Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 30, 2002

By Greg J. Borowski

It's a good bet that most of those who signed the recall petitions that drove Milwaukee County Executive F. Thomas Ament from office will go to the polls Tuesday, since a new analysis shows most of them have been there before.

The analysis, conducted by a Michigan-based firm that compared each signer to names in its detailed voter database, indicated that the most consistent voters signed at higher rates than the less consistent voters.

Thus, the signers probably will account for a significant percentage of those who vote in Tuesday's primary contest. Indeed, the analysis shows 77% of the signers who could be identified have voted in at least one election in Wisconsin since 1994.

"This was not a revolt of ignorant anti-government folks but of solid-citizen types," said consultant Mark Grebner of Practical Political Consulting, which did the study. "The more you knew, the madder you got. Quite different from many petition drives."

The firm did the analysis at the request of the Journal Sentinel.

The greatest intensity of signing among voters was concentrated in the southern and western suburbs, with a high of 38% of regular voters in Greenfield signing the petitions. More women than men signed. And the signers skewed toward older residents.

That may simply reflect the fact that older people are generally more consistent voters, or it may be a reflection of a recall effort driven by the pension issue.

For someone living on Social Security payments, a savings account or a basic pension, word of the pension changes that would have meant payouts of $1 million or more for Ament and his close aides hit home hard.

"There are four or five flags that should have gone up," said Dave Goltz of St. Francis, a retired firefighter who signed and circulated petitions. "Any one of them should have gotten the supervisors' attention."

Instead, the pension changes were OK'd with little public scrutiny, along with enhancements to a sick-pay package and, earlier, perpetual salary increases for the County Board and executive.

"I think this was the best thing to happen to people, to get them interested," John Murphy of Cudahy, a retired barber, said of the recall drive.

At a candidate forum last week, both said they regularly vote. And both said they know now they must pay more attention to the workings of government.

The analysis is the first detailed look at who signed the recall petitions, where they came from and, to some degree, who they are. It comes at a time when the six county executive candidates, plus two write-in candidates, are working to persuade voters to support them Tuesday.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The top two finishers advance to the April 30 election.

Many think Tuesday's election will turn as much on which voters actually go to the polls and what part of the county they are from as the messages from the candidates, their promises of reform or the latest snappy TV ad.

Analysts have been divided as to whether the recall drive will mean a major turnout, or whether the fact Ament is gone and voters may have a tough time sorting through the field means many will give up and stay home.

Whatever the level of civic duty, it requires a greater commitment to leave for work early, stop at the polling place and vote than to sign a petition thrust toward you outside a grocery store.

"I think most who signed will vote," said George Macek of Cudahy, a retired construction worker. "People were actually begging me to get them petitions to sign."

In April 2000, when Ament cruised to a third term with 80% of the vote, about 181,000 people voted countywide, for a turnout of about 32%. It ranged from 26% in Brown Deer to 49% in Whitefish Bay. But that election included a spirited Milwaukee mayoral race, aldermanic contests across the city and a presidential primary at the top of the ballot.

Last April, when the ballot carried only judicial races and local contests, 77,000 people voted, for a turnout of 12%.

Ordinarily, one might expect Tuesday's primary to fall somewhere in between the two. Many, though, think the turnout will be above average - even though Ament, having resigned, won't be on the ballot to draw angry voters to the polls.

"Many people thought it might be a low turnout, that the air started to come out of the balloon a bit," said consultant Evan Zeppos, not affiliated with any campaign. "This is the people's chance to validate not only the movement, but validate they want change. You probably would have to be sleeping under a picnic table in Humboldt Park to not know there is a very important election going on in Milwaukee County."

There are six candidates on the ballot Tuesday:

Tyrone Dumas, director of trade and technical education for the Milwaukee Public Schools; Victor Huyke, owner of the El Conquistador weekly newspaper; Milwaukee Ald. Tom Nardelli; Hales Corners Village President Jim Ryan; state Rep. Scott Walker (R-Wauwatosa); and Tim Weber, a college student.

In Wauwatosa, Walker's home turf, 31% of regular voters signed the recall petitions. For purposes of the analysis, regular voters were defined as those who voted in November 2000 or in at least one election since.

In Hales Corners, where Ryan is village president, 30% of regular voters signed, while in Nardelli's northwest side aldermanic district 22% signed.

Analysts say Dumas, the only black candidate in the race, needs a strong showing among African-American voters. But the analysis showed central city aldermanic districts near the bottom in terms of intensity of signing.

Likewise, in Milwaukee's aldermanic District 12, which holds the largest concentration of Hispanic residents, only 15% of regular voters signed. That could be bad news for Huyke, the only Hispanic in the race.

In putting together the analysis, the Michigan firm bought the CD-ROMs containing all 181,957 signatures that the group Citizens for Responsible Government filed with the county. It then entered all the names and addresses into a computer database.

That information was compared with an existing database of county voters, one that has been augmented through other public records, such as driver's license information, to provide a more complete picture of voters, including age and sex.

The data was cleaned up by removing duplicate signatures - about 10,000 - and those from out-of-county residents and names that could not be identified or connected to an actual person. In other words, no Humphrey Pushcarts, the fake name famously signed by a former elections commissioner.

That left about 139,000 identifiable people. Of those, about 107,000 - the 77% figure - have voted in at least one election since 1994. That number surprised even an official with the recall group.

"I thought some of the people who were signing were people that kind of turned off politics for a time and weren't involved," said Bryan Olen, spokesman for the group. "It seemed to me there were people coming out of the woodwork just upset with the whole scandal."

Grebner, who has followed numerous petition drives in Michigan, said the numbers in the Ament recall indicate something quite different.

"As you got to the better and better voters, you had a higher fraction of people signing," he said.

His firm has a database of some 694,000 Milwaukee County adults. Of those, about 293,000 did not vote in November 2000 or in any election since. Of the non-voters, 11% signed the petition.

That compares with the 27% of the 402,000 who have voted in 2000 or since who signed. The percentage grew each time the pool was narrowed to focus on more consistent voters. Of those who voted in any spring election, 33% signed. Of those who voted in an off-year spring election - when there was no presidential primary or major election - 37% signed.

Among other findings:

• Of those who signed the petitions, 54% were women and 46% were men. Looked at from the other side, 22% of female regular voters signed, compared with 19% of male regular voters.
• Of the signers, the largest percentage - 40% - were born in either the 1950s or the 1960s, or ages 43 to 62. Of regular voters, those born in the 1920s (ages 73 to 82) signed at the highest rate, with nearly 35% of that group signing.
• In Milwaukee, 36% of the regular voters in District 11 on the far southwest side signed, putting that aldermanic district at the top. That district generally has a high turnout, and on Tuesday, voters there will also choose a replacement for retired Ald. Annette Scherbert.
• On the low end in Milwaukee: Only 10% of the regular voters in District 4, which covers the downtown area, signed, as did 10% in District 6 and 10% in District 17, two central city districts. Overall, 22% of regular voters in the city signed.
• There was a blue-collar tinge to the recall movement. Some of the city's wealthiest suburbs had some of the lowest percentage of regular voters who signed: 17% in River Hills, 20% in Bayside and 20% in Fox Point.
• All told, about 3,000 different people were listed as petition circulators, an unusually high number for a volunteer effort. On average, each collected 60 signatures.

Factors that could limit turnout include the fact that Ament is not on the ballot and that in a primary, voters must find a reason to pick one candidate over the others.