In Wisconsin, the spring primary elections are on February 20th, less than a month away. The fact that these elections are just around the corner didn't slow Wisconsin Republicans from blowing them up by firing the heads of the ethics commission and the elections commission for no reasons other than retaliation and pure pettiness:

.The Wisconsin Senate voted Tuesday to oust leaders of the bipartisan state agencies charged with running elections and overseeing ethics laws, the latest move by Republicans to exact revenge on anyone connected with a now-closed investigation into Gov. Scott Walker and other conservatives.

The highly unusual Senate vote was designed to force out two former employees of the now-shuttered agency that approved the Walker probe who were later selected to head the newly created bipartisan Elections and Ethics commissions.

And when I say retaliation and pure pettiness, I wasn't kidding:

Fitzgerald said he could never support Bell or Haas because of their work for the GAB, which conservatives believe unfairly investigated Walker and other Republicans for alleged illegal campaign coordination. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ended the secret investigation, known as a John Doe, in 2015 and no one was charged.

The vote, which was taken without a public hearing beforehand, as is the norm, was also without merit:

The Ethics Commission on Monday night, just hours before the vote, released findings of its own internal investigation conducted by a former federal prosecutor, Patrick Fiedler, and his law firm. Their investigation determined “there is not a scintilla of evidence that Brian Bell has ever performed any of his governmental duties in a partisan manner.”

[...]

Haas did not work directly on the John Doe investigation, but did review legal filings made in lawsuits over the probe. Bell did not work on the investigation and publicly criticized the former GAB last week, saying he left it because he thought it was mismanaged and unfairly enforcing the law.

As if it wasn't clear before, the dark money syndicate is in charge of the State of Wisconsin and they don't even care about hiding their misdeeds anymore.

I'm sure the Republicans also see the added bonus of making it easier to commit election fraud in an effort to stem the Blue Wave that's already hit the state once in a special election last week.