DALLAS — There is the Tea Party Patriots “Fire the Speaker” petition, which is not to be confused with the FreedomWorks “Fire the Speaker” petition, or the websites variously urging people to “Fire John Boehner” and “Pledge to Fire Boehner.”

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Katrina Pierson would sign them all, but she hardly needs to put her name on a petition to validate her anti-Boehner credentials. Ms. Pierson, a local Tea Party leader here who has never sought public office, is aggressively campaigning to unseat one of the speaker’s top lieutenants in the House, Representative Pete Sessions, a nine-term Republican who is chairman of the influential Rules Committee.

“If we were to take out a sitting, two-decade member of the leadership, that’s massive,” she told about three dozen people who came to hear her speak in the living room of an elegant three-story colonial that belongs to one of her supporters in the exclusive University Park enclave.

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As for Ms. Pierson, her supporters’ expectations are not unrealistic either, but they say they will still do whatever they can to overcome their long odds. When the audience at the University Park home exhausted its questions, the hostess reminded everyone that on top of giving money, putting up a yard sign and spreading the word, there was one other thing they could do to help the candidate: Pray.

The chief investigator of the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, David Budde, testified on November 1, 2010, that Walker himself, as Milwaukee county executive, was illegally using the private communication system that his staff had set up.

Budde was asked under oath: “Did you find any e-mails written by the County Executive himself” on “personal laptops in the County Executive’s Office?”

Budde answered with one word: “Yes.”