Tonight six Republican state senators faced recall elections in Wisconsin; Democrats had filed petions for recall in protest of the “Budget Repair Bill” that limited collective bargaining rights for public sector unions. Democrats needed to win three of these races to flip control of the state senate; as you might imagine, the unions threw millions of dollars into these races. They only managed* to flip two seats — one in a Democratic district where the Republican incumbent’s victory had been something of a fluke in the first place, and one where the incumbent had moved out of the district to live with his mistress. (Hat-tip to John McCormack for those tidbits; note that what he calls “AP spin” — the claim that Democrats had scored big in these races — was actually something that had been misattributed to an AP reporter on Twitter and was widely retweeted; this was symptomatic of the delusional desperation on display among liberal election-watchers tonight.)
The kicker: Next week two Democratic state senators are up for recall — Republicans decided two could play at the recall petition game — and I’m told by Sean Hackbarth, a knowledgeable Wisconsin native, that the Republican challenger has a shot in one of them.
*That link goes to the AP, which still hasn’t called one of the races as I write, but other news outlets have called that race and I expect the AP to catch up pretty soon.
