Kloppenburg Concedes Wisconsin Supreme Court Race to Prosser

Assistant State Attorney General Joanne Kloppenburg conceded election Tuesday to incumbent David Prosser Jr., saying the widespread anomalies found during a historic statewide recount were not enough to win a court challenge to change the outcome.

Kloppenburg said she called Prosser before her morning press conference to tell him she would not be seeking a court review of the recount, which cut Prosser's approximately 7,300-vote lead by about 300 votes.

Prosser won another 10-year term on the state's Supreme Court with slightly more than 50 percent of the 1.5 million votes cast. The court election drew unusual attention after public employee unions sought to oust Prosser after Gov. Scott Walker and Republican state lawmakers passed what they said were union-busting laws to severely curtail collective bargaining.

Kloppenburg said in her press conference that she was not pressured by unions to seek a recount or a court challenge of the recount.

"I never heard from them," she said. She further joked that she "did not have doughnuts with the union thugs this morning."

She said she was filing a letter with the state Government Accountability Board detailing the numerous election anomalies and problems her campaign found during the statewide recount.

She further urged the GAB to accept her previous request that it hire an independent investigator to scrutinize the processes of Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus.

Kloppenburg had declared victory with a 204-vote margin on election night April 5. But two days later Nickolaus called a press conference to announce she had mistakenly failed to include all votes from the City of Brookfield in the countywide vote tally she released on election night.

Nickolaus drew criticism after she failed to notify the GAB, the City of Brookfield or the Prosser and Kloppenburg campaigns until more than a day after she discovered her error and after her county Board of Canvassers had certified the county's election results.