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The Most Important Wisconsin Recall Candidate You've Never Heard Of
Meet Lori Compas, the grassroots insurgent taking on a top Republican ally of Gov. Scott Walker.
By Andy Kroll
| Mon Jun. 4, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Witness "the Compas effect" Committee to Elect Lori Compas
On the evening of November 5, 2011, Lori Compas, a wedding photographer and mother of two, logged into Facebook and wrote something crazy. The kickoff of the statewide campaign to recall Gov. Scott Walker was days away. Wisconsinites were whipped into a frenzy. Discussions about what other Republicans to target for recall grew to Homerian lengths in online forums, comment sections, and Facebook threads. Compas decided to weigh in. "Is anyone planning to file papers to recall scott fitzgerald?" she wrote. "If not i'm gonna do it."
Later that month, she did. Then a few months after that, Compas launched her own campaign to defeat Fitzgerald in the recall battle she'd started.
Scott Fitzgerald is the majority leader of the state Senate and a key Walker ally. Lori Compas is the grassroots-powered Democratic candidate hoping to defeat him. Perhaps no candidate in Tuesday's Wisconsin recall elections better captures the populist, anti-establishment spirit of last year's protests at the Madison capitol, kicked off when Walker "dropped the bomb" on public employees by proposing to strip most of them of their right to collectively bargain.
But before all that, 18 months ago, Compas, 41, admits she was a politically oblivious working mom who didn't know her own state senator's name. Today? She's raised $200,000 for her campaign to oust that same state senator. Her commercials run on local TV. And her red "Lori Compas for Senate" signs freckle the lawns of the 13th Senate District. Compas, her two paid staffers, and her hundreds of fired-up volunteers want to pull off the upset of a generation.
more...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/wisconsin-recall-lori-compas-scott-fitzgerald-walker
rfranklin
(13,200 posts)It would be sweet!
PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)malaise
(269,212 posts)Rec