Spring, Sprang, Sprung edition

Happy spring!

… she said as she made a small snowman somewhere in the middle of the Eastern Seaboard.

Well, whether it seems like it or not, it’s definitely technically spring. Which is, like, a time for renewal or whatever.

But statehouse action is seasonless. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call…

… out Republicans for doing Very Bad Things. Like a judge just did in Wisconsin.

Spring BREAKING: A Wisconsin circuit court judge has ordered Gov. Scott Walker to call special elections to fill two vacant state legislative seats.

• The seats became vacant in December 2017, when Walker appointed two Republican lawmakers to his administration.
• Walker wanted to delay filling the seats until “special” elections could be held concurrent with general elections this November.
  • This plan would have left voters in these state Assembly and state Senate seats unrepresented for more than a year.

Fun fact! The judge who ordered Walker to hold special elections to fill the seats before November was appointed to the bench by Walker himself in 2014.

• Walker’s refusal to hold these special elections predates an epic special election upset in Wisconsin’s SD-10 in January, but Democrats had already flipped 34 state legislative seats from red to blue at that point in the cycle—a stark fact someone as politically adept as Walker was certainly aware of.

And if you’re worried about losing special elections, what better way to prevent that than not having them at all?

• Walker’s little Twitter freakout in response to Democrat Patty Schachtner flipping this deeply and historically Republican Senate seat further supports a sense of dread that extends beyond just one special election upset.
  • Calling this red-to-blue flip a “wake up call,” Walker gave voice to the extremely reasonable fear Republicans are feeling about Democrats’ down-ballot electoral success this cycle.

Okay, so we’re going to have special elections. Can Democrats flip these seats? 

• Both seats (SD-01 and AD-42) voted for Trump, 56-39 and 55-40, respectively.
• But in 2012, Romney won SD-01 only 52-47, and Obama actually won AD-42 by a 51-48 margin.
  • For frame of reference, that SD-10 seat Democrats flipped in November? Trump won 55-38 there.

So yeah, no wonder Walker wasn’t eager to fill these seats in special elections.

But Wisconsin isn’t the only GOP-led state that’s balking at special elections these days.

• Florida Gov. Rick Scott is also refusing to fill two vacant legislative seats: state House District 33 and Senate District 16.
  • The open Senate seat alone leaves more than half a million Floridianswithout representation for almost a year.
  • And if you’re wondering why Scott might be afraid to hold those specials ... well, Trump won SD-16 by a 56-42 spread—in other words, the kind of turf that's been in reach for Democrats this year. (Trump carried HD-33 by a much more comfortable 69-29 margin, but Scott can’t possibly justify holding a special for one seat and not the other.)
• While we’re talking about Republicans refusing to hold special elections for fear of losing them, let’s revisit Alabama, where Republicans are upping the anti-democracy ante by basically trying to do away with ALL THE SPECIAL ELECTIONS.
  • First, Republicans pushed a measure that would eliminate special elections for U.S. Senate seats; a gubernatorial appointee would instead occupy the seat until the next general election.
    • This measure passed the state House along party lines.
    • It’s currently poised to pass out of a Senate committee.
  • Republicans also want to eliminate most special elections to fill vacant state legislative seats.
    • If a vacancy occurs after the first two years of a lawmaker’s term, a special election would not be called to fill the seat. (Fun fact: state representatives and senators all serve four-year terms in Alabama.)
    • Instead, the governor would appoint someone to the post until the next general election.
    • This measure has passed both chambers of the legislature, but it still must be approved by a majority of the state’s voters in November as an amendment to the state Constitution.
• GOP lawmakers claim that both proposals are aimed at saving money.

Funny how Alabama Republicans didn’t care about election costs until they got their butts handed to them in one of those special elections they suddenly want to do away with.

ImPeachy Keen: A month and a half or so ago, a Republican lawmaker had a totally reasonable response to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling the GOP’s severely gerrymandered congressional maps unconstitutional: IMPEACH!

• But this wasn’t just some crazy backbencher screaming into the void; Rep. Cris Dush received tacit approval from GOP legislative leadership, and a GOP members of the U.S. House and Senate voiced their support.
• And now that a new, fairer map is definitively in place for Pennsylvania’s congressional elections this fall, Republicans are moving to make good on this impeachment threat.
  • On Tuesday, Dush filed impeachment resolutions against four of the fiveDemocratic state Supreme Court justices—the same four justices who ruled against the GOP-gerrymandered map and required a replacement map to be used starting this year.
  • A dozen of Dush’s fellow Republicans have also signed on, and key GOP House leaders say they’ll consider the impeachment resolutions.
• On Thursday, the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court—notably, one of the members not targeted for impeachment, and a Republican, to boot—took the unusual step of issuing a statement denouncing the GOP’s move to impeach his fellow justices.
  • Chief Justice Thomas Saylor rightly called out the threats as retaliation for the justices’ “decision in a particular case” and as “an attack upon an independent judiciary.”

Of course, we know that “attacking an independent judiciary” is something Republicans are super hot for.

Read the rest of this week's edition here.

Sign up to get This Week in Statehouse Action delivered hot and fresh to your inbox each week here.