Midterm Elections Unlikely to Alter Party Balance

Well, get used to the combination of a Republican House with a Democratic Senate and White House. It’s likely to remain that way for the next four years, not just two.

And oddly enough, that might just help Washington lower the partisan temperature and strike a few compromises for a change.

The campaign for midterm elections in 2014 has begun. Late Wednesday, President Obama travels to California to raise cash for the Democratic National Committee and his party’s House campaign arm.

But chances that Democrats can gain the 17 seats needed to recapture control of the House appear remote. Republicans have better prospects of picking up the six seats they need to regain the Senate – but not drastically better.

After midterm “wave elections” in 2006 and 2010, the calmer outlook this time reduces the stakes of electoral competition next year. That, in turn, may expand opportunities for bipartisan action on such issues as immigration, modest gun control measures and deficit reduction.

“We’re going to maintain our majority,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in an interview. But with Mr. Obama not going anywhere either, he added, “I’m committed to seeing ways we can work with this White House, knowing full well we have big differences.”

“I think what you’re seeing emerge now is an appetite for achievement,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, who is a solid favorite to win re-election next year. “We want to do some things – or at least try – on a bipartisan basis.”

The ideological and political gap between the parties remains wide in any event. But the lure of seizing control of the House or Senate, and winning the presidency, has widened that gap in recent years by injecting all-or-nothing electoral drama into virtually every high-profile dispute.

In 2006, Democrats used unhappiness over the Iraq war, the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and other Republican setbacks to recapture House and Senate majorities. When the financial crisis hit two years later, they captured the presidency.

In 2010, House Republicans used continued economic weakness and a backlash against Obama administration policies to create their own comeback wave. Last year Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, set his sights on winning control of the Senate and ensuring Mr. Obama’s defeat.

As it turned out, voters last November preserved the existing balance of power. Odds favor their doing the same next time.

As this week’s fund-raising jaunt suggests, Mr. Obama is lending his energies to Congressional Democrats now that he no longer has to campaign for himself. But history and circumstance argue strongly against Democrats retaking the House.

Since voters tend to blame the White House incumbent for their discontents, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but three midterm elections in the past century. The number of times the president’s party has gained 17 seats in a midterm election: zero.

Democratic campaign operatives say they will defy history and gain at least a few seats. Among other factors, they point to strong fund-raising and the Republican Party’s national image problems.

But district lines drawn after the 2010 census circumscribe their opportunities. Charlie Cook, a political handicapper, estimates that fewer than 30 Republican-held seats are even at risk, and Democrats themselves have slightly more in jeopardy.

The midterm electorate tends to be heavier than in presidential years with older voters and whites – both important Republican constituencies. In Senate races, Republicans once again boast an auspicious map of possibilities.

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Critics assail reform plans for elections

Election 2012 -- with its surge of Latino voters, increase in impossible-to-track campaign donations, and hotly fought ballot measures -- is reverberating at the Legislature in a flurry of bills that seek to remedy the problems exposed by last fall's contests.

THE BILLS

Bills proposed to address the problems that occurred during the November general election would do the following:

Pare down early-voting lists.

Make it more difficult to deliver other people's ballots to polling places.

Make it more difficult to place citizen initiatives on the ballot.

But many of the bills, including three approved in the Senate last week, could backfire. County elections officials promoted much of the legislation in the name of trying to avoid a repeat of last fall's issues, when a flurry of provisional ballots caused final results to be delayed for more than a week. Many voters were forced to file provisional ballots because their names appeared on early-voting lists.

But new restrictions could alienate voters and lead to further confusion, if not lawsuits, critics argue.

One bill would pare down early-voting lists; another would make it more difficult to deliver other people's ballots to polling places; and other bills would make it more difficult to place citizen initiatives on the ballot.

The loudest complaints have come from Arizona's Latinos, who led aggressive voter-registration drives that added thousands of new voters to the rolls. Those voters tend to cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Democrats.

Others have criticized the double standard that would be created for petition-signature requirements: strict compliance for citizen-driven initiatives, but a looser standard for candidates.

"We should be working on encouraging folks to participate in our elections, not taking that right away," said Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, who has led the charge against bills that would tighten rules for Arizona's popular early-ballot program.

Sam Wercinski, executive director of the Arizona Advocacy Network, said the bills are not so much a reaction to the 2012 election as to the protests sparked by the two-week wait for results.

"We've always had large numbers of provisionals," said Wercinski, whose group lobbies for voting access. "I think politicians saw how powerful the permanent early-voting list and vote-by-mail are for new voters, and particularly Latino voters, and that's why we have all these bills."

Even elections officials, who would have to enforce whatever changes the Legislature approves, say the best solution to confusion over early voting is increased voter education. However, there is no money in the current bills to provide for greater voter outreach.

Lee Rowland, an attorney at the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, said Arizona is not alone in reacting to last fall's elections with a stream of proposed changes.

There was an "unprecedented level of restriction" in the 2012 election, she said, such as the refusal of Florida Gov. Rick Scott to extend early-voting hours to deal with long lines and confusion in Pennsylvania over a new voter-identification law.

"It's really important that the focus be on actual problems, not manufactured problems," Rowland said. "What we really shouldn't see is a return to some of the restrictive practices that happened before the election."

To hear the backers of some of the key bills at the Capitol, Arizona's laws weren't restrictive enough. From trying to rein in who can return a voter's ballot to how much scrutiny should be given to voter signatures on petitions, the bills seek to tighten the rules.

Early-vote troubles

Many of those provisional ballots that caused problems in last fall's election came from voters who had signed up on the permanent early-voting list and received a ballot in the mail. But on Election Day, for any number of reasons, people who received an early ballot walked into a polling place and either dropped it off or asked for a ballot. Those who got a new ballot had to vote provisionally so elections workers could verify that they had not voted twice. That process added time to the tabulation process.

It's not a phenomenon unique to 2012: Ever since Arizona created the early-voting list, late-arriving "early" ballots have slowed elections returns.

Senate Bill 1261 would thin out the permanent early-voting list by automatically removing any voter who does not vote by mail for two consecutive election cycles.

The clock would start ticking with the 2010 election, meaning voters who didn't cast an early ballot in 2010 and 2012 would be purged. They could still vote, but would have to do it the old-fashioned way by going to the polls.

The Arizona Voters Coalition doesn't like the automatic nature of the purge. Rather, this collection of civic groups said, the state should let voters opt out of the list. Coalition members include the League of Women Voters of Arizona, the Inter-Tribal Council and Mi Familia Vota.

The group also objected to the bill's original penalty of imposing a Class 5 felony, punishable by up to 11/2 years in prison, on anyone who knowingly altered a voter-registration form without consent of that voter. Sen. Michele Reagan, R-Scottsdale and the sponsor of SB 1261, reduced the penalty to a Class 6 felony, which often is bargained down to a misdemeanor.

The Senate approved the amended bill last week on a party-line 16-12 vote, with Democrats opposed. It's now in the House.

The state Democratic Party assailed Reagan over the bill, as well as two others approved by the Senate, sending out a news release headlined "Help stop voter suppression in Arizona" and charging that the bills were part of her strategy to nail down the GOP nomination for secretary of state in 2014.

Reagan, who's been clear about her interest in the top elections post, said the bills come with the backing of county elections officials, both Democrats and Republicans. They resulted from study sessions last year that involved an array of people involved in the elections process who were trying to plug the holes plaguing the system.

However, she never invited the Latino organizing groups that mobilized thousands of new voters. They held a news conference, testified at the Elections Committee hearings Reagan chairs and, just last week, staged a silent protest that led to their ejection from a Senate hearing room. About a dozen young people held up small signs claiming Reagan was anti-Latino.

These grass-roots groups are particularly upset with another Reagan bill that would limit who can carry a voter's ballot into a polling place. It carries a Class 6 felony penalty. Currently, anyone, or any group, can take in ballots, a practice that Reagan last month said she found appalling.

SB 1003 would require anyone who delivers a ballot on behalf of a voter to sign a statement that they have the voter's permission to do so. It's a concession to critics of the original bill, which would have limited the practice to immediate family members or roommates.

Reagan questions whether protesters realize she's amended the bill to allow the voter to designate anyone they want to deliver the ballot. And she has set up meetings to discuss concerns with these groups, saying they had never asked before they launched their protests.

SB 1003 is a response to the practice of grass-roots groups that signed up thousands of Latino voters and then collected their ballots for delivery to the polls.

"A lot of people trust us more than the U.S. mail to take in their ballots," said Brendan Walsh, who worked on voter registration and turnout with Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy.

SB 1003 also passed the Senate on the same 16-12 party-line vote. Sen. Jack Jackson Jr., who represents the Navajo and Hopi tribal areas, said SB 1003 could have a "devastating" impact.

"Republicans want to make a felon out of someone helping their neighbors to vote, but many members of our tribal communities live in remote areas and depend on help to deliver their early ballots," Jackson, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Initiative reform

Last summer saw courtroom battles over two of Arizona's most contentious ballot initiatives: to dedicate a permanent sales-tax increase to education and to create an open-primary system. Both withstood their challenges but lost at the polls.

But the legal battles could have turned out differently if SB 1264, also sponsored by Reagan, had been in place. The Senate approved the bill 16-12.

Among the two dozen changes the bill proposes is one that would make "strict compliance" the standard for voter signatures on initiative petitions.

In the court challenge to the open-primary system, the judge relied on a "substantial compliance" standard that allowed certain voter signatures to be counted, although opponents argued they should be tossed.

Chris Herstam, an attorney and former state lawmaker, questioned why the Legislature is creating a tougher standard for voter-initiated measures while not imposing it on their own candidate campaigns.

"An obvious double standard exists by giving candidates the benefit of the doubt, but not citizens who wish to utilize their constitutional rights," said Herstam, who supported the open-primary system.

This provision of SB 1264 would "neuter" the 101-year-old citizen-initiative process, he said.

Jim Drake, staff attorney for the secretary of state, said the rules for candidate petitions are in a different statute and should be looked at separately.

Another provision of the bill would clarify that only a copy of a citizen initiative that is time- and date-stamped by the Secretary of State's Office would qualify as the official version.

Backers of the education sales tax relied on a version of their measure that had been submitted electronically when they circulated petition sheets. The courts upheld the education supporters, and the measure qualified for the ballot over the objection of opponents.

However, the ensuing campaigns on the education sales tax and the open primary were defeated largely because of an infusion of money from non-profit corporations that are not required to disclose their donors.

Reagan said she couldn't find a way to force those groups to disclose their donors, and the Senate last week defeated a Democratic amendment that was an attempt to put the disclosure burden on the recipient of the outside contributions.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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3 fined for Clean Elections violation

Election regulators voted Thursday to fine three Republican candidates for the Arizona Corporation Commission a total of about $29,000 for misusing public money during the primary election.

All five members of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission voted there was reason to believe that candidates Bob Stump, Bob Burns and Susan Bitter-Smith violated election laws. But they disagreed on what the financial penalty should be.

With two commissioners, Louis Hoffman and Thomas Koester, abstaining, the other three voted to approve an offer that the Republicans made earlier in the week. The deal calls for them to return $9,617.50 each by Monday to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

They will return the money from the $137,800 in public funds each of them received to spend on the general election.

The Democratic Party filed a complaint that said the mailers Republicans sent during the primary election violated the law, which requires public money given to candidates during the primary election be used only for the primary. The law specifies that any leftover funds must be returned to the public before general-election campaigning begins.

With three open seats on the five-member commission this election cycle, both parties are running three candidates. That meant neither party faced opposition in the primary.

Each of the six candidates received nearly $92,000 to spend on primary campaigns.

The Republicans used $230,000 of their combined funds to print and mail brochures that attacked the Democrats they face in the general election.

Republicans disputed that their mailers violated the rules, which apply to candidates who don't finance their own campaigns and instead use public money. But they agreed to return some of the money to put the matter behind them.

Instead of returning all of the money spent on the fliers, they agreed to pay back the amount it cost to mail the brochures to independent voters.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Democrats, Obama actively target Arizona in 2012 elections - AZCentral.com

by Alexander Burns - Feb. 26, 2012 02:06 PM
POLITICO.com

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- President Barack Obama and his party have a modest plan for contesting Arizona in 2012: speeding up time.

Not literally, of course, but Democrats are actively targeting the state this cycle with a push they hope will eventually convert Arizona to permanent swing-state status and test the GOP's appeal up and down the ballot.

The idea is to accelerate a transition in Arizona that's already taken hold throughout the West, as the rapidly growing ranks of Hispanic and independent voters have turned once-conservative-leaning states such as Colorado and Nevada firmly purple.

Strategists in both parties say it's uncertain whether Arizona is changing quickly enough to make it a genuine battleground in 2012 -- or anytime soon. The task of competing here looks especially daunting for a president who has clashed repeatedly with local Republicans, and whose Justice Department has sued the state over its restrictive immigration law. Most Republicans think their opponents are chasing a mirage in the desert.

But if they can fire up Latino voters, bring new registrants into the political process and take advantages of state-level miscalculations by the GOP, Democrats are hopeful that they can at least win back some of the territory they lost in the 2010 conservative landslide.

"All the elements are in place for Arizona to be a competitive state. Demographically, historically, all the pieces are lining up," said Andrei Cherny, a former state Democratic Party chairman now running for Congress. "You need to have an appeal that reaches past party lines and motivates and excites independents. I think that can be done, even on a presidential level."

Democratic state Rep. Ruben Gallego predicted that in a presidential year, Latino voters who sat out the 2010 campaign and who gave native-son presidential candidate John McCain a respectable showing in 2008, would come out in force for Obama.

"Time is moving this way, but what's also happening is the Latino community is becoming more active," he said. "The Republican brand is very damaged among the Latino community in Arizona."

Longtime Republican presidential strategist Charlie Black said he doubted Democrats would be viable in Arizona in 2012. Over a longer political timeline, he explained, the political prognosis is different.

"With the growth of the Latino vote and if Republicans don't get back to being more competitive in the Hispanic community, yeah, Arizona will be a competitive state up and down the ballot," said Black, a top adviser to McCain's 2008 bid. "But people in the West, including Arizona, have a sort of libertarian orientation. They don't much like the federal government and they don't like 'Obamacare,' telling religious voters what to do."

The state's conservative history has been alive and well in recent cycles: Arizona has routinely gone for Republican presidential candidates, handing GOP nominees 50 percent-plus totals in every election since 1996. Republicans control the governor's office, both chambers of the Legislature, both Senate seats and a majority of the congressional delegation.

And yet, the Obama campaign and other national Democrats have insistently signaled that they aim to compete here. The president's team outlined one possible route to reelection that involves strengthening the party's performance here and throughout the West -- potentially offsetting Democratic losses in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Obama has already opened offices in Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff, and plans to open a fourth in Glendale soon, according to a campaign official. As of Wednesday, Obama for America's Arizona staff and volunteers had more than 237 phone banks and 439 voter registration events, the official said.

Democrats have geared up for this year's Senate race, with Obama helping recruit former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona -- a George W. Bush appointee - for the open-seat contest to replace GOP Sen. Jon Kyl. Encouraged by newly drawn congressional maps, the party is hoping to recapture several of the House seats it won in the 2006 anti-Bush landslide and then lost in 2010.

Mahen Gunaratna, the Obama campaign's spokesman for Arizona and New Mexico, said the president's team is "confident we can be competitive in Arizona," emphasizing the potential impact of the Latino vote in a race against "a Republican field whose leading candidates oppose the DREAM Act, even calling it a 'handout,' as well as opposing a path to citizenship for immigrants."

Even Democratic strategists who are upbeat about the party's Arizona prospects suggest that they may fare better down-ballot -- in state and congressional races -- than in the presidential election, with an incumbent tied to a weak economy.

Jill Hanauer -- president of Project New America, the group formerly known as Project New West -- said it's part of the "Western tradition" to engage in split-ticket voting and support maverick members of both parties, such as McCain and Janet Napolitano, Arizona's former Democratic governor.

"I think voters in Arizona are going to be very intentional and do a lot of sorting," she said. "I think Arizona, both short term and long term, is really primed to be what Colorado is now, which is a solidly purple state that favors moderate, mainstream Democrats over Republicans."

On top of long-term trends that ought to make the state more hospitable to Democrats, Arizona has been buffeted since 2008 by a series of political crises and controversies that inject a major dose of uncertainty into the mix for both parties.

The national uproar over Arizona's immigration law -- known as S.B. 1070 -- was the first in a cascading sequence of local political crises, including a federal investigation of firebrand conservative Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a recall election that ousted state Senate President Russell Pearce and, most prominently, the January 2011 shooting of Democratic then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

What has remained constant throughout is much of the state's resentment against the federal government for its immigration lawsuit -- it's now headed for a ruling in the Supreme Court after portions were blocked by lower tribunals -- and the steady growth of the Latino population.

There's no question that population growth looks like a boon to Democrats. Between 2000 and 2010, Latinos went from 25.3 percent of Arizona residents to 29.6 percent, with that percentage markedly higher among younger Arizonans. A Democratic official said that over 111,000 people with Hispanic last names have registered to vote since 2008, and that 80,000 Hispanic voters who participated in 2008 took a pass on the 2010 campaign -- giving the party room to expand this year.

Republicans remain intensely skeptical -- verging on scornful -- of Democratic claims that this demographic shift will be enough to put Arizona in play this year or in the immediate future. To them, the prospect of Arizona-as-swing state looks about as plausible as the short-lived George W. Bush-era fantasy of turning California red.

Republican National Committee political director Rick Wiley issued a memo late last year essentially dismissing the Obama campaign's Arizona chatter as a flight of fancy and said this week he still doesn't "see a scenario" where a president with middling approval numbers can mount a real fight for the state.

"With the gains we had in '10, this is an entirely red state right now," Wiley said. "I think you're looking at a decade, at least, before they can get close in some of these congressional districts."

Though there's some evidence that Republicans are paying a price for their policies on immigration and other divisive policy debates, there's little indication so far that the alternative voters want is a Democrat. When they booted Pearce, the polarizing author of S.B. 1070, they voted in another Republican -- now-state Sen. Jerry Lewis.

And while state and national Democrats have scored points off flamboyant conservatives like Pearce and Arpaio, the party's 2012 ticket is likely to be headed by two more inoffensive candidates: Mitt Romney and Rep. Jeff Flake, who is running for Senate.

That doesn't mean that the GOP isn't taking some steps to prepare for a Democratic push here -- even if it's one viewed as doomed from the start.

At the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in New Orleans, Wiley said the Arizona GOP was asked to take part in an exercise that other 2012 battleground states participated in last year, sizing up their state as a potential target and taking "a long, hard look at why [Obama] can't win."

"I just wanted to put the Arizona party on notice," Wiley explained, calling it a matter of "diligence."

The amount of preparation necessary for the state GOP will depend on how much actual money and national attention Democrats end up devoting to the state -- X factors that are unknowable this far out in the cycle. While Obama visited Arizona only last month, his time and resources will be scarcer by the fall.

"If the Obama people choose to run a serious campaign in the state, we'll have to run a serious campaign," said Black. "But let me put it this way: they will run about 4 or 5 points behind their national median in Arizona. So it won't be a state they'll need to get."

What's more, the president's presence may or may not be an asset to candidates running down-ballot and seeking to appeal to Arizona's independent streak.

That makes for something of a balancing act for candidates like Carmona, who's offering himself to voters in the Senate race as a "centrist and moderate" challenging a state GOP that's perceived as "too radical."

"The average person is just looking for somebody -- more or less any person -- who will do something rather than blaming the other side," he said. "The thing I hear most is, they just want some leadership. 'Somebody solve the damn problem.'"

As for whether that anti-politician mantle would leave room for, say, campaigning with Obama, Carmona was non-committal.

"I haven't even thought about that, to tell you the truth. I know Arizona is one of 50 for him and Arizona is my Number One focus," he said. "I'm certainly happy to have the conversation, but my focus is on my campaign and the issues that I think are important to Arizona."

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Wisconsin's historic recall elections wrap up this week (Reuters)

By James B. Kelleher James B. Kelleher – Mon Aug 15, 12:55 pm ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Wisconsin's series of recall elections concludes on Tuesday when voters go to the polls in two state Senate districts where Democrats are being forced to defend their seats.

No matter who wins, Republican Governor Scott Walker and his Republican allies will retain control of the legislature, where the battle over public workers' union rights was waged earlier this year with public protests, legislative maneuvering and court challenges.

Republicans have managed to keep control of the state senate -- 17 to 16 at last count -- because Democrats failed to unseat three Republican state Senators in the key round of six GOP senate recalls last week. But Democrats did pick up two state Senate seats formerly held by Walker allies.

To many Wisconsin voters, especially Republicans, the special elections have been, as 70-year-old Wade Ellingson of Fond du Lac put it, "a waste of time and money."

Nevertheless, Tuesday's two final votes, like the seven before them, will be watched closely.

Two Democrats who opposed Walker's anti-union bill and even fled the state for weeks in an unsuccessful effort to prevent a quorum and delay passage -- Jim Holperin of Conover and Robert Wirch of Pleasant Prairie -- will be defending their seats.

"As always in Wisconsin politics, one has to give the incumbent an edge," said Mordecai Lee, governmental affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

"It is likely the two Democratic incumbents will win their recalls -- but it is not a slam dunk," he said.

Holperin seems to be in the tighter race. His rival is Kim Simac, founder of the Northwoods Patriots, a Tea Party group.

Though Simac is a political novice, the district has leaned Republican in the three years since Holperin was elected.

READING THE TEA LEAVES?

Inside Wisconsin, Tuesday's votes will again be seen as a referendum on Walker's Republican policies since his election last year. It may also give Democrats who hope to recall Walker next year a sense how such an effort might turn out.

Outside the state, pundits will be seeking more clues to what 2012 holds in the national elections.

In Wisconsin, not only have Republicans kept control of the state Senate by the slimmest of margins, the limits they wanted to impose on public workers are now state law.

Walker fought for the curbs, which severely diluted union bargaining power and also make public workers pay more for healthcare and pensions, saying they were needed to help Wisconsin close a $3.6 billion budget deficit.

Democrats cried foul, pointing out that public workers already agreed to steep benefit cuts. They called the effort as union-busting, designed to hobble organized labor -- a major source of Democratic Party financing -- ahead of 2012.

The fight thrust Wisconsin into the national spotlight, igniting massive pro-union protests and political fights that led to the recall efforts against six Republicans who backed the union curbs and three Democrats who opposed them.

On Tuesday, analysts will be watching turnout carefully, since the key issue of senate control --- and a possible legislative block on Walker's conservative agenda -- is settled.

Analysts say Democrats may be less motivated to turn out to vote. Tea Party activists, meanwhile, appear more energized by the recent fight in Washington over the debt ceiling, seen as a clear victory for conservatives in the budget-cutting concessions agreed by President Obama and Democrats.

The nine Wisconsin recalls are historic. Until this summer, there had been only 20 state-level recall elections in the 235-year history of the United States.

Reflecting the national spotlight Wisconsin drew over the winter as Walker and his allies battled state Democrats, a tidal wave The money poured into the campaigns has been something for the record books, too.

Mike Buelow, research director for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, estimates that candidates and outside groups spent as much as $37 million on the recalls.

That amount is "really astronomical for Wisconsin," he said -- more than double the amount spent on state legislative races last year when 116 seats -- not nine -- were up for grabs.

With the recalls acting as somewhat of a rehearsal for 2012, experts say the spending could be a harbinger of record outlays next year.

"This is the first major election of 2012," said Joseph Heim, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, "and one of the things we saw here was huge amounts of money."

(Additional reporting by David Bailey and Mary Wisniewski, editing by Barbara Goldberg and Peter Bohan)

(The following story corrected the governor's name in second paragraph)

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Democrats hold seats in Wisconsin recall elections (Reuters)

RHINELANDER, Wis (Reuters) – Two Wisconsin Democratic state senators beat back Republican challengers on Tuesday in the last of a series of recall elections triggered by a fight over collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.

Both Democrats and Republicans were claiming victory on Tuesday in a series of nine summer recall votes in which Democrats unseated two incumbent Republicans but fell short of winning control of the state legislature.

Democrats had hoped to win a majority in the state senate following a fierce battle with Governor Scott Walker and his Republican allies earlier this year over public workers' union powers that involved mass protests, legislative maneuvering and court challenges.

"This was a political Rorschach test in that anyone can read anything into the result," said Mordecai Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee governmental affairs professor and former Democratic lawmaker. "Politically, it was a draw."

He expected the results would embolden Democrats to try to recall Walker, which would require a half a million signatures just to schedule an election. "By November, we'll know if they're pursuing it seriously or not."

The Democrats who successfully defended their seats on Tuesday, Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin, were among 14 Wisconsin state senators who left the state in an attempt to prevent passage of an anti-union measure earlier this year.

Holperin beat political novice and Tea Party activist Kim Simac by 54 percent to 46 percent, according to WisPolitics.com. Wirch beat Republican lawyer Jonathan Steitz by 58 percent to 42 percent.

Overall in the recall elections, a total of three Democrats and four Republican incumbents kept their seats, while two Republicans were unseated.

CONTROL OF SENATE

Republicans managed to keep control of the state senate -- 17 to 16. But state Democrats point out that one Republican state senator, Dale Schultz, voted against Walker's curbs on public sector unions. They argue that the balance of power actually shifted away from the conservatives.

"The state Senate as now constituted would NOT have approved Walker's extreme, divisive assault on the middle class and working people," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said in a statement.

Brad Courtney, chair of the state's Republican Party, congratulated Simac and Steitz for mounting what he described as well-fought challenges.

"Wisconsin now emerges from this recall election season with a united Republican majority who has beaten off an attack from national unions and special interests and emerged steadfastly committed to carrying forward a bold job creation agenda," Courtney said in a statement.

Holperin told supporters in Rhinelander that he hoped the recall results would signal a change in Wisconsin politics.

"I do hope (these recalls) signal a new era of what I hope is a more moderate approach to public policy in the state, starting with the governor," he added.

Governor Walker fought for the union curbs, which restrict the bargaining rights of public workers and also make them pay more for health care and pensions, saying they were needed to help Wisconsin close a $3.6 billion budget deficit.

Democrats cried foul, saying public workers had already agreed to steep benefit cuts. They called the effort union-busting, designed to hobble organized labor -- a major source of Democratic Party financing -- ahead of the 2012 elections.

The fight thrust Wisconsin into the national spotlight, igniting massive pro-union protests and political fights that led to the recall efforts against six Republicans who backed the union curbs and three Democrats who opposed them.

Until this summer, there had been only 20 state-level recall elections in U.S. history, and the money poured into the recall campaigns has been something for the record books.

Mike Buelow, research director for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, estimates that candidates and outside groups spent as much as $37 million on the recalls.

With the recalls acting as somewhat of a rehearsal for 2012, experts say the spending could be a harbinger of record outlays next year.

(Writing by James Kelleher and Mary Wisniewski; Additional reporting by Jeff Mayers; Editing by Jerry Norton and Cynthia Johnston)

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Rules would speed up union elections (AP)

WASHINGTON – The National Labor Relations Board proposed sweeping new rules Tuesday to allow unions to hold workplace elections much more quickly, winning praise from Democrats and labor leaders who called it a long overdue fix to a broken system riddled with roadblocks and delays to union organizing.

But the move was quickly condemned by business groups and their GOP supporters as another in a series of moves by the board to placate organized labor and tie the hands of employers.

The board is proposing to streamline a union election process that currently has workers vote within 45-60 days after a union gathers enough signatures to file a petition, a time many companies use to discourage workers from unionizing.

The new plan could cut that time by days or even weeks — depending on the case — by simplifying procedures, deferring litigation, allowing electronic filing of petitions and other documents and setting shorter deadlines for hearings and filings.

If the board makes the rules final, following a period for public comment, it would be a victory for labor unions that long have complained about employers using procedural delays and litigation to hold up elections and intimidate workers. Some employers use the extra time to hire so-called union busting consulting firms to produce videotapes, draft talking points or create brochures to deter unionizing.

"Our current system has become a broken, bureaucratic maze that stalls and stymies workers' choices," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. He hailed the proposal as "a common sense approach to clean up an outdated system."

Not so, said Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who called it "an outrageous assault on America's job creators and workers."

"The question everyone should be asking is why the need to rush?" Enzi said. "Is it because union membership is at an all-time low? If employees want to unionize they should be allowed to do so, but to ram elections through before important questions are asked and answered does a disservice to everyone involved."

Usually an obscure federal agency, the board has grown into a major political target since its acting general counsel filed a lawsuit in April that accuses Boeing Co. of retaliating against union workers in Washington state by placing a new assembly line for the Dreamliner 787 in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.

The latest NLRB proposal has reignited a growing debate over whether the agency is simply doing its job or overreaching.

Union membership has declined steadily from about 20 percent in the 1980s to 11.9 percent of all workers and just 6.9 percent of the private sector. Many members blame increasingly aggressive anti-union tactics, but they have tried without success to pass legislation in Congress that would address those problems.

Labor leaders made a major push in 2009 for Congress to pass so-called card check legislation that would have made it easier for unions to organize workers by signing cards instead of holding secret-ballot elections. But the measure failed to garner a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Since then, labor has pinned its hopes for a revival on action at the NLRB, the Labor Department and other sympathetic agencies.

The rule proposed on Tuesday could be one step in helping unions halt the membership slide and organize more workers.

It would:

• Allow electronic filing of petitions and other documents to speed up processing.

• Set pre-election hearings to begin 7 days after a petition is filed.

• Defer litigation of eligibility issues involving less than 20 percent of the bargaining unit until after the election.

• Eliminate pre-election appeals of rulings by an NLRB regional director.

• Reduce from 7 to 2 days the time for an employer to provide an electronic list of eligible voters.

Union officials say the problem under the current system is that procedural delays and needless litigation can postpone some votes by months or even years. One study by Stanford Business School professor John-Paul Ferguson showed that 35 percent of the time that workers file a petition for a union election, an election never happens.

Joe Trauger, vice president of human resources policy for the National Association of Manufacturers, said that in 2009, labor unions won 68.5 percent of representation elections. And 95 percent of all elections are conducted within 56 days of the filing petition submitted by the union.

"These so-called snap elections are the latest attempt by the NLRB to effectively do for the unions what Congress wouldn't — stack the deck in their favor," Trauger said.

Anticipating the critics, board chairwoman Wilma Liebman issued a statement predicting the new proposal would be controversial, but she insisted the agency has a duty to resolve union elections "quickly, fairly and accurately."

"That controversy is unfortunate, but it is not a good reason for the board to abandon its responsibilities," Liebman said.

Jumping to her defense was California Rep. George Miller, ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

"Ideologues will undoubtedly criticize and scaremonger over this modest, commonsense proposal," Miller said. "In reality, the proposal will reduce costly litigation for all parties and reduce unnecessary conflict in the workplace."

The proposal was approved by the board's majority, led 3-1 by Democrats. The board's lone Republican, Brian Hayes, issued a vigorous dissent, saying the proposal would result in the type of "quickie elections" union leaders have long sought. Hayes claimed elections could be held in as little as 10 days to 21 days from the filing of a petition, giving employers less of a chance to make their case.

"Make no mistake, the principal purpose for this radical manipulation of our election process is to minimize or, rather, to effectively eviscerate an employer's legitimate opportunity to express its views about collective bargaining," Hayes wrote.

The board will take 75 days to review comments and replies before making a decision on whether the rule should become final.

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Recall elections certified for 3 Wis. Senate Dems (AP)

MADISON, Wis. – A Wisconsin state board has voted to let July recall elections be held against three Democratic state senators who fled the state during a divisive debate on collective bargaining rights for public workers.

Opponents of the recalls argued Wednesday before the Government Accountability Board that widespread fraud in collecting signatures warranted invalidating the signatures.

The board rejected thousands of signatures, but not enough to disqualify the petitions. They voted to certify recall elections for Sens. Dave Hansen of Green Bay, Jim Holperin of Conover and Bob Wirch of Pleasant Prairie.

The senators were targeted for the positions they took on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's proposal taking away collective bargaining rights from most state workers. Republicans pushed through the law, but the state Supreme Court is weighing an appeal.

View the original article here

Recall elections certified for 3 Wis. Senate Dems (AP)

MADISON, Wis. – A Wisconsin state board has voted to let July recall elections be held against three Democratic state senators who fled the state during a divisive debate on collective bargaining rights for public workers.

Opponents of the recalls argued Wednesday before the Government Accountability Board that widespread fraud in collecting signatures warranted invalidating the signatures.

The board rejected thousands of signatures, but not enough to disqualify the petitions. They voted to certify recall elections for Sens. Dave Hansen of Green Bay, Jim Holperin of Conover and Bob Wirch of Pleasant Prairie.

The senators were targeted for the positions they took on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's proposal taking away collective bargaining rights from most state workers. Republicans pushed through the law, but the state Supreme Court is weighing an appeal.

View the original article here