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" (Optional soundtrack to this blog post...)      Late in the evening, a little ray of sunshine. Who knew? Now, if this state-senate result holds up, and I suspect we&amp;#039;re in for a long three weeks of formal and informal argument, at the end of it all, Scott Walker may have to be as much of a conciliator as he pretended to be in that speech last night. Before then, however, yoicks: Around 12:50 a.m., Justin Phillips, Wanggaard&amp;#039;s campaign manager, released a statement saying, &amp;quot;We owe it to all of Senator Wanggaard&amp;#039;s supporters and the voters of Wisconsin to thoroughly examine the election and its results and act accordingly once we have all of the information.&amp;quot;  Uh-oh. Until last night, control of the Wisconsin state senate depended on one renegade Republican named Dale Schultz, who represents a district in the southeastern part of the state. Schultz was the only vote against Walker&amp;#039;s union-stripping bill, and he also helped kill a mining bill beloved by the governor and the various financial interests that pull the governor&amp;#039;s strings. While Schultz&amp;#039;s ability to stand the gaff is admirable, it&amp;#039;s better to have an actual Democratic senator holding the balance of power there. There was some truly weird shit going down in Waukesha, where election officials had insisted that controversial county clerk Kathy Nikolaus would have nothing to do with the election, due to her incompetence (or worse) in handling a tight Supreme Court race a year ago when she &amp;quot;found&amp;quot; 14,000 votes that she had &amp;quot;forgotten&amp;quot; to include in her count, tipping the race to the Republican incumbent. However, yesterday, she was in the Waukesha City Hall. People saw her in different places. (I had three different people tell me they saw her. After a while, it was like looking for Nessie or Sasquatch.) Even if you found her, like Wade Boggs once did, she willed herself invisible.... Nickolaus refused to respond to questions in her office, turning her back and closing her office door while a reporter waited at a service counter. Her deputy, Kelly Yaeger, didn&amp;#039;t respond, either. Ninja clerk! The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is sure there&amp;#039;s a pony under there somewhere. The paper&amp;#039;s editorial endorsement of Walker \u2014 and, arguably, its contention that democracy is messy, inconvenient, and frightens the children \u2014 was reasonably pivotal, and now it thinks the increasingly empowered governor has to listen to it. Silly newspaper.... To Republicans: Walker&amp;#039;s margin of victory was solid - but there is still a significant portion of the population that disagrees with him. If there is any lesson from Walker&amp;#039;s first year and a half in office, it is this: Wisconsin needs a governor who will propose pragmatic ideas and look for consensus before moving forward. That approach, used successfully by Republican and Democratic governors alike, is consistent with Wisconsin&amp;#039;s long history of bipartisanship. Too often, Walker seemed to forget this history. Walker had the right instincts. He was right to focus on the state&amp;#039;s labor costs as part of the solution to closing a gaping budget hole. He was right to make jobs the centerpiece of his administration. But Walker went too far in curtailing collective bargaining for most public workers. He could have met most of his goals with far less acrimony and without union-busting. His take-it-or-leave-it approach exacerbated the turmoil...If nothing else, Walker&amp;#039;s victory should finally break the state&amp;#039;s case of recall fever. It&amp;#039;s time to recover from this irksome malady. Most of all, we call on Walker to show leadership. To us, that means being a governor not just of the majority who supported him Tuesday but of all of Wisconsin. And that means listening to good ideas no matter which end of the political spectrum they come from. It&amp;#039;s time to bring us together. &amp;quot;Irksome malady&amp;quot;? Bob LaFollette wept. CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE FROM ON THE GROUND IN WISCONSIN... "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14333/wisconsin-election-results-9479122/>