Wisconsin Democrats Start Drive to Recall Governor

By MONICA DAVEY
NYT

Democrats in Wisconsin made a long-mulled plan official on Monday night: next month, people will begin collecting signatures to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican in his first year in office whose move to limit collective bargaining rights for public workers set off a political firestorm across the state.

“The people of Wisconsin feel duped,” said Mike Tate, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, in an interview Monday night on “The Ed Show” on MSNBC. In the interview, he announced that activist groups, many of them already involved in protests earlier this year over the collective bargaining question, would begin gathering thousands of signatures on Nov. 15.

Some in Wisconsin thought the recall effort against Mr. Walker might never really materialize. Recall efforts against state senators over the same issues last summer had been bruising and costly, and though two Republicans lost their seats, it was not enough to end Republican control of both chambers of the legislature. The recall requirements, too, are grueling: organizers must gather 540,208 valid signatures (a quarter of the votes cast in last fall’s election for governor) within 60 days of their Nov. 15 start.

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