I was up til the wee hours of election night (went to bed around 4:30AM). I watched Democrats take the House. Hazzah! Republicans kept the Senate for now, but they’re up against it in 2020 when they’ll be defending the vast majority of seats on the ballot. It was the reverse for Democrats this year, defending the vast majority of seats up for election.
I saw, with great sadness, that Beto wouldn’t be going to the Senate and wondering what Texans could possibly see in Ted Cruz. He’s a man who reminds me more of a troll sitting under a bridge challenging travelers than a United States Senator.
I anticipated that Georgia and Florida would have great Governors, but it’s still not impossible given that the counts haven’t been completed. The shenanigans in Georgia, where the Republican candidate was also the state official in charge of running the election, were sickening. And in Florida, the Republican candidate is also the siting Governor, in charge of the whole state and all of its functions.
I was unhappy that Randy Bryce, an ironworker and fellow activist, wouldn’t replace Paul Ryan in Congress. Instead, we get corporate lawyer and Paul Ryan flunky Bryan Stiel who pretended to be a job creator (despite his history of outsourcing for his corporate clients) and saw tens of millions in brutal, lying attack ads against Randy.
And then there’s arrogant and abusive Glen Grothman from a blood red district just north of here who’s also returning. You might know him as the guy from Wisconsin (of all places!) who tried to remove cheese from the list of food that Food Stamps could be used to buy. He just loves to abuse and humiliate poor people and others. No, he’s definitely NOT married (who would have him?).
It was in the wee hours that I saw some awesome hope for more awesomeness….
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About midnight I started hearing mention of some 44,000 uncounted absentee ballots in the City of Milwaukee which had been left until all the precincts had been counted. At that point, Scott Walker had a couple thousand vote lead.
I began watching local news reporting and found a station that had a live reporter on the scene with the City election workers. I watched as she followed the votes over to the Milwaukee County Courthouse so they could be added to the County vote total. After that was done, the reporter asked about the results.
She was shown a paper, live on camera, and read the results. Walker had 7000 of those votes and Evers 38,000. Rapid mental computation revealed to me that there weren’t enough uncounted ballots, even if every one of them went to Walker, to overcome all of those Evers votes.
Tony Evers had just won.
It took a long time for the results to be called by official powers, but I breathed a long sigh of relief that Scott Walker, who has been the bane of my existence, suffered the first defeat of his long and personally beneficial political career. He’s never had a job outside of government office.
He’s won by the sheer force of hundreds of millions dark money, a powerful Republican Party that will do or say anything to get or retain power, statewide RW media staffed by highly paid blowhards, and by his own personal style of fighting like a junkyard dog who will lie, cheat, steal, and use the levers of power to do whatever will be in his own self interest.
He’s changed any laws that get in his way. Did you know, for instance, that in Wisconsin it’s now perfectly legal for candidates to coordinate with dark money groups? Yes, the focus of John Doe II was eliminated by a bill rammed through the Republican dominated State Legislature and happily signed by Walker to make legal what he did illegally.
He’ll also use the law to punish enemies and reward donors and supporters. We have a new mining law written by a foreign mining corporation after their “investment” of half a million bucks to a dark money group Walker controlled. Our environment and water are similarly poisoned by other corporations and the laws and regulations that their “investments” created.
He’s gone. Buh bye. We’ve also replaced our State Treasurer and Attorney General with Democrats (bye bye to our participation in the Kill ObamaCare Lawsuit). Our State Legislature remains in Republican hands as a result of the severe gerrymandering that was done. Next time the census drops, Governor Evers (I love the sound of that) will be around to make sure that the gerrymandering is over — or veto proposed gerrymanders.
Our state will be left in shambles by Walkers many actions, in substantial debt by his borrowing so he could campaign as a guy who “lowered taxes” (easy to do if you keep borrowing money, cutting budgets, and allowing roads and buildings to crumble into dust).
And now, for your enjoyment, a totally fake note not sent to Scott Walker (h/t NP40 for this which I found too late to submit and have modified below):
Dear Governor Walker:
Did we forget to inform you until Midnight that we still had 44,000 outstanding absentee ballots to count? Oops.
Karma can be a bitch.
Love (not),
The City of Milwaukee
I’m breathing easier.
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