Waukesha Damage Control; Nickolaus Steps Aside
Ah, ha! Nickolaus doesn't resign - - as she'd pledged just an hour or two ago - - but steps aside for her deputy and consultants.
Actually, pushed aside, and hard.
Word is that Waukesha County Exec Dan Vrakas applied a consensus shove from the right. I guess they didn't like this line of reasoning from earlier in the afternoon:
Details of the Vrakas power play, here.Kathy Nickolaus Is New Media Face Of The GOP And New Scott Walker BF/Liability
The GOP Waukesha County Clerk declines to step down after another election process breakdown Tuesday night, and promises a "good, clean election" when the recall primary and general elections take place in May and June.
For Walker, another albatross to lug around as he tries to hang on.
And Democrats will point to the razor-thin Prosser win she mismanaged in Waukesha County as proof that Nickolaus is Walker's secret weapon there.
We will enjoy hearing both of them - - the twin faces of the GOP - - spend the next two months denying it.
Bottom line: The GOP dodged a political bullet; Waukesha County and the entire state deserves and should get a more honest and transparent election.
Emphasis on "should get."
"Will get" will have to be proven.
12 comments:
did I call it, or did I call it?
One of f Walker's tools is finally out of the election process.
She was the Waukesha County clerk long before Walker came into office.
Funny, I didn't here any complaints about her when Doyle won statewide election, but still lost in Waukesha County by about the same margins that Walker won by in 2010.
Not exactly true, RD. In 2002, she avoided prosecution in an illegal campaign activity investigation by providing testimony. In 2004, she was sending out incorrect ballots, and sample ballots that included instructions to vote for a specific candidate. In 2006, the system she installed was criticized for being slow and inaccurate, and there were counting and reporting problems.
In reality, Nikolaus has been at the center of voting problems in Waukesha county for some time, and has used her various positions to illegally aid Republicans for quite some time. If you want to use a "but she was never indicted!" defense, feel free. But don't try to pretend she hasn't left a decade's worth of ethically dubious if not illegal actions on behalf of the Republican Party.
Links to all this stuff here:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/human-error-suddenly-results-7500-new
zombie is correct, and RD is admitting to being out of the loop, again. I well recall reading reports in the media of repeated problems with Nicklaus in election after election, since at least 2004. And just a look at the numbers -- 97% turnout? yeh, in dictatorships, maybe -- could have told RD, and anyone who really cared about clean elections, that there was a problem. I remember talking about it every time to people I know in Waukesha County, but they didn't care and even joked about it, the way that Chicagoans do about the corruption there. That made me wonder about just how widespread is the corruption in Waukesha County, even beyond Nicklaus' office.
There's more to the story, and all the pols protecting her there for so long, like Vrakas, did have to rely on her vote counts to keep winning their offices, after all.
Shucks Paw, I'm confused. Does Scott Walker supervise Kathy Nicholas? Have they in fact had any contact with each other other than a casual wave across a crowed fundraiser or something? Has he stepping in and intervened in any way on her behalf? Spoken out in the media to defend her? Is an entire Wisconsin county a de facto wing of the Walker Administration? Would orchestrating the behaviors of an entire county to support fraud in the Walker admin be as difficult as say, James Doyle being able to control all of Dane county? Is Dane county in fact devoid of members of the opposite party? What has happened to your "journalism" here?
And BF - you mean Best Friend? Usually BF is for Boy Friend, you'd see BFF to mean Best Friends Forever more frequently. It's not technically "wrong" but it's a bit off. So anyways, You're saying Walker and Nickolaus are Best Friends? Is that true? or just BFF BS?
I meant Best Friend, son. Literary license. It will be good for the most Republican County and the rest of the state to have a professionally-run election. Monitoring should still occur, just to be on the safe side.
@anon 10:33
If you really think that Vrakas needed Nickolaus to win the Waukesha County Exec office, then YOU are the one "out of the loop."
I'm not sticking up for her, but those of you shouting "fraud, fraud, fraud" as though Waukesha is a democratic strong hold are clearly delusional.
Who's shouting 'fraud'?
I am shouting "Incompetent partisan hack who doesn't deserve a public paycheck".
The idea that the partisan character of Waukesha County has any bearing on Kathy Nickolaus' clearly demonstrated bias and incompetence is a large man made of straw.
But congrats on defeating him.
Will she still receive a paycheck?
Apparently, too many republicans in the place that was not a "democratic stronghold" didn't care about the veracity of the vote.
To ZRMcD: I didn't follow your link to CrooksnLiars (sounds like BootsnSabers, doesn't it?), but I also remember that early in hers and Vrakas' first terms, they both were caught using County computers--on county time--for personal issues: she was planning her daughter's wedding and he was looking for dates. Of course, this being Waukesha County neither one was reprimanded, much less prosecuted or even investigated. Hey, it's all good when yer a Republican!
@anon,
Do you have a source for those allegations against Nickolaus and Vrakas? A news article, union memo, democratic press release, secret informant, something?
I think everyone would be interested in reading a bit more about it. However, without a valid source it is really not very credible.
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