What's in the Randy Hopper today

Madison's Channel 3000 reports:

It is correct that my husband, Randy Hopper, started an affair in January 2010 with a then-25-year-old Republican aide.

Closer to home, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Dan Bice apparently doesn't care for the story, on privacy grounds. And insofar as this is an obviously painful personal situation, Bice's scorn is not misplaced.

But this is no longer a case of "liberal bloggers" circulating a rumor. By writing a letter to the press, it's something one of the interested parties wants the public to know about. She didn't have to do that.

Hopper teevee spot: "Madison's broken. The system needs overhaul."

eta:

Hopper’s campaign spokesperson Jeff Harvey wrote "Senator Hopper maintains an apartment in the district where he lives." . . . The address provided is not an apartment, but a Town of Empire home co-owned by a campaign contributor who is also an employee of a radio station owned by Hopper. The radio station employee has yet to return a call from WKOW27 News seeking comment on whether Hopper is residing in her home.

Hopper's residence uncertain

That can't be good.

In re Randy Hopper: Only 15,268 signatures to go

Recall organizers having reportedly obtained the support of the State Senator's estranged wife: Via Mal Contends and Blogging Blue.

Little of the above appears to have been confirmed by more traditional means, but it is true that Randy Hopper, Republican of Fond Du Lac, is embroiled in divorce proceedings and headed for trial, and it is true that Persuasion Partners Inc. scrubbed Sen. Hopper's alleged Madison girlfriend from its website yesterday.

Domestic arrangements substantially similar to marriage neither valid nor recognized in this State.

— Shorter Wis. Const., J. Appling, ed.

Persuasion Partners is a Republican PR/lobbying outfit operated by Darrin Schmitz,* famed orchestrator of the notorious Mike Gableman for Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign of 2007/08. Schmitz helped Gableman get formally charged with ethics violations, a case that dragged on for many months and the charges remain pending against Gableman: the State Supreme Court split 3-3 on its disposition, with Justice David Prosser, who himself stands for reelection on April 5, holding in sympathy with Gableman's aggressive rationalizations.

Hopper is believed to be the most vulnerable of the eight Republican State Senators against whom recall efforts are underway. If organizers can topple three of them then Democrats might regain control of the 33-member body. The others would most likely be the 8th Senate district's Alberta Darling and the 32nd's Dan Kapanke.

Sen. Darling's constituency presents an interesting challenge, as it straddles the affluent and increasingly liberal northern lakeshore Milwaukee County suburbs and the three most defiantly conservative counties in the State: Ozaukee, Washington, and Waukesha.

Sen. Kapanke's district spreads over five counties along the State's western border. Kapanke won the district in 2008 but narrowly lost the most populous (by far) of the five, La Crosse County. So the signature-gatherers know exactly where to concentrate their labors.

As for Randy Hopper, he should probably just resign.

* Schmitz calculated then-circuit court judge Gableman's rate of reversal on appeal by counting as cases thousands of uncontested traffic tickets, which Schmitz claimed Gableman had "presided over."

That a sly (or possibly clueless) partisan operator would pull such a risible stunt is unsurprising, but that a State judge with an advanced degree in law would let him get away with it is almost beyond belief.

Randy Hopper's background music turns ominous

Embattled WISGOP Senator lies desperately, pantalons flambé.

You remember Randy Hopper.

Incidentally the Wisconsin Supreme Court does not consider "ominous background music" to be part of a candidate's "statement," at least for the purposes of evaluating whether a candidate for the judiciary violated the code of ethics that candidate necessarily submits to, but it should.

Similarly, when Randy Hopper turns up to face Wisconsin working families dressed like an Edwardian fop, that's a fashion statement.

Randy Hopper wants to "mount" ASAP

But WISGOP says Hopper needs more time to "mount"

Maybe not the best choice of words?

"Let me freakin' be done," Randy Hopper said.

That can probably be arranged.

See also: Sen. Randy "Bed" Hopper threatens WI citizen (Audio NSFW)

What was in the Randy Hopper today

Ce petit morceau:

A State worker with ties to State Sen. Randy Hopper is being paid $11,000 more annually than her predecessor in a position at the department of regulation and licensing. State officials Friday said the woman's predecessor left the position in January, with a salary equivalent to $31,200 annually. No explanation was given for the new hire's higher pay.

Couldn't have been seniority: the new hire is only 26. And of course January coincides with the installation of the new Republican regime.

There's mos. def. more in the Hopper on this one.

Via Tony Galli:* Salary boosted for worker with ties to Hopper

* I think there's actually a street in Rome called that.

Randy Hopper "lobbyist" a misnomer

A reader points out that State Sen. Randy Hopper's unraveling imbroglio — a complaint* hit the attorney general's desk the other day — involves "lobbyists" who are not registered with the State.

* Also, Sen. Hopper has hired a professional out-of-State agitator.

Something's in the Hopper with Randy

WKOW27's Tony Galli is relentless:

Candidates for various jobs in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s administration were passed over despite recommendations from high-level officials, while a woman with ties to Sen. Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) was hired to a position with an immediate thirty five percent salary increase, without formally being recorded as a job applicant.

And now that lovable zany Reince Priebus is in the Hopper also.

Valerie Cass, 26, was with the Madison Republican PR and quasi-lobbyist outfit Persuasion Partners* for a time, until she got disappeared when the randy saga first got hopping. PP's Darrin Schmitz helped Republican State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman traffic in the basest of base political sleaze. Gableman was elected to the court on April Fools' Day 2008 and promptly and formally charged with violating the Wisconsin code of judicial ethics.

* It even sounds like a dating service.

On teh web: Thoughts of Chairman Priebus

New Randy Hopper ad "reprehensible"

And remarkably nauseating. — Washington Post

Hopper has hired an out-of-State agitator to handle his affairs.

In re Hopper.

Meanwhile Zach Dubya's Blogging Blue broak teh internets and had to move to here (the new digs are neither apartment nor McMansion).

See also: "Apartment" is $600,000 home owned by Hopper employee

And the ever-astute Chief: FDL's Hopper "went Madison" PDQ

Randy Hopper has two mistresses now

[Randy Hopper's] charm is infectious. He is a handsome, fit man of 45 with a chin like Buzz Lightyear's, white hair, and fashionable, dark-rimmed glasses. — WPRI "fellow" C. Schneider

Jaysus. Get a room.

"It's about time Wisconsin starts creating jobs."

Says married Republican State Senator Randy Hopper's girlfriend.

For whom a Republican government job was then created.

Arrest these six Wisconsin Republicans today

1. arrest v. — seize someone and take them into custody
2. arrest v. — stop or delay progress or a process

On March 3, 2011, these six Wisconsin State Senators, Robert Cowles, Alberta Darling, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Randy Hopper, and Dan Kapanke, endorsed a resolution by their legislative leader, Scott Fitzgerald, to issue arrest warrants, in the sense of definition 1. above, for 14 of their political rivals. They did so on the flimsiest of alleged legal bases, and in fact on legal bases manufactured from the deliberate misreading of an adverse decision issued by an Oconto County court.

And amazingly, they did this not in the Soviet Union but in America.

Today, many Wisconsin voters have the opportunity to arrest the six named Republican Senators, not according to the lawless means by which those Senators acted, but in the sense of definition 2. above, to impede the progress of a radical Republican agenda in which all three branches of State government — including the highest court — are complicit.

Also in March, Republican legislators broke the law — and admitted they broke the law — by convening a twilight gathering in clear violation of the State's open meetings statutes, which give effect to the Wisconsin constitution's guarantee of public access to government proceedings.

On June 14, in perhaps the most radical act of the current regime, the State Supreme Court, by a bare majority of Republican judges and in an unsigned, unexplained order, invented a novel form of judicial authority through which they blessed the illegal acts of the Republican legislators.

Some, including the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the State's biggest newspaper, have complained that today's elections misuse and betray the spirit of the people's constitutional power to recall their elected representatives. They complain that the constitutional recall mechanism should be reserved for more serious misdeeds in office, not just for disagreements with those representatives' policies.

But Wisconsin voters have to wonder, what more serious misdeeds of office can there be than ordering State law enforcement officials to arrest their political rivals? What more serious misdeeds of office can there be than violating a collection of statutes intended to guarantee the people of Wisconsin merely the barest access to the deliberations of their government? What more serious misdeeds of office can there be than cheering on a court to fabricate its own unprecedented authority?

I can think of none. Arrest them. Or else just arrest any three of them.

See also: Alberta Darling's deliberate indifference to suffering

Interlude

J.B. Van Hollen for U.S. Senate

I heard from a little birdie recently that Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen will seek U.S. Senator Herb Kohl's vacated seat. Meanwhile Abe Sauer notes that JBVanHollenForSenate.com was registered May 13 by Mike Austin at Persuasion Partners. PP is our old friend Darrin Schmitz, campaign manager to Mike Gableman and former employer of embattled State Senator Randy Hopper's 26-year-old Capitol girlfriend.

The WISGOP is like an almost-literally-incestuous family.

Can you imagine: Wisconsin Senators Ron Johnson and J.B. Van Hollen.

By the way if you don't read Abe Sauer's work at The Awl, you must.

Well this is certainly an awkward blow

"Hey there, sexy guy ... "

Hopper, Randy mailer invitation to love you long time$ sex chat

You might say that goes down in the anals of unfortunate typography.

Hopper, Earlier