Posted on 05/31/2011 9:54:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
JoAnn Kloppenburg finally conceded the Wisconsin Supreme Court race this morning, announcing that she had called incumbent Justice David Prosser to congratulate him on his win. She had until today to file a challenge to the recount, which gained her 312 votes but still left her slightly over 7,000 votes behind Prosser in the hotly-contested election:
Candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg has accepted the results of the recount in her state Supreme Court race and conceded to incumbent Justice David Prosser.
Prosser originally won the election by 7,316 votes, out of 1.5 million cast. Kloppenburg requested a statewide recount through, which she picked up 312 votes.
She had until Tuesday to decide whether to challenge the results in court.Prosser’s campaign has said there’s no basis for a challenge and it’s time to move on.
The news conference is still ongoing, although the TMJ4 live stream provided by the Journal-Sentinel has the sound turned off. Stay tuned for more …
Update: Again, I missed her statement, but 620TMJ has a couple of quotes:
Kloppenburg asked for a statewide recount after preliminary figures had her losing to Prosser.
“Wisconsin law makes it clear that even when such a record has been developed in such a recount, the threshold for a court to overturn such an election is appropriately very high,” said Kloppenburg.
“It would serve no purpose to bring a suit with insufficient legal basis.”
Why not? The recount had insufficient common-sense basis, and Kloppenburg didn’t hesitate to spend taxpayer money on a fruitless attempt to reverse a 7316-vote deficit. Maybe it would serve no purpose because Kloppenburg would foot the bill in an election challenge — and because she might want to run for office again in a state that would get pretty angry over a nonsensical challenge to a 7000-vote margin loss.
I’m really surprised. And kuddos to her for showing some character for a change. Watch your back, Klopp. The unions are vicious.
I’m surprised she didn’t just keep announcing that she won. That’s the dems’ way: ignore reality.
I think the unions just did not want to spend any more money on this. They are going to turn their full time and attention to a Scott Walker recall campaign.
This was all a "union tragedy play" just to keep things roiled up and make the unions believe that DemonRats are their best friends.
It cost the state a lot of money (which will be paid for by my taxes).
With respect I don’t think character was part of the equation.
She was either told what to do or simply wanted to retain any shred of future viability.
Another one bites the dust, ha ha ha
.." but she was good enough, she was smart enough, and doggone it, people liked her."
I did say for a change. Everyone expected her to contest the election ad nauseum to obfuscate and delay a fair election, so to go against the flow is something to praise. I still think her wasting the taxpayers’ money in a senseless recount was unforgivable, but to finally stop against union and DemocRAT screams for blood shows some semblance of sanity.
I haven’t been happier about being wrong in a long time. I never thought she would.
She had to concede. They’re filming the remake of the Wizard of Oz and she is playing the Wicked Witch.
They hired her because of all the money they’ll be saving in the Makeup Department.
I know, I’m being mean...
Good news but I’m surprised, thought she would resist until the last dog was dead.
The “liberal/union surge” was aborted as an embryo.
I’m guessing the party looked at this and saw that the PR downside was far greater than any potential upside of delaying and deadlocking the court by forcing Prosser to recuse himself. Fear of backlash working against them in recall elections maybe?
I'm sure there were a lot of Dems telling her she should fall on her sword and demand a recount no matter what she wanted, and are very disappointed in her decision. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this decision was made and the union bosses found out.
Normally I'd agree with you and hope that sanity prevailed. But the left has shown time and time again that when they do something that appears "sane", there is something sinister behind it. Always watch what the other hand is doing.
Still, for her to go against the most strident leftists imaginable was something commendable.
Lead the Kloppinghorse back to the barn. Her race is over.
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