Turnout is going to massively important in the June 5 recall.
Tom Barrett demonstrated on Tuesday he could rally some Dems, most impressively in Dane County, where he beat former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk 2-to-1.
This story from the Wisconsin State Journal suggests Madisonians turned on their hometown favorite in favor of Barrett, seen as most capable of beating Walker, for largely pragmatic reasons.
But the chilling news for Dems, of course, is how many Republicans turned out to cast votes for Walker, whose only opponent was a twenty-something Abe-Lincoln-lookalike from Madison, Arthur Kohl-Riggs, who said he wanted to recapture the Republican Party’s progressive roots. (The Progressive story here.) Thanks to Kohl-Riggs, there was little incentive for Republicans to hop over and attempt to prop up a weaker Dem candidate than Barrett.
Walker got almost as many votes as all of the Democratic candidates combined, as the Journal Sentinel’s Craig Gilbert has reported.
Additionally, if one lops off fake Republican Gladys Huber from the Dem tally and adds her statewide vote total to Walker’s, then Republicans cast some 95 percent of the votes given to Barrett, Falk, State Senator Kathleen Vinehout and Secretary of State Doug La Follette, combined.
These are uncharted waters, and the Government Accountability Board has said as much. Walker may yet turn the winter of Democratic discontent (two of them, really) into a summer of victory.
