GOP Plan To Run Fake Democratic Candidates

Madison, Wisconsin - The gears of government tend to grind slowly. But in Wisconsin lately they are racing at turbocharged speed.

In just the last few weeks, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, has signed legislation to require voters to show photo identification cards at the polls and to deregulate elements of the telecommunications industry. And the Republican-dominated Legislature is now in the midst of advancing provisions to expand school vouchers, to allow people to carry concealed weapons, to cut financing for Planned Parenthood and to bar illegal immigrants from paying in-state tuition at Wisconsin’s universities.

Why the urgency? Republicans, who suddenly swept into control of this Capitol in last fall’s elections, face a deadline of sorts. Though the lawmakers insist that their hurry-up offense is just living up to campaign promises, there is a threat looming: They are at risk of losing their newly won majority in the State Senate as early as next month.

New, special elections are expected in as many as nine Senate districts (six of which are now held by Republicans) as part of the largest recall effort against state lawmakers in Wisconsin’s history — an effort that grew out of yet another controversial measure Republicans pushed through this spring, a sharp reduction to collective bargaining rights for public workers.

“There has been not even a pretense of trying to find a bipartisan agreement on important issues,” said Senator Mark Miller, the Democratic leader, who added that some measures were introduced and passed through committees in just a week’s time — a warp-speed timetable for any state government. “It’s the Republican agenda, and that’s it. The only negotiations now are among themselves.”

And so Wisconsin — which garnered national attention earlier this year because of its Republican leaders’ aggressive efforts to cut collective bargaining — is again being watched closely as a testing ground, this time for potential backlash from the Republican sweep to power in statehouses last fall, when they won control over more legislative seats than they have had since 1928. Republicans also gained complete control of more than half a dozen other state Capitols.

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