If you had asked Supreme Court Justice David Prosser earlier this year about his April re-election bid, he probably wouldn’t have blinked an eye. It’s pretty hard to knock off an incumbent judge who has been relatively low-key and uncontroversial.

Yet what was expected to be a run-of-the-mill Supreme Court election turned into a race that had everyone buzzing. And most of this excitement resulted from Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his bold new agenda.

The new governor definitely struck a nerve when he proposed a drastic limitation of public union rights, in particular axing their power to bargain collectively for benefits beyond salary increases. Powerless to directly lash out at Walker, union supporters began recall petitions for Republican legislators and also set their sights on the conservative-leaning Prosser’s race against JoAnne Kloppenburg.

In just over a month, both sides’ supporters mounted some vicious partisan criticism and attack ads, and despite the race being for a “non-partisan” office, the vast majority would call it a statewide opinion poll of Walker policies.

But Walker wouldn’t.

In an interview with the Associated Press the day after the election quagmire thickened with fluctuating vote totals, Walker dismissed the referendum theory and said the election simply boiled down to two candidates with different backgrounds and experience – though he did say later the election shows a wide divide between Madison and the rest of the state.

If I were Walker, I wouldn’t try to deny the obvious forces behind the Prosser-Kloppenburg race. If anything, he should flaunt them: They’re actually a pretty positive sign for him.

Walker lobbed a heck of a political bombshell when he went after public employee unions mere weeks after his inauguration. The ensuing mass protests at the Capitol exploded to nationwide and even global attention, and the Democrats certainly lost the “enthusiasm gap” that destroyed many liberal candidates in the November elections.

But I think the liberal lobbyists exploiting the anti-Walker rage to boost Kloppenburg expected their candidate to win big against Prosser. No matter which candidate emerges after the official recount is conducted, the margin of victory will still be paper thin. As energized as the liberal base was to fight against Walker, conservatives also came out in force to support their governor.

Maybe it’s not so crazy to think Walker received many supportive emails for his “union busting.”

Granted, if you look at the numbers for each county, comparing victory margins from Walker’s election last November to Prosser’s, there are a lot of variations in percentages, and Prosser even lost counties that went for Walker.

And it isn’t quite fair for Republicans to just attribute the liberal votes to the “bubble” cities of Madison and Milwaukee. Maps quite literally show the state divided in half by vote totals, lending support to the theory Wisconsin is really a “purple state.”

So, this election raises a serious question as to whether or not a Walker recall effort would ever hold weight.

By state law, Walker will not be able to face a recall election until at least a year after being sworn into office. The number of signatures required for a recall petition must be at least 25 percent of the votes garnered in the November election – in Walker’s case, this would mean about 540,000 signatures. With approximately 740,000 votes for Kloppenburg last week, anti-Walker forces could feasibly get their recall referendum.

That is, if public opinion remains the same until next January.

People tend to have a pretty short memory when it comes to politics, and if Walker doesn’t have any other controversial measures on the back burner, the recall efforts will likely lose some steam. And given the dead heat of the Prosser-Kloppenburg race, Walker would practically have to run over children with an ice cream truck – or something similarly evil – to drum up enough outrage to vote him out.

While I do not personally agree with every decision Walker has made during his time in office, I think enough Wisconsinites are behind him to keep him for his full term – or until Walker leaves office for some higher-up political job, which many speculate is a major motive for his aggressive style of governance.

In any case, people looking to get Walker out need to really stop and think about at an even scarier alternative for the direction of our state: Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.

Alicia Yager ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and French.