Tea partiers: We have 50% of the signatures we need to recall the fleebaggers

The American Patriot Recall Coalition was trying to give some focus to local activists who didn’t know how to pull this off. (Baltes’ most recent experience with the recall is his campaign to remove Tucson’s Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who criticized the tone of Republican politicians in the wake of a January shooting spree at an event hosted by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.) There are local Tea Party activists. According to Baltes, there are at least 12 of them in every targeted district and up to 50 of them in key districts. They have to get as few as 11,817 signatures and as many as 20,352 to force recalls.

“We’re right at the 50 percent mark in all of the districts we’re targeting,” Bartes said.

That’s exactly what Democrats are saying about their own campaign. On Tuesday, spokesman Graeme Zielinski confirmed what he’d told the Washington Post this week—that Democratic volunteers have exceeded 45 percent of the signatures they need across all districts and exceeded 50 percent of the signatures they need to go after three districts in particular. Zielinski wouldn’t confirm it, but it’s suspected that these are the districts where polls give Democrats the lead in potential recalls—Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, and Luther Olsen.