Madison – The Wisconsin Democrats’ chances of winning took a big hit yesterday when Attorney General candidate Kathleen Falk fell to the floor in agony during a debate. Apparently, Falk was injured while attempting to back-pedal on the previous pro-illegal immigration stance that she championed in the primary.

Early this week, Falk and Governor Jim Doyle announced that they had found $1.2 million in the couch cushions of the Governor’s mansion to pay for increased staffing at the state crime lab. Political observers have noted how closely aligned the Falk and Doyle campaigns have become, especially since Falk has begun to refer to the Governor as “Captain Snuggles.”

As Dane County Executive, Falk is best known for the political courage it took for her radically change hairstyles in mid-administration. Political observers have called it the most daring change in Wisconsin political hair since Lee Sherman Dreyfus began waxing his armpits.

With Falk unable to campaign, the Democrats have the option of using her backup, current Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, to finish out the campaign. However, Lautenschlager is reportedly unfit to run, as she has ballooned to a weight of 330 pounds on a diet of Quarter Pounders and Colt 45 malt liquor since her devastating primary defeat. Sources say Lautenschlager routinely spends her entire day at home watching the Maury Povich show, yelling “OH, NO – SHE DIDN’T!” at the television, while her dog Bubbles licks her feet.

At the beginning of the race, Falk was asked whether she had ever driven drunk, given that she would eventually attack Lautenschlager for her drunk driving arrest. Falk said she didn’t know, then admitted that she also doesn’t remember how she woke up with so many beads after Mardi Gras a couple years ago.

I think I’m a pretty astute follower of Wisconsin politics, but how in the world did I miss this story for a week?

Candidate touts sex with Packers in campaign

MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) — Sex! The Green Bay Packers! Sex WITH the Green Bay Packers! The usually ho-hum race for Wisconsin secretary of state is being spiced up by one candidate’s naughty tell-all book about her bed-hopping exploits with Green Bay football legends during the team’s glory days under Vince Lombardi in the 1960s…

Hornung did not return numerous messages left by The Associated Press. The book, however, includes a foreword in which he describes Sullivan as a “carefree, fun-loving girl who fit right in with me and the rest of the ‘Pack.’”

Actually, I think Hornung has it wrong. It sounds like the Packers actually fit right in her.

Seventy-eight-year-old Carol Williams of Menasha said she was surprised at Sullivan’s openness, but not her exploits.

“Who isn’t doing things like that these days?” she said.

She’s absolutely right – in fact, I went to pick up some braunschweiger at Sentry the other day, and accidentally ended up having sex with Bubba Franks. It really is unavoidable.

To pick up on the media attention, JB Van Hollen today announced that in college, he once got hammered and plowed a girl that looked like Ray Nitschke.

If you’re a regular reader of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, you are probably unaware that there’s actually a race for the 4th Congressional District seat, currently held by Democrat Gwen Moore. Republican Perfecto Rivera is challenging Moore, and the Journal Sentinel has yet to write a single, solitary word about a race that affects 650,000 Milwaukee area residents.

Granted, we already know who is probably going to win this seat, and Rivera’s campaign had a little trouble getting off the ground. Maybe he isn’t mounting much of an active campaign. But isn’t the first Latino congressional candidate in Wisconsin newsworthy at all? The local media were hyperventilating when Tammy Baldwin became the first female Congressperson from Wisconsin, and they were equally as dazzled by Gwen Moore becoming our first African-American Representative. The difference? They’re Democrats.

There’s a larger issue at work, too. Here we have newspapers screaming for campaign finance reform so we can have fairer campaigns. Yet when it comes time for a challenger to mount a campaign against an intrenched incumbent, the papers are nowhere to be found. If a race receives no media coverage, the natural advantage always goes to the incumbent.

Furthermore, even if Rivera is a big underdog, isn’t a campaign a good time to examine the voting records of our elected representatives? Regardless of who wins, don’t campaigns provide citizens the microscope they need to judge their politicians? Without media coverage, this examination simply doesn’t occur. The only way voters are going to learn anything about the two candidates is if the candidates raise and spent boatloads of money (sometimes known as political speech), which the paper has actively lobbied to curtail.