Senate Targets 6 Evers Appointees

Gov. Tony Evers. Photo by Emily Hamer / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Republicans who control the state Senate fired the first appointee of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers four years ago, voted to fire the top elections administrator last month and have set themselves up to reject six more Evers appointees this month.

The dismissals are “idiotic” and happening “just because I’m governor,” Evers said, noting that Republicans who have controlled the Legislature for 12 years didn’t oppose appointments made by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

“How stupid is that? These people are volunteering their time and effort to do good things for the state of Wisconsin,” Evers added. “It’s really kind of stupid politics.”

For decades, appointees of governors from both parties usually got routine Senate votes confirming them.

That was because governors’ aides would run names of those being considered past key legislators before the formal appointment, giving legislators a chance to informally consider the choice. Or, if one or two senators objected to a specific appointee, they would ask for a roll-call vote by the full Senate, giving them a chance to vote no but not block that appointment.

But, in the five years of the Evers Administration, Republicans have not only had major policy disagreements with the Democratic governor but have also balked at his personnel choices

Evers personally sat in the Senate chamber on Nov. 5, 2019, when Republicans refused to confirm Brad Pfaff, then acting secretary of the state Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection.

Then-Senate Majority Scott Fitzgerald, who had asked Evers to withdraw Pfaff’s appointment, said after that vote: “The liberal Evers administration has been no friend to farmers. The Senate will continue to take its role of oversight seriously and will exercise our responsibility to hold them in check.”

Pfaff got some revenge one year later, when his election to the Senate meant he serves (including on the Agriculture committee) with many of the Republicans who fired him as a cabinet secretary. But Democrats continued to lose Senate seats, so Republicans have a two-thirds Senate majority.

Last month, Republican senators insisted the reappointment of Elections Administrator Meagan Wolfe was before them, so their vote to not confirm Wolfe fired her. The Senate vote came after Wolfe’s boss, the six-member Elections Commission, deadlocked on whether to reappoint her.

Democratic Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul has sued to block Wolfe’s ouster, saying the 3-3 Elections Commission vote did not formally reappoint her and therefore there was no reappointment for the Senate to confirm or reject. The case has now gone to the courts to decide.

But the decision of Elections Commissioner Joe Czarnezki, an Evers appointee and former Democratic legislator, to abstain on the vote to reappoint Wolfe has Senate Republicans on the verge of refusing to confirm Czarnezki this month. Czarnezki also ran for lieutenant governor in 1990.

Sen. Dan Knodl, chair of the Shared Revenue, Elections and Consumer Protection Committee that voted to not confirm Czarnezki, said his abstention on the Elections Commission vote was designed to keep the Senate from its oversight role over who runs the Commission.

If the Senate rejects Czarnezki’s appointment, Evers could immediately name another commissioner who could serve until the Senate acted on that second appointment. Evers will wait on the full Senate vote before deciding on his next move.

The Senate Health Committee also recommended rejection of the reappointment of Sheldon Wasserman, a former Assembly member and physician who chairs the state Medical Examining Board. Although Wasserman got a 27-6 Senate vote when he was confirmed four years ago, Republican senators question why the Board has not taken steps to discipline doctors who recently started performing abortions.

The Senate Health Committee voted to confirm acting Health Services Secretary Kirsten Johnson, however.

The Senate is also poised to reject four Evers appointees to the Natural Resources Board – Sharon Adams, Dylan Jennings, Sandra Dee Naas and Jim VandenBrook – which could leave the seven-member board without a quorum for its scheduled Oct. 25 meeting. The board sets policy for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Republicans on the Senate Committee on Sporting Heritage, Small Business and Rural – Chairman Rob Stafsholt, Cory Tomczyk and Mary Felzkowski – voted to not confirm them after questions over whether there should be a population cap on wolves.

The committee recommended that the full Senate confirm another Evers Board appointee, Paul Buhr.

According to the Associated Press, the DNR board does not plan to include a hard population cap on wolves, despite hunters and farmers’ demands for a specific numerical limit. The plan instead recommends keeping the population at around 1,000 animals – a number hunters and farmers say is far too high.

DNR estimates the state’s wolf population at about 1,200.

The Senate committee vote against his Natural Resources Board choices also angered Evers.

“None of those [appointees] could be considered radical, crazy people,” Evers said. “In fact, if [Republicans] keep throwing people off, I think I’ll bring, start bringing crazy, radical people there and … let them try.”

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com