By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON — Lori Compas says she sees herself as an “ant hurling a crumb at a giant.”

The Fort Atkinson photographer, mother and now recall movement leader, admits to feeling small in her personal fight against one of the most powerful men in Wisconsin politics. And, she said, she’s not exactly sure what she’s doing.

“This is really being run by the seat of my pants,” Compas told Wisconsin Reporter Tuesday, hours after she filed the proper paperwork to form her Committee to Recall Scott Fitzgerald. “Right now I’m pretty much alone.”

Frankly, Compas said, she was hoping someone else would file the recall papers first. No one did, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

She faces a daunting task.

Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, is a Republican in a solidly conservative 13th Senate District. He has been extremely popular among his constituents since first being elected to the Senate in 1994, gliding to re-election in 2010 with nearly 68 percent of the vote. He is the Senate majority leader.

Compas will need to collect 16,742 on the committee’s recall petition by Jan. 14.

“I know it’s an uphill battle,” she said, “but I really think the tide is turning.”

She claimed offices in the district ran out of recall petitions by late Tuesday afternoon.

Compas’ recall committee — what one Republican strategist described as a “local group unhappy with Sen. Fitzgerald and opposed to anything and everything he’s done” — is not a symbolic gesture, the activist insists.

“I would not have stayed up until 2 o’clock (Tuesday) morning to make a statement,” she said.

While Compas’ movement may be small and unorganized, the GOP official said there’s nothing diminutive about its distraction — and the partisan muscle behind it.

“This is a strategic move by other side to tie up the leader of the other party,” said Dan Romportl, executive director of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate, a legislative campaign committee and campaign arm of the Senate Republican caucus. “If Sen. Fitzgerald doesn’t have a race, he’s able to go help his members.”

That mission will be complicated should the majority leader have to fend off a recall attempt, Romportl said.

Democrats, organized labor and other opponents of Gov. Scott Walker cast a wider Senate net Tuesday, initiating recall campaigns against three freshman Republicans: Sen. Pam Galloway, R-Wausau; Terry Moulton, R-Chippewa Falls; and Van Wanggaard, R-Racine.

Graeme Zielinski, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, did not return an email seeking comment. Steve Potter, a representative for the United Wisconsin recall movement, said he would try to contact Zielinski, who Wisconsin Reporter was told was the sole spokesman for the recall field offices, but Potter did not call back.

Wanggaard won his seat with 52.5 percent of the vote in a district that has a strong Democratic base in Kenosha.Moulton garnered 54 percent of the vote in Senate District 23, and Galloway received 52 percent of the vote in her 29th Senate District.

Galloway could not be reached for comment Tuesday, and Moulton’s camp referred all questions to Romportl.

Wanggaard on Monday told Wisconsin Reporter that he wouldn’t be truthful if he didn’t admit to feeling some concern about the recall campaign against him. He said he will stand on his record and with that, he said he’s pretty confident he’ll be in his post at least another three years.

Wangaard and others assert they will fend off recalls by telling the story of GOP successes this year, legislation they say is paying big dividends for taxpayers.

Romportl said a balanced budget that closed a $3.6-billion shortfall, a lower statewide school property tax levy for the first time in several years, and an improved business climate are pretty strong selling points to Wisconsin voters, should recall elections come. It’s a different world for the Republican senators caught in the recall crosshairs — despite their freshman status — than it was for their six GOP brethren during this past summer’s Senate recall elections.

“Last summer, incumbent Republican senators were out there defending votes mainly on the budget repair bill without having any concrete success to point to,” Romportl said. “The biggest difference is going to be our Republican senators are going to be able to go out there and point to local successes and say this ‘controversial’ vote that we took, the changes that took place are working.”

The successes of the reforms have been disputed, particularly in a state Department of Public Instruction report issued last week that said some school districts have borne negative impacts from state aid cuts approaching $750 million.

Compas said those budget cuts and the way they were enacted in March were the inspiration to her personal recall movement against Fitzgerald.

“I feel like he’s changed over the past years” she said. “He’s done things that really have divided the people of our state and polarized state government.”

Romportl countered that Democrats, through calculated means, have put party and politics before the people of Wisconsin, and he said the voters of Wisconsin are realizing it.

“I think it (the recall campaigns) sends the message that it’s all about politics, not about policy,” he said. “I think voters are starting to realize these recalls aren’t about issues but are about flipping power in the Legislature and slowing down the governor’s agenda.”