On April 5, Wisconsinites will go to the poll to pick a new supreme court justice. The election has gained prominence because many political analysts believe the Budget Repair Bill may one day end up before the high court. Throughout the campaign, challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg has claimed she is politically unbiased and impartial. However analysis of her political history, donations and comments have called that into question. Now Media Trackers has learned that Kloppenburg accepted a campaign donation from the husband of Judge Maryann Sumi, the judge who caused a firestorm of controversy by blocking Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill.

Additionally, Sumi’s husband, Carl Sinderbrand, an environmental lawyer, also represents a party in a pending case in which Kloppenburg is defending the other side – the state DNR.

Underscoring the growing ties between her campaign and attempts to stop Walker’s agenda, Kloppenburg’s campaign website boasts an endorsement from a vocal member of the “Wisconsin 14” – one of the Democratic senators who fled the state, Sen. Chris Larson.

According to Wispolitics.com, Kloppenburg said during a debate with incumbent David Prosser this week that “she also wouldn’t need to recuse herself from any cases on the collective bargaining bill because she has remained independent during the protests in Madison.”

However, the donation from Sumi’s husband raises serious questions as to whether Kloppenburg, if victorious, could even hear the state Attorney General’s challenge to Sumi’s ruling, which could eventually reach the state Supreme Court.

(more…)

There was already cause for Judge Maryann Sumi to have recused herself in the collective bargaining lawsuit since her son, Jake Sinderbrand is a former employee of the AFL-CIO and SEIU, now more conflict of interests have been discovered.

Judge Sumi’s husband, Carl Sinderbrand donated to the campaigns of three of the “Badger 14″:  Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Robert Wirch.  Additionally Sinderbrand donated to Tom Barrett in his fight against Scott Walker for the governorship.

(more…)

Today, a liberal judge in a liberal Wisconsin county at the request of a liberal district attorney has issued a temporary restraining order that blocks publication — and therefore the enactment, of the law Governor Scott Walker and Republican legislators passed that limits Public Union collective bargaining rights to issues regarding wages only. This order, issued by Dane County (Madison) Court Judge Maryann Sumi is strictly based on a technical procedural issue. No one’s arguing the law passed wasn’t constitutional (yet– see #2 below), the question is whether or not Republicans violated Wisconsin’s open-meeting law during the session in which the vote took place.   They didn’t.

But whatever the legal outcome, the bill will still pass. In a worst case scenario the Republicans merely need to reconvene and pass the bill again, this time making triple-pinky-sure the Left can’t hassle them in court regarding the open-meeting law. Should this happen, the big question is whether or not State Senate Democrats will repeat their shameful escapades and hot-foot it to Illinois again. But even that won’t stop the law from passing because a quorum isn’t necessary for this part of the bill.

So if this is the case, then what’s going on? If there’s no way the Left can stop the law from eventually being passed, what are they up to?

Three things:

1. The Psychological Game: Yesterday, I published a piece detailing the intensifying threats, violence, vandalism and intimidation taking place in Wisconsin against Republican legislators and their supporters in the form of  Tea Party leaders and local businesses. Obviously, the idea here is to use the worst kind of thuggish mob tactics on legislators in the hopes they’ll be too afraid to vote for this bill a second time. If you remember the tension and stress we as a nation went through while the 2000 presidential election was being recounted and litigated, multiply that times 100 and mix it with the continuous threat of violence. That’s the atmosphere hanging over all of Wisconsin right now.  Ratcheting that tension even higher today is the fact that there will be no final ruling from this judge for at least another two weeks, which means the  tunnel of emotional hell these legislators thought they might finally be emerging from has just slammed shut.

(more…)