Speaker Robin Vos on recall effort, elections and end of legislative session

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), the longest serving speaker in state history, said Tuesday that he keeps serving in the Legislature in part because he is helping “stop bad things from becoming law,” a reference to a quote from former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. Vos doesn’t want Wisconsin to become Minnesota or Illinois, he added.

At a Tuesday luncheon sponsored by WisPolitics, Vos criticized an ongoing recall effort against him, spoke about the 2024 election cycle and reflected on what lawmakers did and didn’t do during the recently completed legislative session.

Vos calls recall organizers “morons”

Vos called the group of right-wing election conspiracy theorists who are pushing for his recall “whack jobs” and “morons” during the event. He said that he thinks the effort will fail and that he hopes the organizers will be prosecuted for fraud. 

“The people who organized this are so out of touch with reality,” Vos said. “They are morons. They are stupid.”

Right-wing critics of Vos launched the recall effort because he wouldn’t decertify the results of the 2020 election — an unconstitutional legal maneuver that would have had no effect on the result — and because he wouldn’t bring a vote to impeach Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe to the Assembly floor. 

The organizers submitted more than 10,000 signatures in support of the recall last week, which is more than the 6,850 required. However, an initial review by the Wisconsin Elections Commission determined that there were not enough signatures from the district Vos currently represents. The Racine County District Attorney is also investigating reports that signatures were forged by organizers.

Vos has until Thursday to challenge the signatures, after which petitioners have five days to make a rebuttal and then two days to make a final statement. The commission will have 14 days after that to determine if there are enough signatures. 

When asked about what the effort says about the current Republican party, Vos said that 80% or 90% of Republicans are “exactly where they have always been,” and the effort was organized by the “fringe.” 

On upcoming 2024 presidential and state legislative races

While he said he would have preferred it if Ron DeSantis were the Republican presidential nominee, Vos again endorsed former President Donald Trump for the 2024 presidential election. He said that Trump’s policies are more in line with where he thinks the country should be.

“I like a lot of [Trump’s] policies,” Vos said, adding that he thought the country would be better off if President Joe Biden is out of office. 

Apart from the presidential race, Vos said that Republicans made the best of a bad situation by passing Wisconsin’s new maps that were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and will be used in the state’s upcoming state legislative races. 

Vos also insisted again that the maps were “gerrymandered” — though the only maps tagged as “partisan gerrymanders” by experts in the most recent lawsuit were the proposals submitted by Republican legislative leaders and by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. 

Vos pointed out that several Republican lawmakers are planning to move to another district for their reelection bids. 

“We had seven people who were drawn outside their district by sometimes 15 feet,” Vos said. “Why would you make a person have to move 15 feet if you care about basic fairness?”

Among the incumbents who have said they will move are Reps. Patrick Snyder, Karen Hurd and Robert Wittke.

Vos acknowledged that the races are likely to be more competitive this year under the new maps, but added that closer margins in the state Capitol would not necessarily lead to more compromise. He said that it would actually make it harder to reach consensus on issues in part because some lawmakers would not be happy with how Evers acted on the maps issue. 

On lawmakers’ accomplishments this session

Though the legislative session was fraught with disagreements between lawmakers and Evers, key pieces of legislation did get over the finish line, including an historic increase in local government funding, money for renovations at American Family Field and a law that overhauls the way that reading is taught in Wisconsin. 

Vos said those bills passed because Republicans worked together to find agreement amongst themselves. He took credit for those accomplishments and blamed Democrats for missed opportunities to pass major income tax cuts and a measure to legalize medical marijuana. 

“I think every single bill that we did had enough support to pass without bipartisan support,” Vos said. 

He also downplayed Evers’ role in signing the bills into law. 

Vos said one of his biggest disappointments this session is that lawmakers were not able to get a large income tax cut over the finish line. Republicans passed a tax cut package the only provision which Evers signed was a child care income tax credit expansion. 

A medical marijuana proposal put forward by Assembly Republicans also failed to pass this session due to opposition from the Senate.

Vos said he still believed there would have been enough support to pass it in the Assembly and that he didn’t “know what the [Senate’s] process was.” He also criticized Democrats for saying that medical marijuana would be a step towards legalizing recreational marijuana and not compromising on the issue.