I emailed the following message today to Wisconsin GOP state senators whom I list below. These are senators reportedly on the fence over whether to vote in an extraordinary (that's an official term, one step up from "special") session this week on Republican bills that would gut the state's election-regulation agency and dispatch the state's campaign finance law into a political black hole.
The original bills were just plain bad, partisan measures designed to make it easier for the ruling political party to operate in the dark, collecting uncountable campaign donations from anonymous sources, making the state's election board a split partisan agency with no chance of agreeing on anything (meaning the miscreants always would get off) and more. When some GOP senators openly balked at the measures, GOP floor leaders backed off and held secret meetings (apparently they regarded these sessions as caucuses, not gatherings whose quorums subject them to the usual open meetings requirements that the Republicans also would like to gut) in an undisclosed location outside the state Capitol.
Result: GOP leaders think they now have the votes to pass these measures, with some marginal tinkering apparently intended as concessions to save some face and enable fence-sitters to climb aboard the GOP high-speed clueless train. And that's just the problem: The Republicans --- without any input or consultation with minority Democrats, as usual -- are voting in a super hurry in an "extraordinary session." Haste makes waste and these guys seem intent on wasting good government in Wisconsin. The news media and public as yet have no clue what's in the bills that shortly will be presented and voted upon with the Wisconsin GOP's usual blitzkrieg pace.
These are dark days for good government in Wisconsin, but maybe there's a chance we can hold the barbarians at the gates a while longer. Go to the jump for my letter. I have no illusions that it will be greatly effective -- my own Republican representative in the Senate -- Alberta Darling -- hasn't for months even bothered to respond with a form letter when I write her with my concerns, and other GOP legislators practice the same aloofness. Some representative democracy! Pitchforks can't be too far in our political future.