State Sen. Pam Galloway — one of four Wisconsin Senate Republicans scheduled to face upcoming recall elections in the still-redounding blowback from the state GOP’s assault on collective bargaining rights last year — has announced her resignation today.
The result is that GOP’s 17-16 majority over Democrats in the chamber prior to today (it had been a 19-14 majority until the first round of recall elections last year) is now gone.
For the moment, the chamber is now evenly split at 16-16. The GOP has lost sole control of the chamber.
Galloway is citing family health issues as the reason for her surprise resignation today. According to TPM’s Eric Kleefeld, “Galloway won her Senate seat by a five-point margin in the 2010 Republican wave, defeating the incumbent state Senate Majority Leader in the traditionally Democratic Wausau district.” She had been scheduled to face Assistant state Assembly Minority Leader Donna Seidel in the upcoming recall.
As per WI recall rules, the contest for her seat, the three other Senators and the offices of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, will move forward as planned. The GOP will be allowed to replace Galloway on the ballot.
The dates for those elections are now set for May 8th and June 5th. The first date will be a recall primary for those races in which there is a contested nomination, otherwise that will be the actual recall election for that seat. The second date would then be the actual recall elections. As the race for the nomination to take on Walker himself is currently being contested by several Democrats, that historic election will be held on June 5th — coincidentally, the same day as the California Presidential primary elections.
Good. The less we use machines to count the votes the better. I mean, we won one without that. She knew we would win. Let’s prove it.
How does the recall work, do they just vote to boot them and then have a later election to replace them, , or do they vote to chose between existing person and new candidate?.
Karen –
WI recall elections are just one election, where the official up for recall faces an opponent from the other party. Whoever wins the election wins the seat.
In cases where there is a contested primary, however (example, there are several Democrats currently vying to run against Walker in the recall), a primary election is held first. Thus we have two dates now scheduled. May 8 for recall primaries, if needed (or final recalls if there is not a contested primary needed), and then June 5 for the final recall elections for those races which had held recall primaries on May 8.
Hope that clarifies!