In addition to the recall effort against Gov. Scott Walker, four Republican state senators are also facing recall in Wisconsin. After successfully winning two recalls in the summer, Democrats only need one more seat to take control of the chamber.
As of yesterday morning, Democrats are already past the minimum signature requirement in one of the four recall efforts. Dane 101:
As of Sunday morning volunteers for the campaign to recall Sen. Van Wanggaard of the 21st district have collected at least 16,000 petition signatures, more than the 15,500 that would make him eligible for recall. [...]
"We're going all out every single day," said Kelly Gallaher, organizer of the progressive group Communities for Change, a partner organization in the campaign to recall Wanggaard.
The petitions still have to be sent to Madison, where the Democratic Party will weed out duplicates and incomplete signatures and make the count official, Galleher said, but meanwhile the signature thermometer at the volunteer headquarters in Racine was red to the 16,200 mark Sunday morning. [emphasis added]
Wanggaard's district is more Democratic than five of the six seats where Republicans faced recall over the summer. President Obama received 55 percent of the vote here in 2008, while John Kerry edged out George W. Bush by one percent. Further, Wanggaard is a first-term senator who received only 52.52 percent of the vote in 2010.
Given how easy the volunteers on the ground in Wisconsin make it look, it is easy to forget just how rare recalls of state legislators actually are. Coming into 2011, there were only twenty recall elections against state legislators in all of American history, and only thirteen had been successful. This year alone, there have been at least eleven recall elections, including four successful efforts. (The other two successful recalls were against Republicans in Arizona and Michigan.)
What's happening in Wisconsin is truly remarkable. Please, chip in $4 to the Wisconsin Dems to help out.