Early in the year, Wisconsin got its first taste of the Blue Wave 2018 when there was a special election that ended in a special upset. Patty Schachtner, a Democrat, won a seat held by Republicans for nearly two decades. Not only did she win it, she caused a 30+ point turnaround.
Tuesday was the spring election day for Wisconsin and the Blue Wave came back - only bigger, better and stronger.
The big race was when moderate Rebecca Dallet easily beat the right wing nut job Michael Screnock to win a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
Rebecca Dallet trounced Michael Screnock on Tuesday for a seat on the state Supreme Court, shrinking the court's conservative majority and giving Democrats a jolt of energy heading into the fall election.
It marked the first time in 23 years that a liberal candidate who wasn't an incumbent won a seat on the high court.
“I attribute it to Wisconsin voters standing up to special interests," said Dallet, a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge. "I think they're ready to have fair and independent courts.
"I’m the candidate with the most experience, really standing up for the rights of Wisconsinites every day and I think people saw that and spoke out today and I’m quite excited by it, by the results.”
Screnock and the Republicans are back on their heels by this win. Screnock did everything by the GOP playbook. He pledged fealty to the NRA. As a young man, he was arrested for causing a scene outside of a Planned Parenthood clinic. He took massive amounts of money from the dark money special interest groups.
Yet he got slaughtered at the polls.
And that wasn't all, folks! There's more. There's always more.
The Republicans' decades long goal of eliminating the office of the state treasurer went down even harder. After two years of using their stranglehold on the state legislature to start the process of changing the constitution, it was finally up for referendum. It lost by more than 20 points:
It turns out Wisconsinites want to have a state treasurer, after all.
By a strong margin, voters Tuesday beat back a constitutional amendment and kept Wisconsin's 170-year-old treasurer's office.
"I'm flabbergasted that the results are as high as they are," said former GOP Treasurer Jack Voight, who led a coalition to keep the office. "I thought it would be a much closer vote than this."
With little spending on either side of the referendum and no known polling, it wasn't clear until Tuesday which side would prevail in the contest that culminated a years-long effort to abolish the office. Some voters may have been surprised just to find the question on their ballots.
"No governor, no politician or political party should be above our state constitution," Voight said.
I can't wait until November for the third visit from the Blue Wave. Scott Walker and Lyin' Paul Ryan better start packing their bags now and avoid the Christmas rush.
