Procedure Bites

This postscript to our recent blog, "Voters' #1 Concern," comes courtesy of All Politics Watch, a weblog on the online edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

TUESDAY, Nov. 14, 2006, 6:34 p.m.
By Patrick Marley

Freese offers advice

Madison -- Before Assembly Republicans elected new leaders today, they recognized outgoing representatives, complete with plaques from the trophy shop owned by Rep. Dean Kaufert of Neenah.

As speaker pro tempore for a decade, Rep. Steve Freese (R-Dodgeville) was in charge of running Assembly debates and playing referee when the two parties disagreed over debate rules. He lost his race last week, which some have attributed in part to his vote against bringing an ethics bill to the floor for debate.

Freese had sponsored that bill, but voted against bringing it to the floor after his colleagues decided behind closed doors to kill it.

"If anybody ever says a procedural vote will never come back to bite you, don't believe them because I can point to examples all over the state," Freese told his fellow Assembly Republicans.