Thursday, April 28, 2011

WI Dems have way more cash than GOP for recalls

DailyKos brings us the happy news: As of March 21, Wisconsin Democrats have $1.2 million more in cash than their Republican opponents (who, as you recall, voted to strip government workers of their collective bargaining rights).

Chris Bowers tells us:
—Almost all of the Democratic money came from small donors on Act Blue....

—The Democratic Party of Wisconsin spent a large amount of money because they are the central organizing hub for the recall petition gathering effort.

—The amount of money the Democratic committees have on hand exceeds the total amount of money all of the incumbent Senators facing recall have on hand
And randy Randy Hopper has $9,844 in debt!

No one should get too comfortable, though. You can bet that outside interests -- the Kochs, the DeVoses, Karl Rove's money machine, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- will funnel plenty of do-re-mi to the incumbent Republicans.

But the Washington Post's Greg Sargent believes the Democrats have the momentum right now. Writes Sargent:
Wow. In a sign that Wisconsin Democrats can still claim momentum in the recall wars, Dems today filed the signatures to trigger a recall election against a sixth Wisconsin GOP state senator — and this time, they filed an astonishing 166 percent of the number required, the highest yet...The enormous amount of signatures collected by Dems could help in the recall battles themselves, since having names and addresses of huge numbers of voters makes getting out the vote far easier.
What continues to be interesting about the organizing success state Dems and labor are having in Wisconsin is that it’s unfolding almost entirely under the radar of the national media, which has largely moved on from this story. And it’s happening outside the Beltway-based power infrastructure of the national Democratic Party.
The final battle lines are all but drawn.