republican side) and nearly 61% of the 2.16 million who voted for governor in 2010.

Senate races:

We haven’t had a poll with a fresher sample than the Public Policy Polling/Daily Kos poll in mid-April that had all the Republicans except Wanggaard with double-digit leads over the “real” Democrats and Wanggaard up by 2 points, though there was a Myers Research/Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee poll taken in late March/early April (2 weeks prior to the PPP/DKos) poll released afterward that had Wanggaard losing and Moulton and Petrowski with single-digit leads. Compas and Lehman (who will be going against Fitzgerald and Wanggaard respectively) received more votes than recall signatures against their opponents, while Dexter and Seidel received fewer votes than recall signatures against their opponents. That metric suggests Wanggaard and Fitzgerald, the latter with a Libertarian challenger as well as a Democrat, could be in for a long night on June 5.

Lieutenant Governor’s race:

The thing that just struck me was that the 758,070 people who voted in the statewide “undercard”, with only minimal advertising by Mitchell, was roughly 90,000 more than those who voted in the Democrat gubernatorial primary, where millions were spent by both Barrett’s and Falk’s camps, and roughly 70,000 more than everybody who voted for somebody other than Walker in the gubernatorial primaries. That. Just. Does. Not. Happen. (until now, that is).

Even so, only 561,018 voted for the two “real Democrat” candidates, over 104,000 fewer than those who voted for the “real Democrats” in the Democrat gubernatorial primary, and over 124,000 fewer than those who voted for said “real Democrats” and the “protest ‘Republican'”. Again, that was significantly fewer than the nearly 809,000 who signed recall petitions against lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch, who like the Republican Senators (and Petrowski), was not in a primary as she was the only Republican who qualified.

The crossover factor:

That brings me to what factor, if any, the potential for crossover had on the Democrat gubernatorial primary. As most of those who did so likely would have voted for Falk as the “weaker” candidate, it obviously was not successful in keeping Barrett from winning. However, that is not to say that it was not significant, even though there were no exit polls to check this against.

James Wigderson used one way to calculate the maximum potential crossover, using heavily-Republican Waukesha and Washington Counties. Allow me to use a second method. The four “real” Democrat gubernatorial candidates garnered 665,436 votes, 104,418 votes more than the two “real” Democrat lieutenant governor candidates garnered.

The last Marquette Law School poll said that roughly 17% of the potential voters in the Democrat gubernatorial primary would actually be Republicans. The 0.7% of the Democrat primary vote Huber received is almost entirely “crossover”. If all 104,418 who voted for a “real” Democrat in the gubernatorial primary but didn’t vote for one in the lieutenant governor primary were Republican crossovers, that would be another 15.6%. Add the two together and the 16.3% crossover would be right in the ballpark.

However, there is a complication. On my paper “complete the line” ballot here in southern suburban Milwaukee County, and on the sample paper ballots in the parts of Racine County where there was a Senate primary, both the Republican and Democrat gubernatorial primaries were in one column, while the Democrat lieutanant governor primary (and in the 4 Senate districts where there was a recall, the Democrat Senate primaries) were on a second column. It is reasonable to believe that at least some people didn’t realize this.

With that said, I strongly doubt that much more than 50,000 people who voted for a “real” Democrat in the gubernatorial primary would either “forget” there was also a Democrat lieutenant governor primary or somehow vote for the one “protest ‘Democrat'”. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll estimate that only 50,000 Republicans decided to meddle by voting for a “real” Democrat in the gubernatorial primary, and will return “home” to vote for Walker come June 5.

That sort of destroys the meme that the Democrats got more votes than Walker. Add that 50,000, and the 4,842 that Huber got, to Walker’s total, and subtract that 50,000 from the Democrats’ (including Kohl-Riggs’) total to wipe out the effects of crossover, and the Republicans likely outvoted the Democrats roughly 681,000-635,000, or 51.7%-48.3%.

Addenda:

To complete Ed’s thought on how bad a night it was for the unions, the Democrats and the public unions had planned on having all the candidates get together with them in Madison today. However, Barrett nixed that idea on Monday, and while the unions are rallying in Madison, the candidates are meeting at his home in Milwaukee.

There is one more recall potentially coming down the pike. Some of the residents of Democrat state Senator Bob Jauch’s far-northwest district got mad enough over his vote to kill a mining bill that would have brought a rather signnificant number of lead mining jobs to the district to launch a recall effort against him on March 19. They have until May 18 to turn in 15,270 signatures. A story posted today by the Barron News-Shield quoted recall organizer Shirl LaBarre, “All I can say is that I’ve put my heart and soul into (the effort).”

The Government Accountability Board will meet at 9 am tomorrow to set the ballot for all six recall elections (for governor, lieutenant governor and four state Senate seats). The staff has recommended that the Board reject the Democrat Party of Wisconsin’s attempt to toss the 6 “protest candidates” the Republican Party of Wisconsin recruited to run as “Democrats” to ensure all 6 recall elections have a May 8 primary and a June 5 general election. From the GAB staff’s analysis (notably completed before the GAB received the RPW response):

Based upon the public statements of the RPW and the protest candidates, as well as literature they have distributed, there is no material dispute regarding the facts related to the challenges, or that the intent of the RPW and the protest candidates is to require all recall elections to take place on June 5, 2012, presumably to benefit the campaigns of the Republican incumbents. The legal dispute is whether Wisconsin Statutes prohibit or penalize such tactics by disqualifying those candidates from having their names included on the election ballot.

In general, Wisconsin election laws do not require an individual to be a member of a political party to seek that party’s nomination in a primary election. The law also does not permit the Board to inquire into the motivations for an individual’s candidacy for office, an exercise which would inevitably lead to the Board, as a government agency, making subjective judements regarding the legitimacy of political candidacies, which would implicate the most protected forms of First Amendments rights of freedom of speech and association. Depending upon one’s political perspective, the statements and actions of the protest candidates may be viewed as justified, clever, micshievous, or misleading. But Board staff cannot determine that they are illegal. They are products of political calculation and decision-making, and as such they can be rewarded or rejected during the course of the campaigns and elections. The purpose of elections is for voters to pass judgement on the ideas and positions of the candidates as they are debated in the crucible of the campaign.

As further outlined below, Board staff concludes that Wisconsin law does not permit the Board to deny ballot access to the protest candidates.

The Board staff went on to explain that neither the existence of an entry line for a political party on the Campaign Registration Statement form nor the existence of same on the Declaration of Candidacy form is required by state statute. Indeed, the staff concluded that portion of the memo thusly:

As stated above, nominees who claim to represent a political party are determined by the candidates and their supporters, not by party officials or government filing officers. Candidates seeking to participate in a primary of one of the parties are not required to prove that they are members of that party or that they have the support of party members or leadership. A candidate may certainly, without interference from the government, be nominated and campaign as a candidate of a party while disavowing any of hte official or stated positions of the party, or may change their stated positions between the time of circulating nomination papers and the election, or even after their election. For these reasons, Board staff believes that the protest candidates have substantially complied with the requirement to complete and file a declaration of candidacy, and the Board does not have the authority to look beyond the document to judge the political motivation or strategy of a candidacy.

Further, the staff held that the nomination papers do not include any requirement that the candidate claim to “have or demonstrate any formal tie to or membership in the political party” listed on the paper, that neither the circulators nor the signers are required to agree with the positions or principles of the named political party, and that no evidence was presented of any individual signer of the nomination papers were “misled” into signing the nomination papers of the protest candidates, much less a sufficient number to knock any of them off the ballot.

Related to that, semi-pro union protestor Arthur Kohl-Riggs will (likely) appear on the Republican governor primary ballot against Scott Walker as he gathered enough nomination signatures. In a normal partisan primary election, participating in the Republican governor primary would prohibit one from voting for Democrats elsewhere on the primary ballot. While that is still true in the governor recall primary cycle (e.g., one cannot vote for both Scott Walker and Kathleen Falk), GAB spokesman Reid Magney has confirmed that since these recall elections are separate entities, one can vote in the Republican governor recall primary and in the Democratic lieutenant governor recall primary and (if in one of the 4 Senate districts where there is a recall), that Democratic recall primary.

One more item of note – a Public Policy Polling poll for DailyKos has Walker up by between 5 percentage points (against Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett), 7 points (against former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk) and 12 points (against state Senator Kathleen Vinehout) among likely voters, reaching at least 50% against all 4 Democrats. In the same poll, Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch is up 46%-40% on Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin president Mahlon Mitchell. The partisan split of that poll was 37% independent, 32% Republican and 31% Democrat, which roughly mirrors recent Rasmussen Reports likely-voter partisan splits in Wisconsin.

I had not expected the opportunity to interview Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch at Saturday’s Defending the American Dream summit held by Americans for Prosperity, so I went into the interview completely cold. Fortunately, Kleefisch is an ex-TV reporter, so I don’t think it turned out too badly, at least in content.

Before I get to the highlights (full, if a bit scratchy, audio here), I do have to point you to today’s column from Michelle Malkin, who was also at the summit. She hit on one of the themes she did on Saturday – how the War on (Conservative) Women and the War on Wisconsin converged:

The outlook for the unhinged Left’s secondary targets, however, is not so bright. Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, a tea party candidate who is not part of the GOP establishment, is being treated as collateral damage by the party. Outside of Wisconsin, most conservative activists are not even aware that she may be booted from office for simply doing her job. Kleefisch told me that on a recent fundraising swing in D.C., national GOP leaders were shocked to learn of her plight.

While Democratic femme-a-gogues continue their plaintive wailing about a “war on women,” Kleefisch has battled vile misogyny from liberal detractors. When lefty Wisconsin radio host John “Sly” Sylvester accused Kleefisch of performing “fellatio on all the talk-show hosts in Milwaukee” and sneered that she had “pulled a train” (a crude phrase for gang sex), feminists remained silent. A former television anchor, small businesswoman and mother of two, Kleefisch’s quiet work on economic development has reaped untold dividends for the state. But if conservatives who preach the gospel of fiscal conservatism do not act, the profligate progressives’ vendetta against Wisconsin may result in the first-ever recall of a lieutenant governor in American history.

My own interview did not touch on the misogynic aspect of the unionistas’ hate of Kleefisch, but we discussed the economy, as she has been an integral part of the effort to get business to locate and expand in Wisconsin, and the recall.

On the economy, which after a good start and a mid-year stall, is moving forward again with the best projected growth in 9 years – “The governor said, from the very beginning, that I was going to be the jobs ambassador, travel the state, having small-business round-tables, talk to our small-business owners, find out what’s working, what’s not, and how we can get government out of their way. We have made great strides towards making sure that we’re correcting the things that aren’t working, enhancing the things that are working, and reviewing great ways to get out of their way.

“Now, Moody’s rated our budget credit-positive. That is a signal to job creators everywhere that we’re headed in the right direction, that we’re putting certainty and stability back on the Wisconsin commerce map…. You compare that to Illinois, where Moody’s has them now scraping the bottom of the bucket. I mean, they’re worse than California, which is tough to do, and you have Governor Pat Quinn actually saying he is encouraged that one of the big three downgraded that badly. That is like saying you’re encouraged your kid is failing all of his classes but got kicked out of only one….

“For those folks who were expecting us to reach 250,000 new jobs in a year and a couple of months, that’s not exactly what we said. We said that we had hoped to reach 250,000 new jobs in our private sector in 4 years. That’s still what we hope for. Just because a goal is ambitious, that doesn’t mean you stop striving for it. We knew those numbers would be back-loaded. We’re starting to feel the hope and we’re starting to feel a genuine recovery. 94% of our job creators in this state say they believe Wisconsin is headed in the right direction, but a majority of job creators also concerned by this recall situation.”

On the recall situation – “I think that this recall is something that people are frustrated with because we have seen a non-stop electoral churn in the last year and a half. We were elected in 2010 by the vast majority of Wisconsinites, who expected they had just elected us to a 4-year term…. People are irritated with the non-stop political ads, and they’re frustrated that we don’t have two sides working together on the most-important thing, the biggest challenge facing Wisconsin – jobs. We just saw in the last couple of weeks the biggest jobs bill that Wisconsin has seen in decades go down because of politics. That type of stuff irritates people, and you know what, it should….”

Malkin asked, “What message would it send to young tea party moms across the country if Walker survived but Kleefisch was hung out to dry? Will Beltway Republican strategists and donors who constantly harp about the need to diversify the party step up to the plate? [Donate to Kleefisch’s defense here.]” We cannot forget the “undercards” of this recall.

Revisions/extensions (4:27 pm 3/28/2012) – Charlie Sykes talked with Rebecca Kleefisch about the recall and the War on (Conservative) Women on today’s show.