President of Wisconsin’s firefighters union Mahlon Mitchell announced Monday he will challenge Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch in her pending recall election, becoming the first person to declare candidacy in the race.
Mitchell has been an outspoken voice against Gov. Scott Walker and his law eliminating collective bargaining for most public employees after it passed last year.
“This administration of Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch has destroyed and divided our state by catering to corporate special interests instead of the working men and women of Wisconsin,” Mitchell said in a press release Monday. “Now, we need leaders that will bring our state back together and work to create the jobs we need.”
Kleefisch defended her record since taking office, pointing to $848 million in savings, solving a $3.6 billion budget deficit without raising taxes.
Like Mitchell going into the election, Kleefisch had no political experience before running for lieutenant governor in 2010.
“I was a small business owner, this is my first political job,” Kleefisch said Monday. “But obviously our backgrounds are quite different. I come from the private sector, and I think that experience is incredibly valuable if we put economic development and workforce development on the front burner, as we have.”
However, UW-Madison Professor Barry Burden said the lieutenant gubernatorial race and who is running against Kleefisch will likely not get a lot of attention because it will be competing with the highly publicized gubernatorial race to recall Walker.
“The focus is really on Scott Walker and who his opponents might be,” Burden said.
In the gubernatorial race, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, have campaigned the most so far. But speculation surrounding other candidates entering the race, namely Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, has taken some of the spotlight from Falk and Vinehout.
Burden said he suspects Barrett would emerge as the front-runner if he decides to run since he has run for statewide elections before and can probably raise a large sum of money. Barrett will likely wait until the April 3 Milwaukee Mayoral primary to make a decision.
Falk, however, already has a strong labor union backing, which Burden said might hurt Barrett and other potential candidates in primary elections.
