On Monday, I wrote about all the signatures the pro-public union group We Are Ohio collected in order to bring Governor John Kasich’s newly-minted collective bargaining bill up for a public vote.  Despite the extremely low threshold of 231,147 signatures to subject the law to a referendum, We Are Ohio turned in 1.3 million signatures.

Last week, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced the collective bargaining law would appear on the November ballot, and released the results of the state’s signature validation process. Husted announced that “more than 915,000 of the signatures were valid.”

As Mike Antonucci points out at the Intercepts blog, while 915,000 is an impressive number, it falls well short of the 1.3 million signatures turned in.  In fact, over 25% of all the signatures submitted by the unions (351,925 total) were found to be invalid.  As Antonucci points out, some of Ohio’s largest counties had some of the highest percentages of invalid signatures:

Of the 159,946 signatures submitted from Franklin County, 48,972 were invalid (30.6%). In Lucas County, 34.4% of the signatures were invalid. In Cuyahoga County, 36.2% were invalid, and in Hamilton County 49.9% were invalid.

Most of the signatures that were tossed were because the person who signed the petition lived in a different county than the one in which the papers were circulated.  Presumably, those 351,925 were easy to check.  But what about the 915,000 that remain?  If a petitioner has an error rate of 25% right off the bat (and about 50% in some counties), how much faith are we supposed to have in the signatures that haven’t been disqualified?  If you had a friend who lied to you 25% of the time, wouldn’t you look askance at the 75% of things he swore to you were true?

It’s as if the unions are panning for signatures – just throw some giant rocks onto the secretary of state’s plate, and hope that when all the sand and gravel is sorted out (at great cost to the taxpayer), there’s enough gold there to force a referendum.  There’s just no way any state department can sort though and validate 1.3 million signatures with any kind of accuracy in such a short time span.

In order to streamline the process, there should be a penalty for submitting hundreds of thousands of bad signatures.  Make the petitioner reimburse the taxpayers for the cost of counting all the bogus signatures.  Dock the unions one valid signature for every two invalid ones.  Punish each circulator who turns in bad signatures with making them watch 10 hours of whatever Keith Olbermann’s show is now called (which would quadruple his audience, come to think of it.)

In any event, the current signature process in Ohio is like aiming a fire hose at the secretary of state’s staffers and asking them to catch the water with Dixie cups.  If this process works for unions in Ohio, there’s no doubt it will be employed here in Wisconsin, where only around 500,000 signatures are required to force a recall of Governor Scott Walker in 2012.

Tuesday night’s utterly predictable recall election win by Democratic State Senator Dave Hansen of Green Bay followed the usual protocol:  At about 9 p.m., Hansen strode to the podium at his victory party and predicted Democrats would take back the state senate when other recall elections are conducted in August.

But Hansen’s speech was followed with a bizarre appearance by – and this is not a joke –  Jon “Bowzer” Bauman of the ‘70s faux-greaser doo wop group Sha Na Na, who congratulated the Democrat on his win and predicted more big wins by Democrats in future recall elections.  Cashing in on Sha Na Na’s biggest hit, Bowzer eschewed any attempt at dip-dip-diplomacy, predicting Republican state senators would soon have to “get a job.”  (If there was any question that everyone in America was on drugs in 1972, that last clip will put that doubt to rest.)

Under normal circumstances, such an appearance by a D-minus list celebrity would have been scary and a bit confusing.  But since the Wisconsin collective bargaining fight broke out in February, Wisconsin has been flooded with once-notable celebrities whose name you thought would never pass your lips again.

On February 26^th, a rally was held outside the state capitol featuring guest speaker Gabrielle Carteris, best known for her role in the early 1990s as high school virgin Andrea Zuckerman on Beverly Hills, 90210.  (And best known to everyone under the age of 35 as “who?”)  Carteris, who portrayed Zuckerman at the age of 30, has primarily been employed as a video game voice-over artist for the past decade.  Apparently Luke Perry’s sideburns were booked and couldn’t make it.  (Or, worse yet, they support Scott Walker.)

Following Carteris was Guiding Light actor Robert Newman, who is best known by people who mistakenly think he is Paul Newman.  The event was emceed by former Billy Madison foil (and West Wing alumnus) Bradley Whitford, who actually is kind of a star, but hails from Wisconsin, so he shows up for every lefty rally in Madison.  (Whitford would later disavow his role in Billy Madison, which is a considered a criminal offense by anyone who owns the first four Pearl Jam albums.)

A March rally featured Green Bay native and “Monk” star Tony Shalhoub, whose sister works as a public school teacher in Wisconsin.  Shalhoub was joined by Susan Sarandon and the ubiquitous Jesse Jackson, who became as much a part of the protest scene as “Scott Walker is Hitler” signs.  Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello showed up to rally the crowd, apparently undeterred by the crushing defeat I handed him in a Guitar Hero battle on Playstation two years ago.

In fact, Wisconsin is probably best known for its fictional celebrities.  Large chunks of this summer’s Bridesmaids and Transformers 3 were filmed in Milwaukee.  Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Titanic supposedly hailed from Chippewa Falls.  Fond du Lac was the fictional childhood home of There Will be Blood’s Daniel Plainview, who is best known for drinking other people’s milkshakes and clubbing them to death with bowling pins.  And let’s not even get started on the Fonz, who is memorialized in downtown Milwaukee with his own bronze statue.

As for the recall elections, it’s not as if Senator Hansen needed the much-sought-after “1970s fake greaser doo wop band” voting bloc to come through for him.  When Republican Assemblyman John Nygren failed to garner enough signatures to make it to the ballot, it left the GOP without a serious candidate to challenge him.  The only Republican left running owed $25,000 in back property taxes and had been arrested four times on domestic violence charges.  (His campaign slogan of “my wife is a crazy alcoholic” didn’t quite match “Yes We Can!” for inspirational value.)

Yet while spending weeks pointing out what a terrible candidate the GOP was running, now Democrats are crowing about Hansen’s re-election, as if it was some monumental triumph that signals momentum for the anti-Walker cause.  It does not.  It merely signals that voters prefer their state senators to dabble a little less in domestic violence.

The state now moves on to the remaining eight recall elections, in which six Republicans and two Democrats are in danger of losing their jobs.  And as for celebrity sightings, voters will certainly be moved when Weezie shows up at the capitol arguing that fish don’t fry in the kitchen, but concedes that beans may, in fact, burn on the grill.

Wisconsin political legend Ieshuh Griffin showed up on The Daily Show last night to unveil her new campaign slogan:

Clearly, her new slogan was inspired by Ron Johnson’s “No Old Booty” campaign against Russ Feingold.

Wisconsin’s own Stephen Hayes takes a look at Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker in the most recent Weekly Standard.  Much of it will be familiar to those in Wisconsin who have been following the race  – but an exchange Hayes had with Graeme Zielinski of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is most telling:

Graeme Zielinski, a former political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who left his job earlier this year to become the spokesman for the Wisconsin Democratic party, wants me to know that Walker’s candidacy is based on lies and half-truths. “Generally, it’s our position that Scott Walker isn’t truthful about his record on just about anything.”

“When Scott Walker was in the legislature, he voted several times for budgets that included studies on high speed rail,” Zielinski explained. “If he was such an opponent of high speed rail, he wouldn’t have been in a tough election fight before he brought it up. He’s been a Johnny-come-lately to this.”

As it happens, I’d just read the transcript of an editorial board meeting with the Journal Sentinel from 2002 featuring Walker and his first opponent for the county executive seat, Jim Ryan. The two men agreed on many of the urgent issues facing the county, but one major area of disagreement concerned infrastructure. Ryan favored funding for a rail-based system in Milwaukee County. Walker did not.

He made two arguments against it—priorities and costs. “There are an incredibly large number of other infrastructure-based projects on the table that directly tie in the economic development that far outweighs the seriousness of just this rail-based system.” Walker was worried that federal subsidies would not cover the entire cost of the project and would, in any case, leave the county responsible for operating costs it could not afford. He makes exactly the same arguments today about high-speed rail.

So I pressed Zielinski about Walker’s supposed votes for high-speed rail.

“Was that one of those situations where he cast the vote for a huge budget so you can’t separate it out?”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “Absolutely.”

“So is it your view that the principled thing to do would have been to vote ‘no’ on the overall budget because it included studies on high-speed rail?”

“Well, he—he took some affirmative votes in committee that allowed—procedurally allowed those studies to go forward.”

That didn’t sound like a big deal to me, but if the spokesman for the Democratic party thought enough of it to make it his leading critique of Walker, I wanted to know more. Zielinski said he would send me details about those votes and then shifted to a broader critique, attacking Walker from the right.

“On spending, he’s increased spending by $380 million—more than any candidate in this race. On taxes, he raised taxes by 40 million bucks while he’s been here.”

I asked him about that number. “He raised taxes by 40 million bucks. The tax levy has gone up by $40 million.”

Of course, those are two different claims. The first one is false; the second one is true. The tax levy has indeed increased, but only because the county board repeatedly raised taxes over Walker’s veto. I pointed that out to Zielinski.

“He signed those budgets. He signed those budgets.”

“But they were passed over his veto.”

A four-second pause and then:

“Spending went up by 380 million bucks. And if his argument is ‘I couldn’t do anything,’ then how can he do something about high-speed rail? ‘Well, I was helpless about increasing spending by 35 percent but I’m not helpless on high-speed rail.’ That doesn’t square.”

Zielinski then warmed to the theme of making Milwaukee County sound something like Rome, or at least Detroit. “The parks are in ruins. The county buildings are in ruins. Services are in ruins.”

Of course, when things go wrong in Milwaukee County, it’s Scott Walker’s fault.  When things go wrong in the City of Milwaukee, it’s never Tom Barrett’s fault.

Read the whole thing here.

So Ron Johnson has a new ad out.  Here it is:

Pretty straightforward, nothing earth-shattering.

But I always get a kick out of the part of Johnson’s ads where he has to say “I approved this message.”  As we know, the only reason Johnson has to waste those four seconds is because of Russ Feingold.

The “I approved this message” provision was passed as a part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law in 2002.  In fact, it is one of the few portions of Feingold’s signature piece of legislation that hasn’t been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Court has, on at least three occasions, struck down major pieces of Feingold’s bill as unconstitutional restrictions of free political speech.

But the obnoxious “stand by your ad” provision remains.  As if, for some reason, we couldn’t figure out that an ad featuring Ron Johnson standing in front of a camera talking to us, with the words “Paid For By Ron Johnson for Senate, Inc., Approved by Ron Johnson” at the bottom of the screen, was, in fact, approved by Ron Johnson.  Has a candidate ever spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ad for which he only partially approved?  Imagine seeing an ad that began, “I’m Ron Johnson, and I’m pretty sure I approve of at least half of this message.”

Of course, McCain-Feingold was supposed to root out corruption from the political system.  I challenge anyone to explain to me how costing a challenger four seconds of his political ad to state the obvious has prevented a single act of corruption or underhandedness in politics.  (Didn’t anyone tell Congressman Charlie Rangel that Feingold meant business?)

If I were running Johnson’s campaign, I would make this a point of one of my ads.  Begin an ad by saying “I’m Ron Johnson, and I approve of this message.”  Then go on to mention that you have to say that disclaimer because Russ Feingold was too busy worrying about micromanaging what is said in political ads and not worried enough about all the jobs Wisconsin has been hemorrhaging.  Then pivot to the economic talking points of your choosing.  Easy as that.

And if I were Russ Feingold, I would work a little harder to find at least one living person who has benefited from the stimulus plan to put in my ads.  At least, thanks to his own law,  we now know he approves of creating jobs for fictional people.

People that know me well know that I love nothing more than fringe candidates.  So when I saw that today a woman was testifying in front of the state Government Accountability Board (GAB) in order to have the words “Not the whiteman’s bitch” placed under her name on the ballot, well…. DOUBLE RAINBOW.

Ieshuh Griffin, independent candidate for the 10th Assembly district, was an impressive witness.  As an independent candidate, she is entitled to have a “Statement of Principle” of up to five words placed under her name on the ballot.  It is assumed that people generally know what “Republican” and “Democrat” mean, but “Independent” could mean anything – so independent candidates are allowed to briefly clarify their platforms.

Obviously, the GAB argued that Griffin’s proposed statement of interest was obscene.  Griffin appealed to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to affirm her free speech rights.  She attempted to debunk the idea that “bitch” is an offensive word, pointing out that it refers to a female dog.  And she was able to quote the GAB rules, chapter and verse.  Obviously, she’s a smart woman, and knows exactly what she’s doing by challenging the GAB’s authority to censor her statement. (In fact, I’d probably vote for her – how can she be any worse than any of the other Milwaukee legislators?)

During the debate, it appeared the GAB panel of ex-judges was sympathetic to Ms. Griffin’s free speech argument.  (Of course, if some independent candidate had put “keep out illegals” as their statement, they would have been thrown off the ballot within seconds.)  An attorney for the GAB said candidate statements have been stricken from the ballot for saying things like “cut taxes,” which seems preposterous.

In the end, Ms. Griffin got a majority of the GAB board to side with her by a 3 to 2 vote.  Unfortunately, she needed four votes to win her petition, so her statement will be removed from the ballot (she said she will appeal.)

But given that her position was shot down by a group of old white guys, it makes her statement of purpose a little ironic, no?

(I’ll post the WisconsinEye video when it’s available.)

In other news, the GAB declined a GOP effort to have Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (or, “T-Ball” as she is known amongst the youngsters) removed from the ballot for having an insufficient address on her nomination papers.  Baldwin apparently listed an office address on her papers, not her actual voting address.  Her campaign claims she was granted a security exemption, given that she is a lesbian.

Let’s back up there.  I have no knowledge of whether any threats have been made against Tammy Baldwin, and I can imagine they’re pretty horrifying.

But really?  In Madison? Of all the places on the planet you’d think would care the least about her orientation, Madison would be at the top of the list.  I’m certainly not saying her security fears are unwarranted – it’s just weird that it still happens in the most progressive town in America.

Back in May, I expressed some skepticism at Congressman Dave Obey’s stated reason for retiring from the House of Representatives after 41 years of service.  Obey said he was “bone tired,” and that he decided long ago to retire after the big health care bill passed.

The media lapped this all up, running with the “old liberal lion retires on his own terms” talking point.  But as I pointed out, this all didn’t add up, as Obey continued to raise money and conduct polls well after the health care bill passed.  At the time, I mentioned that Obey’s next finance report would truly be telling.

Well, we have it – and it confirms my suspicions.  According to Wispolitics.com’s “DC Wrap:”

Retiring U.S. Rep. Dave Obey paid more than $30,000 on polling just eight days before announcing his retirement, according to the longtime congressman’s latest filing with the FEC.

Obey announced his retirement May 5 after more than four decades in the House, saying he wanted to see health care reform passed and was simply “bone tired.” But insiders in both parties questioned the abrupt announcement during a tough election year, and Republicans suggested he may not have wanted to fight against a GOP tide and then-Ashland Co. DA Sean Duffy.

That $30,000 he spent was on top of another $30,000 he spent in the previous reporting period.  So you’re telling me Dave Obey, having already decided he was going to retire, spent $60,000 in polls for no reason?  What kinds of questions was Obey asking people in this $30,000 poll if it had NO bearing on whether he retired?

• “In a head to head matchup: Team Edward or Team Jacob?”
• All things being equal, who can do more push-ups: President Obama or the Green Lantern?
• “Got any good salmon recipes?”
• “Do you think your neighbor smells like Indian food?
• “Would it creep you out if you knew I was conducting this poll in my bathrobe?”

Of course, Obey’s retirement is no longer newsworthy, and nobody’s going to report anything that makes them look like fools in retrospect.  But let the history books show – the voters decided they didn’t want Dave Obey – not the other way around.

If you see a bead of sweat forming on Russ Feingold’s brow these days, don’t blame the late June Wisconsin humidity. It’s far more likely that his flop sweat is the result of early summer poll results trickling in.

Yesterday, Rasmussen issued a poll showing Feingold in a statistical dead heat with challenger Ron Johnson, with Feingold ahead by a slim 46% to 45% margin. It is stunning that an 18-year incumbent would be virtually dead even with a newcomer who has been in the race for about sixty seconds. But Johnson, a businessman from Oshkosh, is clearly riding a wave of discontent with Feingold and Congress.

Yet even with the polls telling us what we already know, Feingold has been signaling his desperation with a number of odd public statements over the past few days. He continues to take some puzzling shots at Johnson, indicating that he knows he’s in serious danger of losing his job.

For instance, at a candidate debate between Johnson and GOP primary opponent Dave Westlake yesterday, the issue of the BP oil spill came up. According to Wispolitics.com, Johnson said he believed “BP must be held accountable,” although he had questions about the manner in which their $20 billion victim’s fund was created and would be distributed by President Obama. Hardly groundbreaking stuff.

But Feingold’s attack machine pounced, almost as if they wrote Feingold’s statement before the debate even took place: “The fact that both Republican candidates came out in opposition to holding BP accountable for the worst environmental disaster in our country’s history shows just how addicted the GOP is to big oil special interests and how out of touch they are with Wisconsin.”

Of course, this is a demonstrable lie, which Feingold knows won’t be followed up on by any reporter in Wisconsin. Apparently, Feingold knows that he can’t win points against Johnson by debating what he actually says, so he just has to make things up.

Even more puzzling was Feingold’s next attack. On Tuesday night of this week, Johnson attended some meetings in Washington, D.C., including a meet and greet with lobbyists. Again, Feingold’s attack dogs went on offense:

“By going out to Washington, D.C., to meet with lobbyists and special interests Ron Johnson makes it pretty clear whose side he’s on.”

Ironically, just a few days ago, Feingold criticized Johnson for being a millionaire. Wouldn’t that mean that Johnson isn’t beholden to special interest money? Apparently, according to Feingold, Johnson is “corrupted” either by his own money or other peoples’ money, depending on what week it is.

Furthermore, it only took about three mouse clicks to find this list of political action committee contributions Feingold has accepted during his time in the Senate. The total tally of special interest contributions collected by Feingold: 1,096 lobbyist contributions totaling $1,868,908. This from the self-professed King of Campaign Finance Reform. Seems to be working out well for him.

Among Feingold’s contributors:

• Goldman-Sachs
• American Dental Association
• American Federation of Government Employees
• AFSCME
• American Postal Worker’s Union
• Armenian American PAC
• Automobile Club of Michigan
• Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen
• California PAC
• Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County
• Engineers Union
• Florida Congressional Committee
• Georgia Peach PAC
• International Brotherhood of Boilermakers
• Land O’ Lakes
• Maryland Association of Concerned Citizens
• NARAL
• National Education Association
• The Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball

And on and on it goes – 1,096 contributions and $1.8 million long. And yet, according to Feingold, it is Ron Johnson, who’s been back in Oshkosh building his business from scratch, who is beholden to lobbyists. (Of course, Feingold will never be asked what the Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County have to do with creating jobs in Wisconsin.)

Even more ridiculous is this press release from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which ends with this paragraph:

The Bellwether Group raised money for Congressman Tom Feeney, who lost his seat after he became engulfed in the largest Washington D.C. lobbying scandal in history. Feeney accepted a Scottish golf trip from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and was named one of the most corrupt members of Congress four times by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Got that? It’s not the Senator who’s spent 18 years in Washington that’s connected to Jack Abramoff – it’s the guy who’s never had anything to do with the corrupt political machine in D.C. for the entirety of his life. This is like saying that since Prince Fielder plays in Milwaukee, he must eat people like Jeffrey Dahmer.

You have to wonder if they have a giant flow chart on the wall at the Democratic Party – the “Six Degrees of Jack Abramoff” chart. If somehow, you fall within five degrees, then suddenly you’re corrupt. It appears asking the Dem Party to have at least a fifth grade level of sophistication is asking too much.

Of course, there aren’t any media members who will ever point out how desperate Feingold actually is. Saint Russ the Maverick will continue to get a free pass until election day. In fact, for this reason, a candidate against Feingold almost necessarily has to be a millionaire, in order to counteract all the positive press Feingold will get throughout the campaign.

This is perhaps the greatest irony in all these mistruths spun by Feingold – he champions restricting political speech because of all the damage it supposedly does to democracy; yet it’s the blatant lies told by candidates themselves that do the most to coarsen the public’s perception of their elected officials.  Obviously, he knows he can’t win on his own likeability – he has to tear down a good man to sneak past the finish line.  Somehow, I don’t think we’ll see a new law regulating that.

In the wake of Dick Leinenkugel dropping out of the Wisconsin Republican U.S. Senate primary race, editorials like this from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and this from my friend Emily Mills were so predictable, I actually predicted them.*  (Now I’m kicking myself for not doing so publicly – if only there were some kind of program where you could broadcast proclamations to hundreds of people at once, preferably using 140 characters or less.  Someone get on that.)

Now Dick Leinenkugel seems like a really nice guy.  His only problem was, he wasn’t a Republican.  Generally, that helps when running in a Republican primary for U.S. Senate.

But the MJS and Mills both believe that it was the fault of the Tea Parties for running Leinenkugel out of the primary.  They cite the old tried and true talking point that somehow the Republican Party is getting too “extreme,” and not welcoming moderates.  Sayeth Mills:

Talk radio and the Tea Party elements of the party had all been hammering away at the fact that Leinenkugel had dared work as Commerce Secretary for a brief period under Democratic Governor Jim Doyle. These days, the so-called Republican base seems to treat any and all bipartisanship (or even mixed employment) like touching a leper. “Leinenkugel also said ‘reasonable people’ understand why a conservative businessman would go to work for government, even with Democrats running it.” Trouble is the new Republican base isn’t big on reason.

Sure.  There’s to “reasonable” explanation as to why a guy who has spent his life supporting Democrats might be looked at skeptically by the Republican Party.

And I’m certain that if a Bush Administration official suddenly decided they were a Democrat and sought the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate at the last minute, Democrats would be perfectly fine with that.  If Condoleezza Rice moved to Wisconsin and ran in a Democratic primary, certainly she would be welcomed with open arms by liberals.  In fact, she’d not only be booed during intra-party debates, she’d have a lot of trouble leaving without being covered in tomatoes.

In fact, wasn’t it just the Democratic Party last week that purged Arlen Specter from its ranks?  Who do we blame for that?  ACORN?  Didn’t Dave Obey just single-handedly purge about five would-be Democrat successors to his seat from a primary?  Wasn’t it the Democrats that gave Joe Lieberman the boot a couple years ago for daring to support the war effort in Iraq?  I guess the Democrats in Connecticut were standing on “principle.”

Now, if Leinenkugel were the only guy running in the primary and the party didn’t give him a chance, it would be one thing.  But when tried-and-true Republicans have the opportunity to choose guys like Terrence Wall or Ron Johnson over a guy with zero GOP street cred, it only makes sense.  In fact, rather than proving Republican voters are sheep, it shows they’re actually tuned in and paying attention.

Dick Leinenkugel may have a future in the Wisconsin GOP yet.  He gained a lot of goodwill by recognizing his lack of credibility with primary voters and stepping aside. (Although my Democrat friends told me they secretly wished he was the guy running as a Democrat to replace Dave Obey in the 7th Congressional District right now.)  Of course, by then, editorial boards will have moved on to blaming the Tea Parties for oil spills, or the gout, or halitosis.

* In fairness, I predicted the editorial would come from the Capital Times, Madison’s steamiest online political chat room for singles.