Wisconsin's historic recall elections wrap up this week

No matter what happens in Wisconsin's next round of recall elections on Tuesday, Republicans will maintain control of that state's Legislature.

Because GOP lawmakers retained four of the six seats up for grabs last week, this week's recall votes in two Democratic districts are essentially moot. If Democrats keep the seats, the Republicans retain a one-vote majority in the Senate. If Republicans flip those districts, the GOP will have the same three-vote advantage it held before the recalls.

Democrats claim they're gaining. But unlike hand grenades and horseshoes, "close" doesn't count in politics. Wisconsin Dems really can't crow too much after laying out $28 million and outspending Republicans roughly 2-to-1.

The Democrats' two pickups were explicable, if not expected. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, one victory came in a Democratic-leaning district; the other involved a Republican incumbent who recently left his wife to take up with a "barely-legal" party aide.

Last week's recall campaigns were a reaction to Republicans' curtailment of public workers' collective bargaining privileges. Yet the media-fueled "backlash" against the GOP sputtered in a state that Barack Obama carried easily in 2008.

Indeed, progressives' marginal results in the Badger State -- the cradle of collective bargaining -- should be a cautionary tale for Florida Democrats, and may further embolden conservatives.

Watch for Florida Republicans to take another run at "paycheck protection" to derail automatic dues-collections by unions.

Last week, at a national education-reform competition, Patricia Levesque, head of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future, may have tipped the state GOP's hand when she declared, "We'll tackle collective bargaining next year."

Business groups, including the Florida Chamber of Commerce, have accused the Florida Education Association and other public-employee unions of using "Wisconsin-style" tactics of busing in demonstrators from out of state to pressure lawmakers.

Unions deny the charges, but left-wing adjuncts such as Progress Florida continue to organize protests and stir the social media pot with Twitter tags like #ItGetsWorseFL -- an obvious play on the LGBT anti-bullying "ItGetsBetter" campaign.

Whether the Left's ad-hominem demonizing of Gov. Rick Scott will be any more effective than the quixotic efforts to take down Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker remains to be seen. For the next 15 months, Obama and the Democrats appear to have bigger and more immediate electoral challenges of their own.

Badly outvoted at the Florida Legislature, reactionary liberals will look to unelected judges to impose a "progressive" agenda over the duly enacted reforms of the people's popularly elected representatives.

Inside Wisconsin, Tuesday's votes will again be seen as a referendum on Walker's Republican policies since his election last year. It may also give Democrats who hope to recall Walker next year a sense how such an effort might turn out.

Outside the state, pundits will be seeking more clues to what 2012 holds in the national elections.

In Wisconsin, not only have Republicans kept control of the state Senate by the slimmest of margins, the limits they wanted to impose on public workers are now state law.

Walker fought for the curbs, which severely diluted union bargaining power and also make public workers pay more for healthcare and pensions, saying they were needed to help Wisconsin close a $3.6 billion budget deficit.

Democrats cried foul, pointing out that public workers already agreed to steep benefit cuts. They called the effort as union-busting, designed to hobble organized labor -- a major source of Democratic Party financing -- ahead of 2012.

The fight thrust Wisconsin into the national spotlight, igniting massive pro-union protests and political fights that led to the recall efforts against six Republicans who backed the union curbs and three Democrats who opposed them.

On Tuesday, analysts will be watching turnout carefully, since the key issue of senate control --- and a possible legislative block on Walker's conservative agenda -- is settled.

Analysts say Democrats may be less motivated to turn out to vote. Tea Party activists, meanwhile, appear more energized by the recent fight in Washington over the debt ceiling, seen as a clear victory for conservatives in the budget-cutting concessions agreed by President Obama and Democrats.

The nine Wisconsin recalls are historic. Until this summer, there had been only 20 state-level recall elections in the 235-year history of the United States.

Reflecting the national spotlight Wisconsin drew over the winter as Walker and his allies battled state Democrats, a tidal wave The money poured into the campaigns has been something for the record books, too.

Mike Buelow, research director for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, estimates that candidates and outside groups spent as much as $37 million on the recalls.

That amount is "really astronomical for Wisconsin," he said -- more than double the amount spent on state legislative races last year when 116 seats -- not nine -- were up for grabs.

With the recalls acting as somewhat of a rehearsal for 2012, experts say the spending could be a harbinger of record outlays next year.

"This is the first major election of 2012," said Joseph Heim, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, "and one of the things we saw here was huge amounts of money.