The last of my three local topics about the recall was whether 13th Senate District race between Scott Fitzgerald and Lori Compas will have any lasting significance for politics in that area (whether in the new or old 13th District).
(For previous posts about the 13th District and its candidates, see The Fitzgerald-Compas Debate in the 13th Senate District, Sen. Fitzgerald’s foolish contention that recall challenger Lori Compas isn’t running her own campaign, and The Democrats’ Recall Forum @ UW-Whitewater (Compas and Jorgensen edition).)
I said that I thought the race would have lasting impact, and I think it will. Here’s why.
Although most politicians, no matter how powerful, fade quickly when not in office or running for office, I think that Lori Compas has a chance at a continuing, and memorable, career. That may seem an odd contention, considering that it’s Fitzgerald who won, and Fitzgerald who’s a senate leader, and Fitzgerald who’s been so much in the news (especially since becoming majority leader). Fitzgerald, after all, carried the district by a wide margin, 47,116 to 32,870.
How could the results be auspicious for Compas?
First, Fitzgerald, no matter how influential, just isn’t a popular statewide figure for the GOP. There are two Republicans who have that political-celebrity status in their party: Scott Walker and Paul Ryan. (Tommy Thompson was once like that, too, but the party he led has changed.) Other Republicans, no matter how influential now (the Fitzgeralds, Robin Vos, Ron Johnson), just don’t have anything like the appeal of Walker and Ryan.
For Democrats, one has Russ Feingold and Tammy Baldwin, and then there’s everyone else. (Neither Barrett nor Falk have anything like the appeal that Feingold and Baldwin have among Democrats.)
Compas’s race (and prior recall-drive leadership) drew the attention of Democrats across the state, and received the notice of influential politicians, reporters, columnists, and activists outside her district. So much so that even if Democrat John Lehman defeats Van Wanggaard, Compas will still be as well known among leading statewide Democrats.
Second, much of Compas’s status among Democrats owes to her work as a recall organizer, before she became a candidate. She began her work in a particular order: recall first, candidacy second. There are lots of candidates; there aren’t as many people who go door-to-door in the winter to collect thousands of petition signatures. She couldn’t have been certain of success when she started, let alone that she would become the 13th District’s recall candidate.
How she began her efforts is much to her credit among Democrats.
Third, she’ll be able to run or organize again, having come through the campaign ably, and more skilled at its end than its beginning. (Fitzgerald didn’t change at all, and having been in office for so many ears, was unlikely to change. It’s Republicans like Walker and Ryan who have, so to speak, upward mobility.)
Compas does, too. She may embrace additional political work, or eschew it all. (I have no idea.) She could, though, easily continue, whether as a candidate or organizer.
Most political careers begin when a candidate wins, but Compas’s – if she wants one — will have started earlier, when she organized a recall within her senate district. That career may be the lasting legacy of the 13th District race.