After careful consideration, I’ve decided to challenge Scott Fitzgerald for the Senate seat he has held for the past 17 years. The campaign website is here. Join our legendary network of grassroots volunteers!

The Republicans’ reply to our rebuttal is at http://webapps.wi.gov/sites/recall/Senate%20Incumbents%20Joint%20Reply/Forms/AllItems.aspx

As I’ve said all along, RECALL FITZ was and is completely fraud-free

You’ll notice that the GOP claims there were fraudulent circulators in the other three recall efforts, but not ours. You’ll also notice no further mention of the Watertown citizen who legally signed our petition using his real name, but who Fitz mistakenly tagged as fraudulent.

Attorneys filed our rebuttal to Fitzgerald’s challenges this afternoon. A quick statement:

From forcing his fellow legislators to sign secrecy pledges in backroom redistricting deals to exorbitant “travel reimbursements” for his one-hour commute, Scott Fitzgerald has made it clear that he will stop at nothing to impose his extreme agenda on our Wisconsin. His latest attempt to keep himself from being held accountable by his constituents is as shameful as it is desperate. He continues to throw any argument at the wall to see what will stick.

I’m proud that 20,000 of Fitzgerald’s constituents exercised our constitutional right to recall Scott Fitzgerald. I have full faith in the fairness of this process and in the honesty and integrity of our volunteers, and I look forward to seeing the election certified soon.

Scott Fitzgerald went on TV the other night claiming that some people signed his recall petition “five, six, seven times.”

From our amazing data genius volunteer:

“I concatenated the petition number and row number in their database. Hundreds of “duplicates” were duplicates in their data entry. In other words, THEY entered petitions multiple times. Duh.”

“From Fitz’s database, I first removed their duplicates that his people created by entering petitions more than once (in Excel concatenate petition number and row number and use “remove duplicates” tool under the “data” tab). Then concatonate first name, last name and use the highlight duplicates tool to color those duplicates and scroll through. Not one person signed more than twice. Some of the names have more than two entries but they are different people — same name but different address. And not a lot of these.”

And what’s more, we’ve had numerous reports of people not finding themselves in Fitzgerald’s database, even though they signed the petition. As our data guru says, “There are definitely valid signatures that were missed in the data entry process. Fitz’s challenge should actually be to their own data entry people.”

… will not be forthcoming this week. Or next week. This is an independent effort and we’re not on the same schedule as the Democrats.

Fitz and his team are trying to find ways to challenge our signatures, and those challenges are due on Feb. 9. We will then have only a few days to defend our signatures, if any defense is needed.

Everyone wants a candidate yesterday, but right now my main concern is seeing our signatures safely through the challenge phase.

Thanks for your understanding!

On Tuesday, January 17, we filed more than 20,600 signatures with the Government Accountability Board. The petition filing was the culmination of two months of serious and difficult work.

Image courtesy of BlueCheddar Blog.

And here’s a video from Arthur Louis:

Thanks to everyone from across the district who braved the snowy roads to join us!

We plan to gather in front of the GAB at 11am tomorrow and take some group photos, and then a few of us will go up to file. After the filing, which should only take a few minutes, we’ll walk somewhere for lunch and a discussion of what comes next. Then we can watch the Walker filing and/or head over to Monona Terrace for the party. Please join us!

Today I was joined by volunteers from across Fitzgerald’s district and Kristin Crowell of We Are Wisconsin to announce that we have gathered more than enough signatures to recall Scott Fitzgerald. Here’s the text of the announcement:

Welcome, and thanks to all of you for coming here this morning. My name is Lori Compas, I live in Fort Atkinson, and I formed the Committee to Recall Scott Fitzgerald.

All of us here today are ordinary people who’ve done an extraordinary thing. We’re here to announce
that together we have exercised our constitutional right and collected more than enough signatures to recall Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald – and we’ll keep going tonight and tomorrow and we will finish this strong.

We took action because over the past year we’ve watched Scott Fitzgerald change from a man who won re-election on a platform of jobs and economic development into a man who was more interested in lining up behind Governor Walker than standing up for us.

We watched him abuse his power.

We watched him betray our trust.

We watched, and we took action. We started this work with no organization and no plan, just the will and the determination of a committed group of people.

I’m so happy to be here with just a few of those people today. Somehow this movement has grown from what some said was a crazy idea into a community of citizens who are taking positive action to regain their voice in the legislature.

We’ve had farmers driving from farm to farm to collect signatures. We’ve had guys camping out in their yard. We’ve had moms looking over city maps like generals, plotting and planning the best canvassing routes. All of us were united by our common belief that government should be responsive to the will of the people.

We’ve developed a diverse, wide-spread community that might not have formed any other way.
Our volunteers are of all ages, from all socio-economic backgrounds, and we hold a wide range of political beliefs. But we hold these things in common:

All of us want to be honorably represented.

All of us want to restore fairness and integrity to the legislature.

And all of us are committed to the difficult and serious task of reclaiming Wisconsin’s proud tradition of open, honest government.

This is a truly grassroots movement, and it’s been my pleasure to guide our volunteers’ efforts. For the past two weeks we’ve been excited to work alongside another grassroots organization, We Are Wisconsin. Their executive director, Kristin Crowell, has joined us today. She’d like to say a few words, and then you’ll hear from two of our volunteers.

And that was that  

I know I said I wouldn’t post any more numbers until January 17, but I can’t resist:

We have 16,000 valid signatures to recall Scott Fitzgerald. We need 16,742 to file, but we sure would like to have a buffer!

Can you help us make history? Mahlon Mitchell will be joining us to canvass Cambridge tonight and we’ll be canvassing all over the district on Friday and Saturday. Please sign up for a shift here!

Join us Wednesday, January 11 for a FitzBlitz in Cambridge! Mahlon Mitchell will be joining volunteers to canvass the Cambridge and Rockdale areas. We’ll meet at 110 West Ridge Circle at 5:30 p.m.

Canvassers will also be departing from the Columbus office  (315 East James Street) for points east at approximately 5:30.

Sign up here to let us know you’ll be coming. Thanks!