Justin's Political Corner

The influence of right-wing money into judicial elections is a growing problem. Not only have the 1% decided they want to own our politicians, they want to own our judges, too. And because judicial elections mostly fly under the radar, they seem to be getting away with it:

The Club for Growth, a right-wing group that supports tax cuts for the rich, privatizing Social Security and writing Tea Party ideology into the Constitution, spent $300,000 to keep a key ally of anti-union Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) on the Wisconsin Supreme Court — and that was just in the primary.

It’s not surprising that the Club and other well-moneyed conservatives are willing to spend big to keep Roggensack on the court. Roggensack was part of the 4-3 majority that upheld a law pushed by Walker to undermine public sector unions. She also cast the key vote to reject an ethics rule that would have prevented justices from hearing cases involving their major campaign donors.

Instead, Roggensack backed a rule written by corporate lobbyists.

h/t: Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars

Suck it, Walker!

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge has struck down the state law championed by Gov. Scott Walker that effectively ended collective bargaining rights for most public workers.

Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas ruled Friday that the law violates both the state and U.S. Constitution and is null and void. The ruling comes after a lawsuit brought by the Madison teachers union and a union for Milwaukee city employees.

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie says he is confident the decision will be overturned on appeal.

h/t: Yahoo! News

Waukesha— The era of elections marred by late reporting and ballots being found at the last minute is coming to a close in Waukesha Wisconsin. County clerk Kathy Nickolaus has announced she will not seek reelection when her term ends in November. The announcement comes just weeks after she was ordered to step aside by Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas for the upcoming recall elections.

Nickolaus’s competency in running a clean election was thrust into the national spotlight last year during the hotly contested Supreme Court race between Justice David Prosser and Joanne Kloppenburg. It was during that election when late reporting along with “discovering” some 14,000 ballots well after polls had closed in the tight Supreme Court race that Waukesha was seen as running corrupt elections. The discovered ballots ending up flipping the result into Justice Prosser’s favor, giving Republicans the majority on the Supreme Court.

H/T: PolitiScoop.com

An appeals court in Wisconsin on Friday ordered a judge in conservative Waukesha County to vacate his ruling and rehear the arguments of a lawsuit filed by the state Republicans about the procedures for counting signatures in the recall effort. The big issue: That the judge had refused to allow Democratic recall organizers to get involved in the case and make arguments.

This means that Democrats are getting another bite at the apple on this matter — depending on the outcome of the additional litigation, state election officials may not have to spend as much additional time reviewing the signatures, which would further delay the election. (However, officials at the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections, did tell the Wisconsin State Journal that they will still continue to strike out “obviously fictitious” names.)

“To summarize, the recall committees have an interest in the complaint’s proposed relief,” the three-judge panel wrote unanimously on the Democrats’ appeal, “because such relief may include new procedures not required by law that may result in (1) striking valid signatures and placing an increased burden on the committees at a later stage of the review process and (2) causing delay to the recall process.”

A month ago, the Waukesha County judge had ruled that the Government Accountability Board must make a greater effort to screen out duplicate or fake petition signatures — rather than abide by the pre-existing rules, which had placed the burden mainly on the elected officials targeted for recall.

Previously, the judge had ruled against the Dems’ motion to intervene, which meant that the arguments were then conducted exclusively between the state GOP and the election board’s attorney. It is this decision that has formed the main basis of this appeal.

Meanwhile, the State Journal also reports that GAB officials are describing just what a daunting task this would be:

Friday’s ruling comes days after GAB Director Kevin Kennedy provided details about the board’s plans to comply with Judge Davis’ order to find and remove duplicate signatures. Kennedy told WisconsinEye (sic) that the creation of a database containing both names and addresses wasn’t practical or economically feasible.

“When we do our duplicate review, we may have a searchable database, but it will be limited just to names,” he said. “We will not include addresses in that because our focus is only to implement that part of the court’s decision that deals with being proactively looking for duplicates.”

Kennedy is expected to discuss the issue in more detail Tuesday, during GAB’s next meeting.

The lawsuit was filed by the state GOP in Waukesha County, the state’s major Republican stronghold, and ended up being assigned to Judge J. Mac Davis. Davis was a Republican state Senator over 20 years ago, and during the final years of the Bush administration, he was nominated for a federal circuit judgeship, but the nomination was never taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Since then, a separate court in Dane County (Madison and the surrounding towns) has granted the GAB an extension on the time it needs to review the 1.9 million total signatures filed against Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and four Republican state senators. The GAB was granted a 30-day extension, in addition to its statutory 31-day review period — but also said it could potentially need to seek even more than the time it had originally planned for, because of Davis’s requirements that they actively search for invalid signatures. Walker’s campaign was also granted 30 days total to review the signatures in order to file challenges.

h/t: Eric Kleefeld at TPM

The special prosecutor in Wisconsin determined Thursday that there will be no charges brought in the alleged physical altercation at the Wisconsin Supreme Court — in which liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused conservative Justice David Prosser of grabbing her neck in a chokehold during an argument. But that isn’t stopping Prosser and Bradley from continuing to fight in the court of public opinion.

Thursday afternoon, both Prosser and Bradley released statements reacting to the special prosecutor’s decision, which followed two months of investigation since the incident occurred in mid-June.

“Justice Ann Walsh Bradley made the decision to sensationalize an incident that occurred at the Supreme Court,” Prosser said in his statement.

He also added: “I was confident the truth would come out - and it did. I am gratified that the prosecutor founds [sic] these scurrilous charges were without merit.”

Prosser also thanked his supporters: “Being in public service has been the honor of my life. I cannot express enough thanks for the hundreds of good wishes I’ve received from people across the state in the last several weeks.”

Bradley responded to the special prosecutor’s decision with a statement of her own, saying that she had not sought out a criminal investigation

“My focus from the outset has not been one of criminal prosecution, but rather addressing workplace safety,” Bradley wrote. “I contacted law enforcement the very night the incident happened but did not request criminal prosecution. Rather I sought law enforcement’s assistance to try to have the entire court address informally this workplace safety issue that has progressed over the years.”

However, Bradley said, her efforts to address workplace safety were rebuffed.

h/t: Talking Points Memo