The pro-labor left appears to have scored a big win in Wisconsin yesterday, as liberal challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg has posted a razor-thin win over conservative sitting Justice David Prosser, an ally of Gov. Scott Walker, in the highly publicized state Supreme Court race.
Those who sympathized with the protesters in Madison throughout February and March viewed the spring election as a chance to flex their political muscles.
Clearly, a recount will decide this race but Kloppenburg has a 204-vote edge with all precincts counted and has declared victory. Voter turnout across Wisconsin was far higher than the typical participation in an off-year election.
Pro-union Democrats say Kloppenburg’s unlikely win, even if it’s erased by the recount, shows that Walker is a divisive, despised figure in Wisconsin politics. The reason for that claim is that the grassroots energy on display at the state Capitol in Madison for weeks at a time created an astounding turnaround in this non-partisan Supreme Court race.
Kloppenburg entered the race, prior to the Madison turmoil, as a virtual unknown, while Prosser is a 40-year veteran of Wisconsin politics. In a primary election in February, in which the field was trimmed to two candidates, Prosser trounced Kloppenburg by 30 points, 55-25. Tuesday’s  results show she doubled her vote share in just over six weeks, while Prosser lost ground.
At The Washington Post, Greg Sargent, draws this conclusion: “This huge shift happened for one reason: Scott Walker.”
 Sargent’s “Plum Line” blog concludes that the outcome reflects a “massive and astonishingly fast swing of support away from Prosser and in Kloppenburg’s favor.
“Second,” Sargent added, “it’s extremely rare in Wisconsin to oust sitting Supreme Court justices. In 2008, Louis Butler was unseated, but …he had originally been appointed and not elected. The last time (a justice was ousted) before that was 44 years ago, and it only happened three times before that since the court was created in 1852.
“Third, for all the talk about labor muscle in this race, labor and Dems were actually outspent on the air by a sizable amount. According to an analysis of outside spending … the pro-Kloppenburg forces spent $1.3 million, while the pro-Prosser forces spent a total of almost $2.2 million, nearly $1 million more.”
If Kloppenburg emerges as the winner — after a recount that is sure to be contentious — that will spark momentum for the recall drives targeting Walker and his Republican colleagues in the state Senate.