It's starting. News is coming out on all kinds of interesting stories - too different to merit a single title. So, here we go:
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Good News! Dems Likely to Get Back the State Senate Majority!
We retook the State Senate majority when Republican Van Wanggaard, following his confirmatory loss in the recount he demanded, decided not to pursue a lawsuit to attempt to cling to his seat. John Lehman was sworn in, the State Senate met, and committees were reassigned in line wth the new Democratic majority.
All was well until State Senator Tim Cullen (D-Janesville) didn't like his committee assignments and offered chairmanship and announced he was leaving the Democratic Caucus and becoming an independent. This snivelling I'm taking my ball and going home move left the State Senate in a tie.
Just breaking now is an apparant agreement between Democratic Leader Mark Miller and Tim Cullen on committee assignments. A joint press conference will be held at 2:30 PM Central Time to announce the details.
It's likely that Cullens taking our State Senate majority hostage has worked to get him the committee assignments and chairmanship he wants. I'll update as information becomes available.
UPDATE:
Tim Cullen is back in the Democratic Caucus and we have our State Senate majority back.
On Friday, the two held a news conference announcing Miller was forming two new committees that Cullen would chair, one on small business and venture capital and one on mining. Cullen is also getting a seat on the Transportation Projects Commission and the Senate Committee on Health, Revenue, Tax Fairness and Insurance.He grabbed a great hostage and got his shameful reward. Sadly, he's not up for re-election until 2014 and by then voters won't remember this childishness action.
On the bright side, Mark Miller can now continue to obtain documents hidden by the Republican majority in their secret contracts with off-site law firms (like the one that did our recent redistricting completely in secret with no input from the public, community groups, or even Republicans that didn't sign the secrecy oath). Additionally, Gov. Scott Walker cannot call a special legislative session to ram through additional Koch/ALEC/extremist GOP blls. They've devastated the state enough already.