'Filthy, Dirty' Tricks Alleged in Pivotal Wisconsin Election

Update: Prosser slim lead with 98% of vote in. 727,440 to 725,534.

Labor unions are fighting a life and death battle to preserve their hold on the Wisconsin State coffers. If they should win, it will have a ripple effect throughout the nation, telling Republicans that the unions should not be confronted.

For those of you in Wisconsin, we here, in the rest of the states, pray that your grass roots desire to balance your budget is strong enough to survive this test.

Excerpt: Republicans and Democrats are pouring millions into an obscure Wisconsin judicial race that suddenly has emerged as a proxy battle over the policies of GOP Gov. Scott Walker, with each candidate's supporters accusing their opponents of dirty political tricks.

The outcome of Tuesday’s election for the state Supreme Court, which pits incumbent conservative Justice David Prosser against Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, could have national implications

At stake is the measure Walker signed into law that cuts most bargaining rights for public-sector workers. The law is under challenge and likely to be appealed to the state Supreme Court. The court now now holds a slim conservative majority.

“I would say the campaign being run against Prosser is absolutely, filthy dirty,” Levi Russell, a spokesman for Tea Party Express, tells Newsmax.

Russell adds that several of the third-party ads targeting Prosser are “abject lies, just completely false.”

Prossers’ supporters are especially angry that Kloppenburg has refused to denounce an ad in which a third-party progressive organization charges that, when Prosser was the Outagamie County district attorney in 1978, he failed to aggressively prosecute a case against a priest who later was convicted of abusing a man who now lives in Virginia.

The individual who suffered the abuse, Troy Merryfield, has since come forward to appear in a pro-Prosser ad sponsored by Citizens for a Strong America. In that ad, Merryfield states he is “being victimized again. This time, JoAnne Kloppenburg’s allies want to use our pain for their own gain.”

Wisconsin state Sen. Dan Kapanke, a Walker supporter who on Friday became the first GOP senator to face over 20,000 signatures calling for a recall election, tells Newsmax that the national interest the race is generating is “incredible.”

“Wisconsin is like ground zero, and this Supreme Court race has taken on a national tone," Kapanke says. “My recall, and many of the other recall elections, will also take on a national flavor. So there’s a lot at stake here, and there’s a call on both sides to wage a big battle."

A Prosser victory would require a formidable grass-roots campaign, and it is clear one is under way. Kapanke says conservative activists are going door-to-door and mounting a huge telephone campaign to get out the vote.

Read full Newsmax article here.