To Recall A Governor or Not?

Opponents of recall elections usually cite the cost of putting on an election and the danger that the process will be used as a quick way to remove incumbents who pursue unpopular policies from office, as opposed to waiting for the next general election.

While I am no advocate of having a revolving chair in the governor’s mansion, I believe that recall should be available under a very specific set of circumstances: such as a crime being committed in office because the impeachment procedures on the books in many states are frankly often as burdensome and politicized as the notion of holding another election.

Any politician facing recall has erred from the will of the people on some level. It is through the people alone that you serve.

I don’t think that if you’ve lost the will of the people two years in, that the people should be forced to deal with two more years of actions contrary to the will of the people, even though this flies directly in the face of my previous comment about not having a revolving chair for politicians.

 Recall elections are complicated ethical excerises that begile even our brightest political minds.

The Curious Case of Wisconsin Recall Turnout

Forgive me, but I couldn’t help but laugh about the news reports about how much higher the estimated turnout was going to be for the recall election than the general election that elected Governor Walker two years ago.

 Admittedly I’m a Wisconsin outsider, but this doesn’t send the world’s greatest message. It says “We couldn’t be bothered to vote two years ago, but now that there’s a recall vote, we better run out and vote.

These people either love the policies of Scott Walker or hate them, but could not rouse themselves for a general election that received far less national media fanfare.

I’m a big proponent of actually turning out and voting. I’m not sure that it could’ve prevented this election, but it couldn’t have hurt.

Maybe, if people acted more like every election was a recall vote, we wouldn’t get ourselves into such dire straits that switchboards at talk radio shows wouldn’t burn up with day after day of angry callers, quite so often.

 It would be interesting to find out what made this recall election, so much more important than the general election that elected Scott Walker in the first place.

Wisconsin Goes National

A personally troubling aspect of the recall election was the vast amounts of money that flooded into Wisconsin from national donors. These are the type of politics that we can expect from now on as long as the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United is considered good law.

 Even though the candidates talked about Wisconsin issues, no one can dispute the influence of national organizations and political figures that proceeded to turn a Wisconsin governors race into front page news nationally.

As a believer in the old axiom that all politics is local, this nationalizing of electoral campaigns is worrisome because if we argue that one campaign is a microcosm of the national political mood (as I’ve heard argued), aren’t we creating an interconnected chain where what happens in one set of races dominos and creates the national effect?

My ultimate worry is that by nationalizing races, the local concerns of the population who are effected by the day to day running of the state, will be forsaken in the pursuit of national dollars.

 As a politician, are you more concerned about appeasing national interests and getting money to run a campaign, or the local issues that may not appeal to national donors.

Total Recall

Today, I will be presenting a series of blogs relating to recall elections. Last night, Wisconsin Governor Scott Brown became the first governor to survive a recall challenge, defeating Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. My concern in today’s blogs is not so much the Wisconsin recall election itself, but some of the debates that go along with it.