MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Still stinging from an election loss, Wisconsin Republicans on Monday tried to push through measures that would weaken the incoming Democratic administration and allow outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker to make one last major mark on the state’s political landscape after his re-election defeat in November.

The measures, part of a rare lame-duck session, would change the 2020 presidential primary date at a cost of millions of dollars to benefit a conservative state Supreme Court justice. They would also diminish the governor’s ability to adopt rules that enact state laws and shield the state jobs agency from his control.

Angry opponents filled the hallways of the Wisconsin Capitol, and the hearing room, banging on doors and chanting “Respect our votes!” and “Shame!”

Republicans forged ahead despite threats of lawsuits, claims by Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and others that they were trying to invalidate the election results and howls of protest from hundreds of people who showed up for a public hearing.

The lame-duck maneuvering in Wisconsin is similar to action taken by Republicans in North Carolina two years ago and is being discussed in Michigan before a Democratic governor takes over there.

The protests, coming at the end of Walker’s eight years in office, were reminiscent of tumult that came shortly after he took office in 2011, when he moved to end collective bargaining powers for public sector unions.

Other measures would weaken the attorney general’s office by allowing Republican legislative leaders to intervene in cases and hire their own attorneys. A legislative committee, rather than the attorney general, would have to sign off on withdrawing from federal lawsuits.

That would stop Evers and incoming Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul from fulfilling their campaign promises to withdraw Wisconsin from a multi-state lawsuit seeking repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald downplayed concerns about the lame-duck session, saying, “I don’t think it’s outrageous at all.”

“But listen, I’m concerned,” he said. “I think that Gov.-elect Evers is going to bring a liberal agenda to Wisconsin.”

Walker signaled support for the package.

“All the talk about reining in power, it really doesn’t,” Walker told reporters Monday afternoon at the executive mansion.

Fitzgerald said Walker and his chief of staff were deeply involved in crafting the measures.

Fitzgerald would not say whether there was enough support among Republicans for moving the 2020 presidential primary date, a change that would cost about $7 million and has drawn opposition from nearly every county election official.

Last week, Fitzgerald said that Republicans want to move the 2020 presidential primary, when Democratic turnout is expected to be high, so it won’t be on the same date as an April election where Walker-appointed Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly is on the ballot, thereby improving his chances of victory.

Walker said he has always found it odd that the state holds partisan and nonpartisan races on the same date. The presidential primary is partisan, but state Supreme Court candidates are officially nonpartisan, although Kelly is part of a clear conservative-leaning majority on the high court.

The state Elections Commission unanimously adopted a motion Monday declaring that the shift would be “extraordinarily difficult” and costly without additional funding. Commissioner Mark Thomsen, a Democratic appointee, called the plan “the biggest waste of money for a single person that I can think of” during discussion preceding the vote.

Fitzgerald and other Republican leaders said changes to that proposal and others, including limiting early voting to two weeks before an election, were being considered and could be offered during floor debate Tuesday.

Similar limitations on early voting were found unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2016, and Democrats have threatened legal action again.

A news conference where Fitzgerald and other Republican leaders spoke was peppered with catcalls from protesters.

A Republican-controlled legislative committee planned to hold a public hearing for eight hours Monday, before taking votes late in the night to set up final approval in the Senate and Assembly on Tuesday.

The votes to pass the sweeping package of bills would come about a month before Evers is slated to take office.

It was the first lame-duck session in Wisconsin in eight years. The last such session happened just before Walker took office, when Democrats tried unsuccessfully to approve union contracts.

Last month, Democrats won every constitutional office, including governor and attorney general.

Evers vowed to fight the session, saying lawsuits were being explored. He called on the people of Wisconsin to contact their legislators even as the bills were speeding through. They were just made public late Friday .

“This is rancor and politics as usual,” Evers said in written testimony to the committee. “It flies in the face of democratic institutions and the checks and balances that are intended to prevent power-hungry politicians from clinging to control when they do not get their way.”

The executive director of One Wisconsin Now, which filed a lawsuit challenging the previous attempt to limit early voting, said the GOP’s latest effort shows they “refuse to accept the results of the 2018 elections” and are worried about large voter turnout.

About 565,000 people voted early in the November elections.

Democratic lawmakers who sit on the committee holding the hearing Monday said the scope of the lame-duck session was unprecedented.

“It’s a power grab,” said Democratic state Sen. Jon Erpenbach. “They lost and they’re throwing a fit.”

Erpenbach said expected legal challenges to what is passed could “grind things to a halt” in the Legislature for as much as a year.

Republicans have had majorities in the state Senate and Assembly since 2011 and worked with Walker to pass a host of conservative priorities. The GOP will maintain its majorities in the Legislature next year when Evers takes over.

Associated Press writers Todd Richmond and Ivan Moreno in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin and Michigan are scrambling to pass last-minute legislation to limit the powers of incoming Democratic officials before their iron grip on state governments is loosened following last month’s elections.

The Republican-dominated Wisconsin legislature began an unusual lame-duck session on Monday to consider bills that would undercut the power of Governor-elect Tony Evers and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul, Democrats whose victories broke six years of Republican control of the state’s executive and legislative branches.

Michigan Republicans have also introduced legislation to strip some powers from the offices of the state attorney general and secretary of state, which were both captured by Democrats, along with the governorship in the Nov. 6 elections.

The states were among four, including Kansas and New Hampshire, where voters broke Republican “trifectas,” in which one party holds the governorship and both houses of the state legislature.

In both Wisconsin and Michigan, Republicans will continue to control the legislatures but will now have Democratic governors.

Democrats have decried the bills as defying the voters’ will.

“It’s really an attack on our democratic values and structures,” Michigan Democratic Representative Christine Greig, the next minority leader in the state House of Representatives, said. “They’re changing the game, because they didn’t like who was elected.”

Evers called the Republicans’ move an “embarrassment” in a Sunday news conference and suggested he might sue to challenge the new measures.

Republicans defended the efforts.

“The No. 1 priority for us is to restore the balance of powers between the two co-equal branches of governments,” Robin Vos, speaker of the Wisconsin state assembly, said at a news conference on Monday.

LIMITING GOVERNOR’S POWER

An hours-long Monday public hearing on the bills before a Wisconsin legislative committee was repeatedly disrupted by protesters’ shouts, while Democratic lawmakers railed at Republicans.

“You guys are just going crazy here,” said state Representative Katrina Shankland. “It’s like Gremlins past midnight.”

The proposals include preventing the incoming governor from withdrawing Wisconsin from a legal challenge to the federal Affordable Care Act, sidestepping the attorney general’s power to represent the state in litigation and rescheduling a 2020 election to boost the chances of a Republican state Supreme Court Justice, among others.

                           Lame-duck Republican legislatures in two Midwestern states where Democrats seized key state offices in November are trying to kneecap the incoming leaders and change election rules, aiming to consolidate GOP power despite the election results.

In Wisconsin, Republicans aim to limit early voting, change the date of the state’s presidential primary to help a conservative member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court win re-election, limit the governor’s ability to make certain appointments and block Gov.-elect Tony Evers from eliminating a state economic development agency.

To the east, Michigan’s GOP legislators are looking to limit the power of the state’s attorney general and secretary of state over lawsuits and campaign finance reforms. Democrats will take over from Republicans in the two offices.

In both states, the lawmakers are mimicking what happened in North Carolina in 2016, after Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, ousted Republican Pat McCrory. Before Cooper took office, the GOP-dominated Legislature moved to limit his power to make appointments, and it has since consistently tried to alter election rules to help Republicans. Cooper has managed to successfully fight some of the changes with lawsuits.

Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina are all presidential battlegrounds, and in all three states district lines for House and state legislative seats have been heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans. The GOP continues to control both chambers of the legislatures in each state, and Republican leaders want to limit the ability of Democrats to undercut the advances they have made in their conservative agendas.

 The last election changed the state in a way that apparently the Legislature has decided to not accept. Wisconsin Gov.-elect Tony Evers (D)