Another Republican senator could be at risk of being unseated after petitioners Thursday afternoon handed in the required amount of signatures to trigger a recall election in May.

The efforts of two separate but cooperative campaigns collected 22,500 signatures among some 3,100 pages, in the recall campaign for Sen. Randy Hopper, R-Fond du Lac. Scott Dillman, head of the Recall Randy Hopper campaign, brought all the signatures in a cardboard box with the Wisconsin flag sticking out of a corner to the Government Accountability Board office in Madison.

Dillman said it felt good to be done and to have run a successful campaign against Hopper, who voted to pass the controversial bill that would limit collective bargaining authority for state employees and require them to contribute more toward their health care premiums and pensions.

Over 1,500 people signed up to help the effort via Facebook, and Dillman said he has been trying to find out what his band of volunteers is planning to do now that the Hopper campaign is over.

“We are actually taking polls with our volunteers to find out what they want to do next,” Dillman said. “Some want to go and help other statewide recall efforts…while others will join in recall efforts in our area.”

He added some volunteers may work to support a candidate running against Hopper in a special election.

He added that volunteers for the recall Hopper campaign members now had their sights set on Senators Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, Alberta Darling, R-River Hills and Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend.

Although the Democratic Party of Wisconsin helped announce that Dillman and the recall campaign would be handing in their signatures to the GAB, he said the statewide organization had little to do with the efforts and insisted it was more of a grassroots operation.

“We’re a non-political group of volunteers ranging from Republicans to Independents to conservatives and everywhere in between,” Dillman said.

Hopper, who was in Stevens Point for a Joint Finance Committee public hearing, could not be reached Thursday, but released a statement that said he remained confident in his actions to reel in reckless government spending.

“I’m confident the voters of the 18th Senate District will support our goal to make Wisconsin a place in which businesses and middle class families can grow and prosper together,” Hopper said in a statement.

Hopper’s election campaign manager Jeff Harvey said he had not seen the signatures and the GAB still had to validate the petitions, but they already have two offices open, phone banks operating and volunteers going door to door asking for contributions.

Although Hopper won election in 2008 by a very narrow margin, Harvey said those past results would not be an accurate predictor of how the special election could go because 2008 was a bad year for all Republicans.

“If anything it speaks to his abilities that he won at all and we are very confident Hopper will get re-elected,” Harvey said. “[Justice David] Prosser put up good numbers in Fond du Lac and Winnebago Counties.”