Watching the election results.

Results reported here.

On the TV station we're watching, News 3, with 6% in, Prosser and Kloppenburg are tied at 50%.

UPDATE, 8:50: 51% Prosser, 49% Kloppenburg, with 9% reporting.

UPDATE, 8:55: According to the Milwaukee State Journal, with 11% reporting, it's 51% Prosser, 49% Kloppenburg.

UPDATE, 9:30: On TV, they seem to be pre-spinning a Kloppenburg loss, saying what an amazing thing it is that she has come close to beating an incumbent.

UPDATE, 9:36: 34% reporting, David Prosser 265,662 (50%), Joanne Kloppenburg 263,356 (50%).

UPDATE, 9:54: With 49% in, News 3 has Prosser at 51% and Kloppenburg at 49%.

UPDATE, 11:08: Paul Soglin has won the mayoral race. He's speaking now, looking extremely tired.

UPDATE, 11:14: Kloppenburg had gone up, but now they're back even at 50%.

UPDATE, 11:35: Concentrating on the AP numbers, looking at which counties still need to report, I'm irritated by the way Waukesha (strong for Prosser) and Dane (strong for Kloppenburg) seem to be holding out, like it's a game of chicken. Right now the candidates are 50-50%, with Prosser up 6,000+. It's been seesawing back and forth, with Kloppenburg up some of the time. To my eye, it looks as though there are more votes left to report in the places that are pro-Prosser, so I think in the end Prosser will squeak by.

UPDATE, 11:43: Dane (Madison's county) is nearly all in. I don't see how Kloppenburg can net more than about 3,000 with what's left of Dane. Waukesha is now shown as completely in, but the numbers didn't change, so I think something may have been misreported. I took the trouble to do a calculation and was going to predict that Prosser would net 40,000 more votes in Waukesha. What happened?

UPDATE, 11:55: There will be a recount, I assume. All those absentee ballots. The possibility of some fraud. It's nearly midnight here. Maybe we won't know the answer for days.

If I wasn't one of the "conservative bloggers" that Kloppenburg was talking about...

... why doesn't the Kloppenburg campaign respond to my email and specify who they were? The idea that I was one of the bloggers is now an internet meme with some life to it. Here's Power Line, this morning. [AND: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.]

As I wrote in an update at the first link, above, I've been able to figure out that one of the "conservative bloggers" was Christian Schneider. Someone in the comments states flatly: "You were not one of the bloggers." Meade responds:

Who were the bloggers? Kloppenburg used the plural, so she clearly meant more than one. Or was she not accurate with her facts?

Also, why would her campaign not reply to Althouse?

Now that the question of Althouse being the "conservative blogger" is becoming an internet meme, it appears that the Kloppenburg campaign is incompetent and unprepared for the questions and scrutiny that lie ahead.

That "15 second" pregnant pause may be only the beginning of awkward moments for JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Indeed. I'm not being vain and narcissistic about the campaign's failure to respond to my email. I'm commenting on the meaning of the absence of a response. In my post, I note that Kloppenburg listed 4 reasons being suspicious of what happened with the reporting of the votes in Waukesha, but "2 of the items are the absence of anything." I added:

An absence of evidence might be probative of something that matters, but you have to build a foundation for why it matters.

Now, I'm talking about an absence: the failure to provide the names of the bloggers and the links to the blog posts that show the "prior knowledge" of the missing votes. And I have built the foundation for why this absence is probative of something that matters. The internet meme is hurting Kloppenburg's credibility and undermining the assertion that an independent investigation is needed.

My working theory at this point is that there was only one blogger, Christian Schneider, and the Kloppenburg campaign is afraid to admit that the plural "bloggers" was false.

Or they really were talking about me.

"It’s a question every candidate for state Supreme Court is asked: Which U.S. Supreme Court justices do you most admire?"

Writes the left/liberal Bill Lueders at the end of his Isthmus piece "Battle for the [Wisconsin Supreme] court/Bradley v. Kloppenburg is a classic contest between two visions of the role of law":

Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg...  has picked Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor. Her rival, Justice Rebecca Bradley, finds this highly objectionable. These two justices, she accuses, “espouse a judicial philosophy that believes the Constitution is a living, breathing document, that it should change to reflect changing social and political conditions.”

But here is what Kloppenburg actually says about Ginsburg and Sotomayor: “They seem to share my view of the Constitution as protecting individual rights and promoting a more fair and equal society.”

Does Bradley disagree that the Constitution calls for protecting individual rights and promoting equality? “There are individual rights that are protected under the Constitution,” Bradley replies. “But when she talks about a more equal society, that’s a very subjective statement,” one whose meaning can vary from judge to judge.

Bradley named Antonin Scalia, before his recent death, as the U.S. Supreme Court justice she most admires, along with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. “These three justices have the judicial philosophy I follow,” she says, she says, including their embrace of originalism: the notion that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of the Founding Fathers’ original intent. She notes that Scalia exhibited qualities that surprised others, such as being “protective of the rights of criminal defendants.”

The question is not who's correct about how to interpret the Constitution. We're having an election. The people get to vote on how they think the Constitution (and all the other law) should be interpreted. Kloppenburg and Bradley have clearly stated what you need to know, Wisconsin voters. Pick!

Who's right about interpretation and who would you pick?

I'd pick Bradley — not because she's right but because I think I'll like the results.

I'd pick Kloppenburg — not because she's right but because I think I'll like the results.

You pick the one whose methodology is correct, so: Bradley.

You pick the one whose methodology is correct, so: Kloppenburg.

I'd pick Bradley, with a vague sense that she's right and I'll like the results.

I'd pick Kloppenburg, with a vague sense that she's right and I'll like the results.

These answers are making me feel that I shouldn't be voting for a state supreme court justice.

 

pollcode.com free polls

At the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates's debate, incumbent David Prosser goes after JoAnne Kloppenburg for what commenters have written on her Facebook page.

What can we attribute to the person with the power to delete comments?

While there was no explicit mention of a Dane County judge's decision to issue an emergency order to block the state's contentious new collective bargaining law, Prosser acknowledged the attacks against him on Klopperburg's Facebook page were from people hoping to elect someone to decide "cases that come out of the governor's budget bill."...

Prosser said Kloppenburg is responsible for the comments on her Facebook page and should take them down. He said the nature of the comments raises questions about whether she can impartially decide any cases that come before her with the budget bill. He mentioned one that read, "Stop the turd, vote Kloppenburg."

"Now am I the turd or is the governor the turd?" he said to laughs from the audience. "Either I am being sort of dissed or she is committing herself to vote in a particular way on a particular case. That's totally inappropriate."

Kloppenburg said the people who post the comments are responsible for the content and that the postings aren't untrue.

"They understand that it is so important to have an independent and impartial court," she said of the people posting on her Facebook site.

I have a very free comments policy myself, and this blog's comments thread is full of things I don't agree with, so I'm strongly disinclined to attribute comments to someone who maintains a comments section. Now, a political candidate might want to clean up the comments, but if she doesn't, what does it mean? It might mean nothing more than a failure to monitor the page — mere inattention or sloppiness. It might mean a commitment to free speech. But one might infer that a candidate would scrub comments that were damaging to her in the election and, perhaps, keep what was helpful.

The key question is whether Kloppenburg has "committ[ed] herself to vote in a particular way on a particular case." Clearly, many of her supporters are saying that she is much more likely than Prosser to give them the outcomes they want, and some of them have said that where she has the power to delete. But Prosser's campaign manager wrote in an official campaign news release that Prosser would "act as a common sense compliment to both the new administration and legislature." Now, that's not exactly a "commit[ment]... to vote in a particular way on a particular case," but it's a signal to people on the conservative side that Prosser to is more likely to give them the outcomes they want. Prosser has "disavowed the release and said he didn't see it before it went out," but what's worse? The Prosser campaign statement or the Kloppenburg Facebook comments?

The answer to that question isn't going to determine who votes for which candidate. Obviously. It's a shame if the judicial campaign has turned into a referendum on the Governor and the GOP legislature, but both candidates bear some responsibility for that. Normally, judicial candidates in this state try quite hard to look as though the race is all about judicial skill and temperament. I think Wisconsinites want that message, and, also, that they are more likely to conflate conservative politics with properly judicial skill and temperament. (That's how Gableman defeated Butler, in my view.)

But at this point in the Wisconsin craziness, some unknown large number of Wisconsinites — especially those who will take the trouble to vote on April 5th — see the election as a way to express an opinion about what the Republicans have been doing in Wisconsin. Presumably, there are some more who have opinions about the extent to which a court should check the legislative process — a more conventional view about judging. I think there are also plenty of Wisconsinites who have a general preference for conservative judges. (They worry that liberal judges will be too sympathetic to criminals and that sort of thing.) Lots of people just vote for the incumbent because they figure he's a solid guy who knows what he's doing.

Who will turn out on April 5th? My sense is that the people who have been protesting for the last month have a lot of pent-up energy to expend on getting their people to the polls, and they are saying vote Kloppenburg.

What does it mean that 24 of the 3630 precincts have not yet reported their votes in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race?

The polls closed 12 hours ago, and the race has been really tight all along as results came in. Right now Prosser holds a slim lead, with 736,878, over Kloppenburg's 736,043. That's a mere 835 votes.

At the link, you can scan the list to find the counties that haven't reported all their precincts and see which candidate is favored in the precincts that have reported. For example, Ashland has 6 precinct that haven't reported, but in the 22 that have reported, Kloppenburg did much better than Prosser, 71% to 29%. If you assume the precincts are equal in population and the 71-29% split remains intact, Kloppenburg should decrease Prosser's lead by 405 votes when Ashland comes in.

There's one more precinct in Madison's Dane County. You can try to calculate what that precinct should be, using the 73-27% difference between the candidates in the 248 precincts that have reported, but I'd like to know what part of town the nonreporting precinct is in. More important, I'd like to know why that one precinct hasn't reported, because, without more, I'm suspicious that politicos with a "by any means necessary" attitude are waiting to see how many votes are needed.

What security do we have that these votes are being handled properly? With the vote so close, and the number needed to close the gap right there for all to see, it's hard to believe that nobody's going to cheat.

This race has been so politicized that, whether Prosser or Kloppenburg wins, the public will lack faith in the work of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Every 4-3 decision — assuming the winner of this election is one of the 4 — will raise suspicion. The power of the court, in the end, rests on the faith of the people. It cannot balance the power of the other branches of government without the faith that this election has eroded.

This is why I think a Kloppenburg victory will be a disaster. Her supporters and her opponents expect her to vote to undo the legislation of the Republican majority that won decisively in the November election. If she proceeds to decide cases that way, people — including her supporters — won't believe that her vote was properly judicial, and the decision against the legislation will look like the court abused its power. How then will the court retain its prestige? If the people do not believe that the court is a court, then we will not have a workable system of separated powers in our state government.

UPDATE: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

As of 9:45 this morning, the Associated Press had results for all but 7 of the state's 3,630 precincts and Kloppenburg had taken a 140 vote lead after Prosser had been ahead most of the night by less than 1,000 votes.

That close margin had political insiders from both sides talking about the possibility of a recount, which Wisconsin has avoided in statewide races in recent decades. Any recount could be followed by lawsuits - litigation that potentially would be decided by the high court.

Politicizing the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

2 women at the protest march yesterday chant "April 5, keep hope alive, vote Kloppenburg":



There's an election coming up, and JoAnne Kloppenburg is the challenger to the incumbent David Prosser. There are many Kloppenburg signs at the march and, as I've noted before, although it's supposed to be a nonpartisan election, some people try to make it very political. I've seen many people out at the protests stressing the need to make Kloppenburg a Supreme Court Justice so that she can vote against the GOP budget repair bill and do other things that will help the party that lost the elections last fall get something back in the judicial process.

"April 5, keep hope alive, vote Kloppenburg"... I'm sorry but I find that chant quite appalling. And I hope Kloppenburg does too.

Mid-recount, Prosser's lead has gone from 7,316 to 13,735.

525 of 3,602 precincts have finished their work. Maybe the slower-counting precincts will trend toward Kloppenburg, but it looks pretty hopeless.

ADDED: Actually, if Prosser picked up 6,419 in the first 525 precincts, there are perhaps 26,000 votes that could be netted by one candidate or the other in the remaining precincts. If there are more Kloppenburg-leaning counties that haven't finished yet, why couldn't she win? Prosser supporters should not get complacent. Pay attention! [ADDED: Most likely, the increased margin after counting only about 1/7 of the votes is purely a result of Prosser-leaning precincts having finished counting at this point. The precincts that are reporting on the recount may be coming up with exactly the same totals they had the first time.]

IN THE COMMENTS: Larry J says:

Of course the precincts that trend towards Kloppenburg will be slow to report. They want to see how many votes they have to manufacture. It's a very old tactic that has been proven quite effective (e.g. Kennedy, Franken).

And traditionalguy said:

Or the recount is revealing the vote packing fraud practiced by the Kloppenburgers that aimed to win by just enough against a known count for Prosser. But the "mistake" of leaving out a city's report from the totals skewed the target that the Kloppenberger vote packers had to aim for. Damn those cheating Republicans.

That made me realize that I was assuming Prosser's net gain was the result of finding previously uncounted votes. But it could just as well be the result of Kloppenburg losing votes. The linked article is minimal, but it does say the recounters haven't found any "major anomalies."

MORE: Commenter Dual Freq gives us the cite to get to the running totals, so we can see how the new counts in each precinct. When you do that, you can see that nothing dramatic has happened. Even though the margin at this point is 6,419 more than the original margin for the whole state, the comparison of the previous totals in the recounted precincts reveals that Prosser has only netted 33 votes so far in the recount. That is, the original count was pretty accurate.

MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Dual Freq says:

Looking closer at the totals from the GAB's spreadsheet, the differences are mostly 0, 1, 2 or 3 votes in each ward. Except two wards. Prosser lost 4 and Kloppenburg gained for for a net loss of 8 votes in Bailey's Harbor Ward 1&2 in Door county. Prosser also netted 15 in Eau Pleine Ward 1 in Portage County when Prosser gained 7 and Kloppenburg lost 8 from the original totals. That's a huge error there because there were only 339 votes in that ward.

T J Sawyer saYS:

The title of the post reads like a report from the MSM. It's a good thing we have DualFreq on the job!

Yes! Many thanks to Dual Freq!

"Kloppenburg = A Vote Against the Bill."

A pro-Kloppenburg yard sign that works as an anti-Kloppenburg yard sign (for 1 if not 2 reasons):



Meade and I voted at around 11. He was #399 and I was #401 at our polling place (the First Congregational Church). There were about 6 others there, including the guy that slipped in between me and Meade and snagged the lucky number 400. The ladies manning the polls seemed to think the turnout was good. But with no waiting in line, it felt light to me.

ADDED: If Kloppenburg wins, her opponents should move on to a "recuse Kloppenburg" effort.

"Kloppenburg to announce recount decision at 4 p.m."

I hope she'll give a gracious concession speech.

Should Kloppenburg ask for the recount?
	No, but she will.
	Yes, but she won't.
	No, and she won't.
	Yes, and she will.
pollcode.com free polls

UPDATE: 4:00 Central Time, of course. I'll be in class until 4:50, but Meade will be covering the event, so go into the comments to see what he's got to say.

UPDATE 2: Kloppenburg has called for a statewide recount. Video to come.

UPDATE 3: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg requested Wednesday a statewide recount - the first in 22 years - to check the results in the April 5 election for state Supreme Court race she lost to Justice David Prosser, the Government Accountability Board said....

Kloppenburg also called on the board to appoint a special investigator to probe the "actions and words" of Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus.

"David Prosser gained 7,582 votes in Waukesha County..."

"... after a major counting error of Brookfield results was detected, County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced in a stunning development this afternoon."

Who knows if that's the end of the back-and-forth between Prosser and Kloppenburg, but at this point it looks decisive for Prosser.

AND: Nickolaus said:

"I'm thankful that this error was caught early in the process. This is not a case of extra ballots being found. This is human error which I apologize for, which is common," Nickolaus said, her voice wavering as she spoke to reporters.

It's interesting to go back and look at Kloppenburg declaring victory yesterday:



"How do you feel comfortable declaring victory when the margin is so thin...?" Ah, yes.

ALSO: On election night, I was watching Waukesha and noted the problem:

UPDATE, 11:35: Concentrating on the AP numbers, looking at which counties still need to report, I'm irritated by the way Waukesha (strong for Prosser) and Dane (strong for Kloppenburg) seem to be holding out, like it's a game of chicken. Right now the candidates are 50-50%, with Prosser up 6,000+. It's been seesawing back and forth, with Kloppenburg up some of the time. To my eye, it looks as though there are more votes left to report in the places that are pro-Prosser, so I think in the end Prosser will squeak by.

UPDATE, 11:43: Dane (Madison's county) is nearly all in. I don't see how Kloppenburg can net more than about 3,000 with what's left of Dane. Waukesha is now shown as completely in, but the numbers didn't change, so I think something may have been misreported. I took the trouble to do a calculation and was going to predict that Prosser would net 40,000 more votes in Waukesha. What happened?

Another Prosser vs. Kloppenburg debate.

"Prosser says the campaign is one of the most politicized court races in state history and people are not looking at the qualifications of the candidates. He says the race has become a referendum on the wrong subject and people are supporting his challenger based on the perception that she’ll rule against the policies of the Governor... Kloppenburg says voters are turning to her because they think she’ll be an independent voice on the court that will help restore integrity."

That makes it sound like what we've heard before. You can listen to the whole thing here, but unfortunately, there's no transcript. I'm listening now. It begins with opening statements. Kloppenburg, speaking very quickly, recites her resume and claims she will be independent. Prosser, speaking slowly — he sounds like Mr. Rogers — recites his resume, concentrating on the number and range of his judicial opinions, and how they demonstrate that he's moderate and a centrist. He stresses that Kloppenburg lacks judicial experience and is a "stealth candidate."

MORE: Asked whether there is a First Amendment right for a judicial candidate to lie about his opponent, Prosser says he knows this is a reference to an ad the winning candidate in the last Wisconsin Supreme Court election used against the incumbent, which has been the subject of some very heated litigation. Getting into the specifics of that case, Prosser's answer was legalistic. When it was Kloppenburg's turn to answer the same question, she gave a clear "no," there is no First Amendment right to lie. That gave Prosser the opening to accuse her of lying about him. He offered to give her a list of her lies. She remained impassive.

What "conservative bloggers" was JoAnne Kloppenburg casting aspersions on yesterday as she asked for an investigation?

At her press conference yesterday, JoAnne Kloppenburg — the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate — asked for an independent investigation of the Waukesha County Clerk based on a list of things that she said "raise significant questions." 

One of the things on the list was: "the prior knowledge by conservative bloggers." I believe that "knowledge" refers to the clerk's failure to include one city's votes in her first report. But Kloppenburg casts aspersions on bloggers as evidence of something worrisome going on.

Who are the bloggers? I'd like the links to the blog posts that support the statement! 

I'd like to know if I'm one of the "conservative bloggers," and, if so, why am I being called "conservative"? (At the link, above, you can see why I suspect the reference is to me [and how I got my knowledge]. ) And who are the other bloggers?

Kloppenburg is stirring up public suspicion of the vote-counting process. That is a very serious matter, especially for someone who aspires to a seat on this highest court in the state. She should be scrupulous about the way she presents facts and should not manipulate public opinion. If the evidence does not warrant mistrust, it is injudicious to stimulate mistrust.

Her list of things that "raise significant questions" about the process in Waukesha felt long, but what is really on it?

a one-and-a-half day delay in notifying any responsible party about a county vote total that [the clerk] knew was incorrect

the absence of any reasonable basis for her explanations

the prior knowledge by conservative bloggers

the complete absence of knowledge by the canvass board until the press conference

It sounded like big list, but there are only 4 items. And 2 of the items are the absence of anything. An absence of evidence might be probative of something that matters, but you have to build a foundation for why it matters.

The first item on the list is simply the mistake we all know about: The clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, initially reported zero votes from the city of Brookfield and later provided a vote total. (The vote total is easily consistent with what you would expect from Brookfield.)

The second item is an attempt to make something out of what looks like a mistake. What is the evidence that it's anything but a mistake? The most substantive point is the prior knowledge by conservative bloggers.

So, really, this is important! What was she talking about?

ADDED: Before writing this post, I emailed campaign@kloppenburgforjustice.com: "What does 'the prior knowledge by conservative bloggers' refer to? I would like the names of the bloggers and the links to the blog posts that support this statement." That was 2 hours ago. I'll let you know if I get a response.

AND: Still no response from the Kloppenburg campaign, but a few people have indicated that they think one of the "conservative bloggers" was Christian Schneider, writing at National Review's Corner, noting the "computer error... revealed today" approximately 1 hour before the press conference. I don't know who the other bloggers were or what their sources were.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recount is finally over, Prosser has won by over 7,000 votes, but Kloppenburg may move the battle for judicial power into court.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

Former Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske said she saw little chance that a court challenge to the recount would succeed. "I think it's going to be a very, very difficult road for Ms. Kloppenburg to upset Justice Prosser, unless there are things we do not know about," said Geske, now a professor at the Marquette University Law School. Any evidence is "going to have to be extensive to overcome that number of votes."...

Prosser attorney Dan Kelly said earlier this month he was concerned a legal challenge would take months and lead to a temporary vacancy on the court. The next 10-year term on the seven-member Supreme Court begins Aug. 1.

It would seem that the only reason for taking this into the courts would be to delay in order to produce this vacancy. The vacancy has special value because of the hot controversy over the budget-repair bill:

Unions rallied behind Kloppenburg in the hope that she would vote to overturn the law, while conservatives stepped up their support for Prosser in the hope that he would vote to uphold it. Now that bill has been passed by the Legislature but blocked from taking effect by a court challenge....

Ultimately, the issue could be decided by the Supreme Court - unless a temporary vacancy in Prosser's seat produces a 3-3 tie, in which case a lower court might have the last word.

So Kloppenburg failed to win a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an election that focused on the budget-repair bill, but she could try, by initiating a futile lawsuit about the election, to affect the way the Wisconsin Supreme Court decides the budget case and to affect it in a way that is contrary to what the voters voted for. And, if she does that, expect to hear her say lofty-sounding things about protecting the interests of the voters.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg takes the nonpartisan election in a strongly partisan direction.

At a forum at the Waukesha County Courthouse last night:

“Justice Prosser has sent a clear message that he will favor the agenda of Gov. (Scott) Walker and the Republican Legislature,” Kloppenburg said. “I will apply the law to the facts of the cases before me and decide them without prejudice.”

What is her basis for attributing a "clear message" like that to Prosser? If she doesn't have a solid basis for that statement — and I can't see what it is — how is that supposed to jibe with her self-image as a dutiful applicant of law to fact?

ADDED: The Isthmus columnist Bill Lueders, who is quite openly liberal, can't see fit to disrespect the venerable Prosser:

Prosser wins the Supreme Court race, but not by enough to block Kloppenburg from seeking a free recount.

"A statewide canvass of vote totals of the state's 72 counties finalized Friday afternoon has Prosser beating Kloppenburg... by 7,316 votes.... The deadline for calling for a recount is 5 p.m. Wednesday."

Congratulations to Justice Prosser.

Should Kloppenburg seek the recount?
	Yes, the margin is slim, the recount is free (to her), and the balance on the court matters.
	No, the margin is strong, the recount will cost the state money, and I'd like finality.
	No, because I like the outcome and want it clinched now.
	Yes, because I don't like the outcome, and I'll want to pursue whatever hope is left.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Professor Jacobson repurposes "a plea taken from a concern troll who posted a comment here when it looked like Kloppenburg would win by 200 votes." Ha ha.

Justice Prosser: "I like to think that I have survived a nuclear firestorm of criticism and attack and smear."

"So as far as I'm concerned if these results hold up I will be the winner. My opponent has the right to call for a recount and have the state pay for that recount if it is within a certain level. But, if you get up over 7,000 votes that's serious business, that's not likely to be overcome."

He was on Fox News talking to Greta Van Susteren last night.

Looking for that, I ran across this Crooks and Liars post, dated April 5th, complaining about Prosser appearing on Greta's show the night before the election. The blogger, John Amato, states a principle of ethics that you know damned well he wouldn't apply generally. Keep in mind that both Prosser and Kloppenburg were invited onto the show, and Kloppenburg declined. Here's Amato:

I think it's inappropriate and unethical for Fox News to have candidates for public office on the night before an election, because it's a clear attempt to manipulate the election results. Prosser gets to throw bricks at Kloppenburg for free -- including defending himself on accusations that he failed to prosecute a child-abusing priest...

Greta brought up the dirty story of Prosser calling the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin court a "bitch' and threatening to "destroy her". Watch how [Greta] phrases the events. Calling the Chief Justice a bitch is not as bad as having somebody snitch on you. ya know. It was all a TRAP to ensnare him! Right.

So... Prosser got a chance to defend himself from the vicious attacks, and no one was there to push back from the attack side, because Kloppenburg didn't have the nerve to enter the scary enemy territory that is the Greta Van Susteren show. And in Amato's view that is "inappropriate and unethical." Ridiculous.

"Will Wisconsin voters feel comfortable turning a judicial election into, in effect, a referendum on a law Democrats don’t like?"

"Will the other 3 Democratic-appointed Supreme Court judges play along with this slightly banana-republicy game? True, conservatives have often campaigned against liberal judges after unpopular rulings (e.g., Rose Bird in California). But it seems even worse, in terms of legal etiquette, to elect a judge in order to make a particular ruling, about a particular law, in a particular upcoming case."

Mickey Kaus says.

Carter Wood quotes Mickey (and me) and says:

Goo goo groups decried the "politicization" and campaign spending on the Supreme Court race in 2008 between Michael Gableman and Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler Jr., in which business generally supported Gableman and unions and trial lawyers spent heavily on Butler. Gableman won.

Gableman won using the kind of conservative judicial argument that was used (back in 1986) against Rose Bird: that his opponent takes an overly expansive view of the rights of the criminally accused. This argument presents the conservative candidate as properly judicial and the opponent as inappropriately activist. The liberal counterpart to that argument would be that the conservative opponent — in an inappropriate enthusiasm for locking up criminals —  refuses to see rights that really exist and would be seen under a properly judicial approach to decisionmaking.

This isn't the argument I've been hearing from Kloppenburg supporters. They're saying let's recoup political power through the judiciary and get a judge who will see judicial power as political and strike down the legislation passed by the democratic branches of government. This is the exact opposite of the argument that has worked in the past, and it should backfire against Kloppenburg. If Kloppenburg is the completely political candidate, then voters who want to preserve the integrity of the judiciary should vote for Prosser.

There's a debate between the 2 candidates on Monday night, and it will be live-streamed here. I expect to see JoAnne Kloppenburg strongly and clearly separate herself from the arguments the politicos are making on her behalf.

RELOCATED FROM ALTHOUSE2: With Kohl out, who wants to be the junior senator from Wisconsin?

There's:

Reps. Ron Kind, Tammy Baldwin and Steve Kagen as well as former Sen. Russ Feingold and former Rep. Tom Barrett, who ran [for Governor and] lost to Walker last November, are mentioned....

For Republicans, the obvious name is Rep. Paul Ryan, the architect of House Republicans’ controversial budget plan. It’s not clear whether Ryan wants to leave his perch as chairman of the House Budget Commtitee to make a statewide run, however.

Other GOP names being mentioned include state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, wealthy businessman Tim Michels and former Rep. Mark Neumann.

Interesting!

ADDED: WaPo's Greg Sargent opines:

But the key is that a lot has happened in Wisconsin since Feingold’s loss. The months long war in the state over Scott Walker’s effort to strip public employees of their bargaining rights has galvanized the Democratic Party in Wisconsin in a major way and — if polls showing the unpopularity of Walker’s proposals are any guide — has tilted independents and moderates in the state against GOP rule. It’s true that this battle has galvanized the grassroots on both sides, but the emerging shape of the recall elections suggest the left has more momentum and energy.

A lot has happened... including the big Prosser-Kloppenburg race, which Sargent doesn't seem to have heard of.

COMMENTS (Relocated):

"Two sources with knowledge of internal GOP polling tell us that Prosser and Kloppenburg are near even, a bad sign for the incumbent."

Writes Robert Costa in the National Review:

“She has driven his negatives up,” one source says. “It will be hard to drive hers up. Her lack of judicial experience should hurt her, but it also makes her harder to pin down. The question now is: Does the Right have enough resources to counter the Greater Wisconsin Committee’s millions? And even if they do, is it too late? It is going to be touch-and-go for these last few days.”...

According to state-election figures, nonpartisan spring elections usually draw less than 20 percent of the electorate: 18 percent in 2009, 19 percent in 2008, 19 percent in 2007, and 12 percent in 2006. To win, GOP officials say Prosser will need to draw strong numbers from emerging conservative pockets in Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee, and Racine counties. If voters from these areas don’t show, but liberals pile into voting booths in Dane County and Madison proper, Kloppenburg could cruise to victory.

“Look, this race is not a referendum on the governor or a specific piece of legislation,” Brian Nemoir says. “It has a much broader scope. supreme-court judges are elected to ten-year terms on purpose. Their elections are not intended to be snapshot responses to the current political environment.”

But if the election depends mostly on turnout, portraying it as a referendum on the governor is probably a better strategy than the usual grim focus on judicial aptitude and temperament. Who can be moved to go out and vote next Tuesday when it's just about a judgeship?

I hate these stranded elections. You have more power than usual, if you vote, because so few vote. That might be some motivation to vote, but... obviously not. That's the whole point: Few vote. Who are those few? The super-heated political types. So... how does that work for a judicial election? You can see that this stranded April 5th voting day presents a special problem with respect to keeping judicial elections above politics. Judicial elections above politics... it makes even less sense than usual.

Prosser has criticized the very negative ads that Kloppenburg supporters have put up, but if his supporters don't come on strong in retaliation, he's going to lose.

"Prosser and Kloppenburg have both engaged in their share of negative comments on the campaign trail."

"Prosser has already played the liberal extremist card during candidate debates. And Kloppenburg has been relentless in labeling Prosser a Republican partisan. But because the candidates are about tapped out -- each has agreed to public financing spending limits -- the negative advertising to come will be carried out mostly by proxy. And thanks to the inflamed political atmosphere... Kloppenburg stands to gain the most."

So now, in this last weekend before the election, we're barraged with crazy ads that the candidates can't control, don't have time to respond to, and can benefit from without taking responsibility for. What an ugly mess!