On the hot seat in Wisconsin.

• Author: Walters, Steve
• Position: Problems of Republicans who now control the Wisconsin. Legislature. Senate

Republicans took over the Wisconsin Senate this spring for the first time in 28 years. And it's not as much fun as it might be with more money.

There was no honeymoon for Wisconsin Republicans, who took control of the Senate for the first time since 1975 when they won two of three special elections April 6. Republicans control with the narrowest of margins, 17-16, and perhaps only until the November 1994 elections.

On one April Tuesday, 22-year legislative veteran Michael G. Ellis officially took over as Senate majority leader. Only 48 hours later, Ellis had to be protected by five Capitol police officers as he dashed from the new office where he had barely unpacked to his car. He was surrounded by shouting and spitting employees of a suburban Milwaukee printing plant angry over losing their jobs because of a decision made by a Swiss company. Ellis and an aide drove off, as protesters pounded on the car windows and police cleared a Capitol traffic lane for the new majority leader.

Welcome to Senate control, Mr. Ellis, said Democratic senators.

Democrats, bitter at losing power, staff and their first-floor Capitol offices, went before TV cameras and the 200 angry workers to accuse Ellis of personally blocking a Senate vote on an emergency bill that would have let state government preserve jobs by condemning buying and temporarily running companies whose private owners had announced they would close. The bill would have required state government to find new buyers for the plants and would have given Wisconsin the broadest "eminent domain" power in the nation, said Attorney General James E. Doyle. The attorney general advised that he could defend the bill in court; he refused to say whether it would have been wise public policy.

For his part, Ellis admitted he was shaken by the incident, but said it was only Democrats playing in the "sandbox" of governing one last time. Ellis scheduled vote on the bill, however, which had already passed the Democratically controlled Assembly.

The incident illustrated the hardball politics that surround the Republican takeover of the Wisconsin Senate, and how fragile that control is. Democrats say three Republicans from traditionally Democratic areas are up in 1994, while only one vulnerable Democrat must face voters. Control may switch again in January 1995.

But Ellis, 52, who watched others run the Legislature for two decades, pounced on its leadership levers. Before April 6, Republican senators had agreed on...