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Wisconsin Republicans are gearing up this week to use a lame-duck legislative session to subvert democracy by stripping powers from the governor now that he’s going to be a Democrat. It’s even possible that Republicans will attack Gov.-elect Tony Evers’ ability to veto their next gerrymandering effort. The plot is getting started with a Monday hearing, and it’s not just Evers in the crosshairs: Wisconsin’s next attorney general is also a Democrat, so Republicans are planning to weaken that office, and they want to spend $7 million changing the date of the state’s presidential primary to help a conservative win a state Supreme Court election.
Both Evers and incoming Attorney General Josh Kaul said they’d fight the effort.
"I view this as a repudiation of the last election. I will take any steps possible to assure the people of Wisconsin that I will not invalidate those votes," Evers told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview Saturday. "And frankly, I'm encouraging citizens across the state of Wisconsin to help me in that effort."
Evers isn’t ruling out a lawsuit, saying “We’re exploring options—all of them. But we hope not to take them. We hope legislators will rethink their strategy.”
Kaul took a similar stance:
“This is just not the process we should have in an advanced democracy,” Josh Kaul said in an interview late Sunday. “This is an attempt to undermine the election we had less than a month ago by fundamentally changing the way our state government operates.”
Like Evers, Kaul isn’t saying directly if he would take the matter to court, but he did tell the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that if Republicans go ahead with their plan, he expects it to end up in court—whether he’s the one who sues or someone else does. For now, both Evers and Kaul are focused on trying to stop Republicans from passing legislation to attempt to reverse the effects of the election.