Until the judicial elections last week, the momentum in Wisconsin appeared to favor the unions. After a big and unexpected turnout of conservatives in the state appear to have kept Justice David Prosser on the Supreme Court, the focus now turns to the recall efforts launched by both sides aimed at state Senators. Fox News interviews Dan Baltes of the American Patriot Recall Coalition, who is pushing the efforts on the ground in the eight districts represented at the moment by Democrats who fled the state, who claims that his group is getting close enough to shortly file papers against two incumbents and is optimistic about initiating recalls of all eight. The Fox anchor is more skeptical:

Baltes claims to be more than 60% in half of the cases to the needed signatures, and 75-80% in two of those races. That’s still a fair bit off from meeting the threshold, and the farther we get away from the controversy, the harder it will be to get people engaged for a recall effort. That’s just to initiate the recall itself, too; a recall election would have to be called, and the unions would spend a lot of money to get voters to the polls in these already-Democratic districts. In special elections, the side with a stronger organizational capability usually wins, and that would be the unions and Democrats, especially in the eight districts in question.

I agree with Baltes that the recall statutes are there for a reason, although usually they’re used to remove corrupt officials rather than punishment for a one-time political stunt, offensive as this one was. I’d guess that Wisconsin voters are tired of the drama and want to move on, but it would be nice to see at least a couple of the fleebaggers have to account for themselves in a recall election this summer.