Earlier this month the country's eyes were trained on the recall election in California against now-lame duck Gov. Gray Davis. It provided the country a fantastic civics lesson on how an enraged citizenry can coalesce to throw out a public official who has made the people so angry they can't wait for the regular election. Not many people realize this, but before California's freak event, the Midwest, which had the same progressive movement a century ago that gave the recall to California, was doing recalls before it was cool.
In the late 1980s, an anti-tax revolt in Michigan caused control of the Michigan Senate to shift over to the Republicans by a series of recalls. In 1996, the Wisconsin Senate shifted from Republican to Democrat following the recall of then-state Sen. George Petak, R-Racine. This week, a long political career was brought to end with the recall of Sen. Gary George, D-Milwaukee.
Gary George had this coming for a while. Since his election to the Senate in 1980 he's had one ethics scandal after another. His main racket was constantly running skeleton campaigns for the governor so he could live off the campaign expense account, a fancy form of bribery. This led to his worst sin of all, when his campaign was found by the state elections board to have forged its petition signatures for ballot access. With fewer than the minimum number of signatures, he was kicked off the ballot.
After it was revealed that his archenemy, former Majority Leader Chuck Chvala, D-Madison, was the one who unearthed this mess through intermediaries, George endorsed Jim Doyle to prevent a victory by Chvala's favored candidate, Tom Barrett.
Once Doyle was in, though, he found George to be the last vote he could actually count on to back up the Democratic agenda. George voted with Republicans to strip Doyle of power to negotiate gaming compacts with Native American tribes, voted with them again on the budget, the property tax freeze, pork spending, you name it. Local newspaper owner Jerrel Jones, whose Milwaukee Courier had aided George in his lying and excuses for years, started a recall effort because he stood to make a lot of money off the gaming compacts and wanted George out of his way. Rep. Spencer Coggs stepped up to the plate to run in the recall. Tuesday night, he defeated George by a 30-point margin. Gary George got what he had coming to him, and that's that.
Or is that all there is to it? If I lived in George's district, I would have voted for Coggs in order to punish George for all of his ethical missteps over the years. However, those ethics problems were the last reason that this recall was actually initiated. The recall came about as a nuclear option in the arsenal of party discipline. He wasn't recalled because of his expense accounts, his petitions scandal, the frequent allegations of sexual harassment, or any his many other transgressions. He was recalled and prematurely removed from office because he failed to vote with his fellow Democrats often enough. The right thing happened for all the wrong reasons.
Senate Minority Leader Jon Erpenbach greeted the news with a measure of satisfaction, which is perfectly natural. He now has one less vote to worry about; Coggs will not be breaking ranks like George was. But we all should wonder if it's really appropriate to start a recall election against a legislator just because he's not enough of a party stalwart. If that was their concern, couldn't this have waited for when George was up for re-election next year?
Make no mistake about this. As a human being, Gary George had this coming to him. But it should also be considered whether a purge of moderate legislators is really in the public interest. Do we want a political system where those in the middle are not only shut out from the normal discourse, but kicked out of office midway through their terms? If the people truly do want this, then we will have an increasingly polarized political system where legislation is not about working for positive compromises, but only a matter of power struggles between competing extremes in which the people have no real voice.
Eric Kleefeld is a senior majoring in political science. His column runs every Thursday. He can be reached at opinion@dailycardinal.com.
