The county turns a little more blue, 8 years ago

Three legislative seats representing La Crosse County changed hands in 2011.  At the start of the year, the 32nd District Senate seat was held by Republican Dan Kapanke, who had just made a run for Congress.  Republican Mike Huebsch was the 94th District Assemblyman, and Democrat Jennifer Shilling served the 95th District.  When Scott Walker became governor of Wisconsin that year, he appointed fellow Republican Huebsch as his secretary of administration.  Huebsch’s seat went to Democrat Steve Doyle in a special election.  The passage of Walker’s Act 10, known as the ‘Budget Repair Bill,’ led to recall drives against many state Senators, including Kapanke.  Shilling ran as the Democratic challenger to Kapanke, and won an August recall election with 55 per cent of the vote.  Shilling’s Assembly seat was filled late in 2011 by Democrat Jill Billings, giving La Crosse County three Democrats in the legislature by year’s end.   

Murder investigators in Wisconsin were sending decks of playing cards to prisons and jails around the state, in hopes of inspiring tips to solve cold cases.  Five of the unsolved murders or disappearances described on cards in the deck were from the La Crosse area, including the presumed 1953 abduction of teenage babysitter Evelyn Hartley.   

At the movies that summer, you could see ‘Kung Fu Panda 2,’ Part 2 of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,’ or the Kristen Wiig comedy ‘Bridesmaids’…8 years ago, yesterday in La Crosse.