In the only meeting of the Assembly and Senate scheduled this month, the Legislature voted in favor of moving the state’s presidential primary election to April and the Senate swore two new members into office.
In its first meeting of the fall session and what will also likely be its only meeting until October, the state Senate swore in Sens. Jessica King, D-Oshkosh, and Jennifer Schilling, D-La-Crosse, who defeated incumbent senators Randy Hopper, R-Oshkosh, and Dan Kapanke, R-La-Crosse, respectively in the heavily publicized recall elections of the summer.
The Assembly also voted in a 65-32 split to move the state’s presidential primary from mid-February to the first Tuesday of April.
Wisconsin Republican Party spokesperson Katie McCallum said the idea to move the presidential primary to early April was a bipartisan decision made by the national Republican and Democratic committees.
McCallum said the current national presidential primary schedule by nature encourages presidential candidates to campaign in the earliest primaries, as these tend to forecast who will be the victors in the general election.
Due to this trend, McCallum said states such as Iowa and New Hampshire moved their primary elections to extremely early dates over the past several years, which she said unnecessarily extends the national presidential campaign season.
States that are not willing to spend the resources to compete for early primaries, such as the state of Wisconsin, are hurt by this system, she said.
For this reason the RNC and DNC came together and drafted national standards to curb some of the influence of the early primary states, she said. The decision to move Wisconsin’s primary date back to April was in congruence with these national changes.
“This was created so that Wisconsin voters do have a say in who the national candidates are,” McCallum said.
In a statement, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin lambasted the Legislature’s decision not to schedule any additional Assembly or Senate meetings for the rest of September.
Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican majority in the state Legislature have failed to pass any jobs legislation this year, the statement said.
“In the face of soaring unemployment and unable to explain his administration’s failure on a phony campaign jobs promise, Scott Walker is sitting idly by as his Republican Legislature has only one work day planned this month after not passing a single piece of jobs legislation in 2011,” the statement said.
While unemployment has increased in the state during Walker’s tenure as governor, the statement said the governor has not backed down from the stance that his controversial budget repair law will aid job creation through the improvement of the state’s economy.
“Scott Walker has done nothing to create jobs in Wisconsin, and his Republican Legislature can only be bothered to show up for work one day this month, displaying a shocking indifference to the terrible climate they have created in Wisconsin,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said in the statement. “I guess now that tax breaks for the super-rich have been made law, Scott Walker and the Republicans can take the month off.”
