Madison — Advisers for Justice David Prosser on Monday said a recount by challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg is unwarranted and would be too costly for taxpayers.

"Admittedly the election was uncomfortably close," Prosser said at a Capitol news conference, where he declared victory. "My opponent ran a very effective campaign. But now that all 72 counties have completed their canvasses, the result of the election is not in doubt."

Jim Troupis, an attorney for Prosser's campaign, was even more blunt.

"We will take every and any step to prevent this frivolous matter going forward," he said of a possible recount.

The official vote canvass shows Prosser defeating Kloppenburg, an assistant state attorney general, in the April 5 election by 7,316 votes out of about 1.5 million cast. That margin is just under half a percentage point, which would allow Kloppenburg to ask for a partial or statewide recount without having to pay for it.

Troupis declined to specify how he could challenge a recount request by Kloppenburg.

Melissa Mulliken, Kloppenburg's campaign manger, said Troupis would have a "hard case to make" that a request for a recount was frivolous.

"State statute clearly contemplates recounts when the margin is less than one-half of 1 percent, as it is in this case," she said.

Kloppenburg has until Wednesday to decide whether she will ask for a recount, and Mulliken said she has not made a decision.

The election initially appeared much closer, with Kloppenburg winning by 204 votes. But two days after the election, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced she had failed to include in her initial, unofficial tally the 14,315 votes from the City of Brookfield. Once those votes were counted, Prosser gained more than 7,000 votes.

Weeks before the election, Prosser was heavily favored to win. But that changed when Gov. Scott Walker proposed eliminating most collective bargaining for public workers and massive protests erupted at the Capitol. Opponents of the plan saw the courts as a way to stop the measure and poured their energy into electing Kloppenburg.

Troupis said since 1980 there have been 24 statewide recounts around the country. The most any result changed was by about 1,000 votes - a fraction of the votes Kloppenburg would need to win.

He and others said that was a sign Kloppenburg should not call for a recount.

"If this recount goes forward, even if partial, this will be enormously expensive for taxpayers," said Brian Schimming, an adviser to Prosser who served as his chief of staff when Prosser was speaker of the Assembly.

Schimming estimated a recount would cost the state and counties at least hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A recount would be conducted at the local level and overseen by the state Government Accountability Board. Reid Magney, a spokesman for the board, said there were too many variables to know what the cost of a recount would be.

Each of the 72 counties has a three-member board of canvassers, and those board members are each paid about $100 a day. Local governments would also face increased costs for photocopying, supplies and the like.

Magney said there would also be a large "opportunity cost" for clerks, because they would have to devote time to recounts that would otherwise be spent on other duties.

Campaigns raising funds

In a recount, the campaigns would face hefty expenses for lawyers and recount observers. Both campaigns are now fundraising in anticipation of those costs.

Prosser and Kloppenburg participated in a new public financing program that gave them $400,000 in taxpayer money to run their campaigns. Providing public money was meant to minimize the potential for conflicts of interest for justices, but the candidates are now free to raise unlimited sums for a potential recount.

Kloppenburg is raising money through her campaign committee. Supporters of Prosser have set up a separate committee for him, and they will transfer money to his campaign as needed. That was done in an effort to insulate Prosser from conflicts because his campaign would not be directly involved in fundraising.

"I don't want to know who's contributing," Prosser said in an interview. "I'm doing the best I can to be totally ignorant of this."

Troupis' work for Prosser also potentially raises issues for a major case on campaign financing and free speech rights before the court.

Troupis represents tea party groups and other conservatives who sued the state to halt new rules that would require groups that talk about candidates to register with the state and report how they got their money. Arguments will be heard this fall, and the Supreme Court has blocked the new rules while it considers the case.

Prosser said he had not thought about the matter, but his initial belief is that he would not need to recuse himself from the case.

In general, a judge should step aside from a case if an attorney representing one party also represents the judge's campaign, said Jim Alexander, executive director of the state Judicial Commission, which oversees the state's judicial ethics code. However, such a decision is for each judge to decide individually, he said.

If Prosser stepped aside in the case, that would open the possibility of the court deadlocking 3-3. Normally, the decision of the next highest court stands if the Supreme Court splits evenly. It is unclear what would happen in this case, however, because it was started directly with the Supreme Court and has not been through lower courts.

Barring a recount that changes the results, Prosser, 68, will be seated for a new 10-year term on Aug. 1.

Prosser thanked three colleagues on the court - Justices Patience Roggensack, Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman. He singled out Gableman, calling him "tireless, indefatigable and brilliant."

Those three justices, plus Prosser, since 2008 have made up the 4-3 conservative majority on key cases.

Gableman has been controversial because of an ad in his campaign that drew a formal complaint from the Judicial Commission that alleged he violated the judicial ethics code by misstating facts in a campaign ad about his opponent, then-Justice Louis Butler. The case was abandoned after the Supreme Court split 3-3 on whether Gableman violated the ethics code.

Prosser voted with Roggensack and Ziegler to say Gableman did not violate the ethics code. The other justices - Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and N. Patrick Crooks - wanted to send the case to a jury.