Effort to recall Gov. Rick Snyder dropped

A group seeking to recall Gov. Rick Snyder has halted its efforts after the results of last week’s elections in Wisconsin.

In a post on its website, independent group Michigan Rising says it has collected 2,079 signatures so far, well short of its goal of 200,000 signatures by June 1. Roughly 807,000 signatures are needed for a gubernatorial recall election to take place.

“Even though the campaign is ramping up, we do not have any prospect of going immediately from 100 signatures a day to 18,000 a day,” the group said in the post. “Any hopes of an energizing effect from Wisconsin’s recall election were dashed by the outcome of (the) election.”

Last week, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won 53 percent of the vote in his recall election, surviving a very public and heated battle with grassroots activists upset about his policies that sought to limit collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions.

Walker succeeded in large part thanks to conservative and Republican groups outspending liberal and Democratic ones by an eight-to-one margin.

The biggest reason for his victory, however, might have been voters not being very fond of recall elections. A CNN exit poll found that 60 percent of voters said recall elections are appropriate “only for misconduct.” Another 10 percent said recall elections are never appropriate.

Michigan Rising was bound to run into similar problems in a hypothetical Snyder recall.

Snyder did not have a lot to say when asked for comment after a speech last Thursday.

“That’s nice,” Snyder said about the group’s abandoned effort, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Heading forward, the group said it will focus on educating Michigan voters on what they call Snyder’s “destructive policies” while putting forward ”sustainable alternative policies.”

For labor unions, the next electoral fight they face will be over the proposed “Protect Our Jobs” amendment, which would protect collective bargaining rights in the state constitution.

The amendment, if passed by voters, would effectively ban Michigan from becoming a “right-to-work” state that gives workers the right to choose whether or not they want to join a union and might end up invalidating many policies passed since Snyder took office in 2011.

Backers of the initiative have until July 9 to collect at least 320,000 signatures.