A group working to recall state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said Friday it has collected enough signatures to force the veteran Republican legislator into an election. Lori Compas, a Fort Atkinson photographer who serves as the recall group’s chairwoman, said it had collected more than the 16,742 signatures needed to trigger the election, although she declined to say exactly how many. She said volunteers would continue to gather signatures through Saturday, the last day they are allowed. The signatures must be turned in to the state Government Accountability Board by Tuesday. “Over the last year we have watched Scott Fitzgerald change from a man who won re-election on a platform of jobs and economic development into a man who is more interested in lining up behind Gov. Walker than stand up for us,” she said at a news conference at the Capitol. “We watched him abuse his power. We watched him betray our trust. We watched and we took action.” Fitzgerald spokesman Andrew Welhouse didn’t immediately return messages. Democrats and their allies are looking to punish Republicans for passing a contentious law last year that stripped most public workers of nearly all their union rights. The brainchild of Gov. Scott Walker, the proposal generated weeks of around-the-clock protests at the Capitol and drove the Senate’s 14 Democrats to flee the state in a futile attempt to block a vote on the plan. Fitzgerald and other Republican leaders in the Legislature finally broke the impasse by hastily calling a committee meeting to strip the fiscal components from the plan. The move enabled the Senate to vote without a full quorum and Walker ultimately signed the plan into law in March. Democrats ousted two Republican senators from office in recall elections last summer, although four other Republican senators survived recall attempts, maintaining the GOP’s control of the chamber by a single seat. The Democrats have spent the last two months working to gather enough signatures to force Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, Fitzgerald and three other GOP senators into recall elections as well. Few gave the Fitzgerald recall push much of a chance. The 48-year-old Juneau Republican looked invulnerable; his southeastern Wisconsin district just re-elected him to his fifth term in 2010. Compas, though, said she was inspired after watching Fitzgerald ignore Assembly Democratic Minority Leader Peter Barca’s shouts during the committee meeting that Republicans were violating the state’s open meetings law. She ran the signature drive almost single-handedly at first, but by the beginning of January the group had gathered 12,000 signatures and it was clear its efforts were gaining momentum, she said. “I realized no one else was going to do this,” she said. “I met a lot of people who just didn’t feel right (about Fitzgerald). ” On Thursday Fitzgerald filed a complaint with the GAB arguing Compas’ group was given too much time to gather signatures. He said he believes the 60-day window for collection should end Friday at 5 p.m., and that any signatures gathered after that should be disqualified. The board said at the outset of the recall effort on Nov. 15, however, that the clock didn’t start ticking until the day after a recall group registers, which means signatures can be collected through Saturday. Compas and her supporters blew off the complaint Friday. “That’s a kid who’s not winning at Monopoly throwing the game up at the end,” Sarah Hammer, a 38-year-old volunteer signature collector, said of the complaint after the news conference ended. No candidates have emerged to challenge Fitzgerald in a recall election. Compas said Friday she doesn’t plan to run. Whoever goes up against Fitzgerald faces a tough task. He’s a seasoned legislative veteran with almost 20 years of experience in Madison. He has an expansive network of connections and a mountain of money; according to the latest campaign finance reports, he had $280,269 in the bank.
