“This is complicated by the election dates and the date the final winner of the 7th Congressional Dist WI seat is sworn into office which is January 2021.”
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Sorry, that is not correct, either.
First of all, the special election for WI-07 will be held on May 12, and Tiffany will be seated by the House within a coulle of days of his certification as the winner.
Second, when Tiffany resigns from the state senate upon his certification as winner of the special election (around mid-May), Gov. Evers may set a date for a special election for the rest of the legislative term.
Could Evers run out the clock and not call a special election, this leaving the seat empty until January 2021 (the start of the next regular term for such seat)? Maybe; I really don’t know whether Wisconsin courts can force Evers to do his job, much less whether they would be willing to do so in the short time frame between thectime they receive a GOP lawsuit and the end of the legislative term. But what I do know is that Evers can’t appoint anyone to serve in the state senate upon Tiffany’s resignation.
OK, I decided to dig a little deeper abd answer my own question about whether Evers could run out the clock and leave the state senate seat vacant. Ballotpedia’s explanation of the rules for filling vacancies in the WI state legislature provided the following “Also, all vacancies must be filled quickly as long the vacancy happened before the second Tuesday in May during an election year.” So I looked up Wisconsin Statute 8.50(4)-(d), and it reads as follows:
“(d) Any vacancy in the office of state senator or representative to the assembly occurring before the 2nd Tuesday in May in the year in which a regular election is held to fill that seat shall be filled as promptly as possible by special election. However, any vacancy in the office of state senator or representative to the assembly occurring after the close of the last regular floorperiod of the legislature held during his or her term shall be filled only if a special session or extraordinary floorperiod of the legislature is called or a veto review period is scheduled during the remainder of the term. The special election to fill the vacancy shall be ordered, if possible, so the new member may participate in the spe- cial session or floorperiod.”
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/Stat0008.pdf
Evers set the WI-07 for May 12, which is, you guessed it, is the second Tuesday in May. That way, Tiffany’s state senate seat will remain vacant after Tiffany leaves for Congress unless (i) Tiffany resigns before he even had won the congressional special election or (ii) a special session is called in which the winner of a special state legislative election could participate.
Given that Tiffany holds a safely Republican state senate district, I hope that he resigns a few days before May 12 (assuming that it’s clear from polling that he’s got the WI-07 election in the bag, which I assume will be the case) and forces Evers to call a special election for the state senate seat.