Wisconsin has become kind of a fishbowl due to our idiotic governor and legislature. So you may already know we have an important Supreme Court election April 5.
The race pits a progressive challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg, against an incumbent who was Scott Walker's mentor in the legislature and who is prone to fits of anger, once calling our very genteel chief justice a "bitch" and threatening to "destroy" her.
The race is more important than usual in two ways: 1) it will be seen as a referendum on Walker, and 2) removing a Rethug partisan will ensure better judicial oversight on whatever evils Walker and his cronies come up with at the Capitol (Voter ID, redistricting, etc.)
Both Kloppenburg and her opponent have taken public funding -- $300k. That's not enough to mount a real statewide campaign. The bad guy has wingnut PAC support to back him up. Fortunately Kloppenburg has some independent support also.
It's a measure of how fired up the grassroots has become that several PACs have formed to support her campaign. Most of them are a handful of friends and neighbors who registered as a PAC in order to make yard signs or other materials. I would link to them all, but few of them have web sites or are actively taking donations.
One that I would like to highlight is called ProgressWorks. Several UW-Madison students with experience working on various campaigns started it a few weeks ago. It's been funding literature we need to canvass Madison and other areas in the state as we're able.
In the final weeks of the campaign, ProgressWorks will support area activists working in and around the campus to do GOTV among a constitutency that often fails to turn out for spring elections, but which this year has been awoken to the situation by events a few blocks away at Capitol Square.
Our budget isn't huge -- under $5,000. And we already have about a third of that from small individual donations from the community. If we can raise the rest we hope to produce thousands of new votes with canvass materials (door hangers with voting and candidate info), plus ads in the campus papers and signs.
Please consider dropping a little in the kitty. It's a Paypal thing; on the confirmation screen, if you want to send instructions that the money be specifically for Kloppenburg, you can do that. The PAC will also be supporting GOP recall work, but that will go beyond April 5, so Kloppenburg is the urgent issue.
We Sconnies appreciate progressives' support from outside the state, and we'll be there for others when the time comes.
Forward!