Chvala should quit, or face a recall
4:03 PM 11/16/02

Regularly scheduled elections are a cornerstone of democracy. We elect public officials to do a job, fully expecting we will not agree with them on every issue. If we don't like how they represent us, we vote them out of office in the next regular election. Recall elections, often sought by single-issue zealots, disrupt this representative democracy.

But now we have an exception: The campaign to recall state Sen. Chuck Chvala, D-Madison. If the disgraced former majority leader won't quit on his own, we hope voters oust him.

A group called Voters for Ethical Government wants Chvalato recall Chvala because he has been charged with 20 felonies in connection with the Capitol campaign scandals. Chvala faces charges of extortion, misconduct in office, campaign contribution violations and filing a false report.

Recalls are warranted when a politician has committed gross malfeasance in office. We think the Chvala case easily meets this test. True, Chvala hasn't been convicted yet. He deserves his day in court, but his guilt or innocence isn't the issue. Against ample evidence of his corrupted and corrupting tactics, he has lost his credibility and effectiveness as a public servant.

We agree with John L. Finch, treasurer and chairman of the recall organization, who says, "If that man had one ounce of honor in his body, he would resign."

But Chvala, who is Finch's representative in the Legislature, shows no sign of yielding. We don't know how long it might take for Chvala's case to wind through the courts, and he's not up for re-election until 2004. The 16th District deserves better, sooner.

The recall organization has until Dec. 28 to collect at least 14,477 signatures. Finch hopes to collect 20,000, so the recall will not be contested. With the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays approaching, that could be a tough job.

To sign the recall papers, you must live in the district. The 16th Senate District encompasses the 46th, 47th and 48th Assembly districts, including much of eastern and northern Dane County and southern and eastern Columbia County. Communities in the district include Sun Prairie, Cottage Grove, McFarland, Monona, Oregon and Stoughton in Dane County, and Lodi, Merrimac, Poynette, Arlington and Dane in Columbia County. For information or petitions, you can visit www.cwlp.org.

We don't advocate this step lightly. We opposed recalls of former state Sen. George Petak, R-Racine, for his vote on Milwaukee's new baseball stadium; U.S. Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl for their partial-birth abortion votes; and various local school board recalls. But all of these were misguided efforts to dump an official because of one vote on a single issue, not because of a pattern of misconduct.

Recall elections cost taxpayers and candidates enormous amounts of money, and replacement candidates may not be held up to the same scrutiny as they would during a regular election season. But, in the Chvala case, we'll accept the cost and the risk.

We'll also suggest that as the number of signatures increases, perhaps Chvala will recognize that he should do the honorable thing: resign.