Wisconsin Democrat leaves secretary of state's post after ginormous four decades in office
Democrat Doug La Follette ended an era in Wisconsin politics on Friday when he resigned as secretary of state after close to five decades in office, a period where his never powerful post has become weaker and weaker over time. Gov. Tony Evers quickly announced that he was appointing former state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, who dropped out of the 2022 Senate race shortly before the Democratic primary, to an office that operates with just a $250,000 annual budget and does not oversee elections.
La Follette is a member of a prominent Badger State political family that included his great-great uncle “Fighting Bob” La Follette, the legendary progressive Republican senator who ran for president as an independent in 1924; the senator’s son and namesake, Sen. Robert La Follette Jr., also made his mark in American politics before losing his 1946 GOP primary to none other than Joe McCarthy.
Doug La Follette, for his part, outpaced those two relatives in sheer political longevity, but he never managed to rise above secretary of state despite many attempts. The Democrat lost a 1970 primary for southeastern Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District by 20 votes to eventual winner Les Aspin, who would resign in 1993 to become Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense, before prevailing in a state Senate race two years later. La Follette won the secretary of state’s office in 1974 but gave it up in 1978 to run for lieutenant governor: He earned the Democratic nod, but the ticket led by Gov. Martin Schreiber lost 54-45 to the Republican team of Lee Dreyfus and Russell Olson.
La Follette took a distant third in the 1981 nonpartisan race for superintendent of public instruction, but he decisively regained the secretary of state’s office the next year. (Incumbent Vel Philips, who was the first African American elected statewide, took a weak third in the primary after critics accused her of doing little in office.).
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/17/2158831/-Wisconsin-Democrat-leaves-secretary-of-state-s-post-after-ginormous-four-decades-in-office
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"The 1.26 million people who voted for me during the November 2022 election should be outraged at the news that Secretary of State Doug La Follette has stepped down just three months after being sworn-in for yet another term after 40 years of doing nothing in that office," she said in a statement.
"In fact, the people who voted for LaFollette thinking he would fulfill his promised obligation should also be upset that the new Secretary of State has been appointed by Governor Evers and not chosen by the voters unless that was the idea all along."
Loudenbeck said though the appointment is legal, "this move coming so soon after the election raises questions once again about the tactics used by those in power who will do anything to keep that power."
