Wisconsin Asshats

Scott Fitzgerald and Robin Vos. Photos by Callen Harty

Dear Scott Fitzgerald and Robin Vos,

The nicest thing I can say about the two of you is that you are asshats. After years in the Wisconsin Legislature as waterboys for the Koch Brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), you are somehow still in power as the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the Assembly. Your service to right-wing causes has been a disservice to the citizens of this state as a whole, but because you are in conservative districts (all of which were gerrymandered by you and your party) you keep getting reelected to further wreak destruction upon the state. Vos, you first got in by running unopposed for your old boss’ position in both the primary and general election and once an incumbent, always an incumbent.

Though your constituents have been okay with your various power grabs over the years, I am hopeful that maybe this time they will find their humanity and realize that you have none. Filing a suit to force Wisconsin to hold in-person elections during a pandemic should be enough to cause voters to boot you out of office. Already, there appear to be spikes in Covid-19 cases in Milwaukee and Green Bay, two of the cities with the longest lines because they didn’t have enough volunteers to handle the usual number of polling stations. Perhaps you are okay with a spike and a handful of people dying in your attempt to help your conservative lackey Supreme Court Justice win another term. Fortunately, that failed, but people are still going to die because of it.

And now, you are filing suit again, appealing directly to the conservative State Supreme Court and bypassing lower courts to try to immediately halt Governor Evers’ extension of his stay-at-home order. How many lives are okay to sacrifice to satisfy the business interests who back you? How many pieces of silver do you need? How much more power do you crave?

Vos, you even stated that you wanted to craft the suit carefully so as not to give the governor more power should you lose. Can you tell us again that everything you do is not about accruing more power? Bullshit. You’re an asshat who doesn’t care about the people of this state. Neither one of you is listening more carefully to medical experts than to your corporate benefactors. Neither one of you has ever listened more to the citizens of this state than to the moneyed interests whose interests are the core of your agenda in the statehouse.

If you win this case (with the help of the Supreme Court that sides with you every time you file a lawsuit, and there have been many), and cause the state to open up before it should, you will be responsible for much more sickness and death. Of course, you won’t care. You will have done what you need to do to satisfy those who want to keep you in power. You will have to live with that. Unfortunately, others may not.