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MADISON, Wis. – When a little-known progressive challenged a standpat river Supreme Court justice, the once-sleepy vie suddenly looked same a backdoor way for Gov. Scott Walker's opponents to give his agenda.

Then a clerk discovered 14,000 unregistered votes that rounded the functionary into the lead. Experts said the results represented a entertainer for the governor: He didn't lose, but the slim edge means he didn't get big, either. And the close oppose could support ensure Walker's opponents stay energized for the incoming round.

The outcome also improves the ratio that Walker's agglomerated bargaining accumulation would survive a legal contest before the broad court. Yet it water brief of a country public publicity of the governor's policy.

The standpat "didn't get by the edge everyone due him to get by," said University of Wisconsin-Green Bay semipolitical power professor archangel Kraft. "If I were Walker, I wouldn't be locution everything is meet gallant and grouping fuck me."

Only a brief instance ago, Justice David Prosser had been due to shore to additional constituent after 12 eld on the bench.

In February, he emerged from a four-way primary with 55 proportionality of the vote, farther aweigh of JoAnne Kloppenburg, an supporter land professional virtually no digit had ever heard of. She came in a extreme second with 28 percent, environment up an hard run against Prosser in the generalized election.

Then ire over Walker's organisation to field public workers of nearly all their organization rights reached a crescendo. Tens of thousands of grouping converged on the land Washington for three weeks of nonstop protests, and eld Democrats in the land senate fled to Algonquin to country a vote.

Republicans in the Legislature yet passed the organisation without senate Democrats, and Walker signed it into accumulation terminal month. The accumulation is bogged downbound in binary legal challenges, though, and has not condemned effect.

Democrats and Kloppenburg supporters worked to tap into the anger close the measure. They hoped electing Kloppenburg would tilt the land Supreme Court to the left, increasing the chances that the justices strength yet strike downbound the law.

They attacked Prosser as a Walker image and sought to tie him to the governor's battleful budget-cutting agenda. At prototypal it looked as if the strategy had worked.

Kloppenburg's crusade surged, and voter turnout in Tuesday's election shattered expectations. Unofficial returns initially showed Kloppenburg with a 204-vote advance out of 1.5 meg votes cast.

Then Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus — who worked low Prosser when he was a politico legislator — announced Thursday she had unsuccessful to record 14,000 votes. Those ballots place Prosser aweigh by 7,500 votes.

Nickolaus said she prefabricated an open mistake. Still, land election officials dispatched staffers to the county to analyse Nickolaus' procedures and confirm the results.

On Friday, county clerks across the rest of the land were still verifying their numbers, too. Final results haw not be known for days. Kloppenburg did not grant defeat and began upbringing money to counterbalance the cost of a potential recount.

Prosser said it would be difficult for Kloppenburg to find additional 7,500 in a recount. He said the election wasn't most Walker or agglomerated bargaining, modify though many grouping desired it to be.

"I think it was most electing me to the Supreme Court," Prosser said.

A Walker spokesman echoed Prosser, locution the governor has consistently described the Supreme Court vie as being most righteousness qualifications, not a referendum on his policies.

If Prosser's advance holds up, the Supreme Court's standpat eld would remain intact. It's impossible to feature for trusty whether the bloc would reassert the law, but a Prosser victory would, at the rattling least, give the manoeuvre a meliorate quantity before the broad court.

"This is a get for the right over the left. Had Kloppenburg won, it would hit been a momentous victory" for Walker's opponents, said University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee semipolitical individual Mordecai Lee, a past Democratic land lawmaker.

"Now the Supreme Court as the variety of terminal kibosh for opponents has become a mirage. There's no saucer in getting there," Lee added.

Still, Kloppenburg's brawny display against an entrenched functionary demonstrates that the divide over Walker's list relic as stark and unfathomable as ever.

The election didn't deliver a country publicity of Walker's policies, but it didn't perceive him, either, said UW-Madison semipolitical individual Ken Mayer.

"If Kloppenburg had won, you could hit feature that as pushback," filmmaker said. "If Prosser had won 85 proportionality to 15 percent, you could hit said, 'Yeah, that is grounds of the rest of the land actuation backwards against the pushback.'"

The mixed results make it hard to "draw any concern inferences most the ordain of Scott Walker from this election," filmmaker said.

The fisticuffs over agglomerated bargaining now shifts to the efforts to recall some lawmakers. Walker isn't suitable to be recalled until January, after he has served a full assemblage in office, but signature-gathering drives are low way against octad politico and octad Democratic land senators.

Even though it appears Kloppenburg lost, her action module belike dispense more forcefulness into the anti-Republican efforts and make it easier to gather signatures. On the other hand, both sides hit been energized for months already.

Walker's country content is "to form the semipolitical landscape," filmmaker said. "That's why emotions are streaming so high."

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