News Archives
January 19, 2012
One Million Signatures Submitted to Recall Governor Scott Walker
Wisconsin unions scored a huge victory yesterday in the “Recall Walker” effort after they submitted over one million signatures supporting the Governor’s recall. A total of 540,208 valid signatures were required to initiate a recall election for Scott Walker.
This is truly an unprecedented effort of historic proportions. No other gubernatorial recall drive in American history has gathered the signatures of so large a proportion of the electorate. The total number of signatures submitted Tuesday represents 46 percent of the turnout in the 2010 Wisconsin gubernatorial election.
Petitions were also filed to recall the state Lieutenant Governor and four Republican State Senators including the Senate Majority Leader, a close ally of Walker. If Democrats can pick up just one of these four seats, control of the chamber will shift from Republicans to Democrats. This seems to be a manageable task since Democrats were able to flip two Republican seats during a recall election last August.
Joined by Republicans in the State Legislature, Walker last year pushed to abolish the rights of public employees to collectively bargain for a middle-class life. Overall, Walker’s policies are killing 18,000 jobs a year in Wisconsin, according to a recent report and more than 27,000 jobs have been lost since he signed the budget last year.
We congratulate Wisconsin’s unions and working families on their hard work and persistence. As the campaign for the recall election commences, we are confident that worker unity will continue to overcome Walker’s billionaire buddies and their joint anti-union agenda.