Waupaca County Republican Party reacts to recall

By Henry Redman, Wisconsin Examiner

Right-wing critics of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos began their effort to recall the longest-serving speaker in state history in part because of his refusal to impeach Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe. 

On Monday, those critics walked into the offices of the WEC to submit more than 10,000 signatures in support of the recall. If the signatures are valid, the group has collected far more than the 6,850 needed to force a recall election. 

Burlington resident Matthew Snorek, who led the recall drive because of Vos’ refusal to impeach Wolfe and criticism of former President Donald Trump, called Vos “the most corrupt member of the Wisconsin Assembly ever.”

“I stand before you honored to represent not just Racine County, but all Wisconsinites ready to end Vos’ era of corruption, tyranny, and secretive dealings,” Snorek said at a news conference before submitting the signatures Monday morning.

Vos has been Assembly speaker for a decade and has represented the 63rd Assembly District since 2005. Despite his leadership of the chamber during some of the Wisconsin Republican Party’s biggest legislative victories, members of his party have turned against him in recent years over disagreements about how aggressively state Republicans should pursue baseless allegations of fraud during the 2020 presidential election. 

That disagreement led to Trump himself endorsing Vos’ primary opponent in 2022. 

Over the weekend, members of the state Republican Party leadership and conservative media criticized the recall effort, saying the leaders weren’t real Republicans because the effort would hurt the party’s leader in an important election year when Vos needs to be recruiting Assembly candidates and in a cycle that — because of new legislative maps — could lead to Democrats winning a majority for the first time in more than a decade. 

Despite the accusations that the recall is a Democratic effort to harm Vos, the dispute is between two wings of the state Republican party fighting over the 2020 election because Vos didn’t go as far as recall organizers wanted. 

Vos hired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to review the results of the 2020 election and allowed that review to continue for more than a year, despite its rising costs and failure to turn up any evidence of fraud. Vos also gave state Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) control of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, allowing her to use the committee’s gavel to spread baseless accusations of election fraud. 

Yet the right wing of the party turned on Vos because he wouldn’t decertify the results of the 2020 election — an unconstitutional legal maneuver that would have had no effect on the result — he ultimately ended the Gableman review and he wouldn’t bring a vote to impeach Wolfe to the Assembly floor. 

In the four years since the 2020 election, Racine County has become one of the state’s hotbeds for election conspiracy theories. The Racine County sheriff has accused five elections commissioners of committing felonies when they adjusted how absentee voting occurs in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

At the WEC offices on Monday were some of the state’s most prominent election deniers, including Harry Wait, a Racine County resident who is facing criminal charges for requesting absentee ballots on behalf of Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason. Wait, who has said he requested the ballots to prove the absentee system is vulnerable to fraud, is the president of H.O.T. Government, an organization dedicated to searching for election fraud. Even though Wait was at the event, H.O.T. Government has insisted it is not part of the recall effort. 

Also at the event was former state Rep. Tim Ramthun, who ran a failed primary campaign for governor in 2022 almost entirely on a campaign based on decertifying the 2020 election results. 

The six members of the WEC are set to meet Tuesday to rule on the validity of the signatures. If the group has collected the required 6,850 valid signatures, a recall election will be scheduled on the Tuesday of the sixth week after the recall petition is declared sufficient. Vos has 10 days to challenge the petition if it’s found sufficient.

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Waupaca County Republican Party reaction

Joel Bartel, chair of the Waupaca County Republican Party, emailed members concerning this on March 11.

“Today, 11,000 citizens, mainly Republicans, signed a petition to Recall Robin Vos, the State Republican Assembly leader,” Bartel wrote. “This Recall is very important so we get the State of Wisconsin Republican Party all on the same page going into November, or as I like to call it the Trump page. Robin Vos has divided our party by not listening to the base. Once the signatures are verified there will be an election in late April and May to unseat him from his position in Racine. This man is evil, and he will throw fellow Republican under the bus to achieve his personal agenda and has even kicked fellow Republicans out of the Republican caucus in Madison.

“Robin Vos has done nothing to secure our elections,” Bartel continued, “redrew the voting maps so Republicans will lose the majority in the Assembly and Senate over the next few years, failed to impeach Meagan Wolfe of the election commission, tried to keep Trump off the ballot, and it goes on and on. Finally it is important to understand these are Republicans who signed the petition, not Democrats.”