A significant victory for the campaign to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
A top Walker aide said today the Republican governor won't challenge any of the one million signatures submitted on petitions seeking his recall from office because his campaign staff ran out of time to go through them all.
Walker had until 5 p.m. today to file challenges after being granted a 20-day extension to examine the signatures submitted last month (a request for a further two weeks was denied).
Spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said the Walker campaign found an error rate of about 10 percent to 20 percent among the entries it did examine, which is consistent with the 15% figure in a random sampling by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which is about normal for election petition drives.
Democrats and their allies submitted nearly double the 540,208 signatures needed to force a recall election against Walker, who is one of six Republican elected officials facing recall efforts.
The Government Accountability Board, which oversees Wisconsin elections, has until March 19 to rule whether there's enough valid signatures to trigger a recall election against Walker. If a recall election is called, it must take place by April 30.
Meantime, the Wisconsin Democratic party today released its first ad in the Walker recall campaign. “Walkergate” compares the investigation into current and former Walker aides to the Watergate scandal, juxtaposing news clips about the probe with coverage from the 1970s Nixon scandal.
