DPW Blog

Today, the Government Accountability Board certified our signatures and set June 5 as the recall election date. This election will be the first major battleground of the 2012 cycle, and what happens in Wisconsin has major implications for the direction of both Wisconsin and our great nation.

It is in Wisconsin where we will decide if the halls of power are to be forever hijacked by extreme Tea Party politicians and their powerful special interests or if our democracy is still open to ordinary, hardworking people.

The grassroots effort that successfully gathered a million signatures to recall Scott Walker was a resounding victory for working, middle-class families. More than 25,000 volunteers worked tirelessly over the last two months to collect, verify and prepare 1.9 million signatures  – a historic achievement. 

Tammy Baldwin started a thank you card for all of our recall volunteers. Maggie, Mitch and I signed our names to the card today. Will you join us by signing your name too and by passing along the thank you card to your friends and family? 

Wisconsin's next governor will be quite different than Scott Walker.

We are in the final stages of collecting the signatures necessary to recall Walker, in a vast, people-powered movement fueled by an historic rejection of his radical agenda.

Walker's strategy will be to prolong the period before the recall is certified, with wasteful lawsuits and other shabby game-playing, but it will not hold off the inevitable.

The question will then turn to the candidate who will replace him. I have no doubt Walker's successor will be able and qualified. And I know, whoever emerges, he or she will be much more than that -- because that is what Wisconsin is now demanding.