Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)
A secretive billionaire in his 70s supports Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker by pouring money into a political advocacy group not required to disclose its donors. Old news, right? But I'm not talking about the Koch brothers here.
While the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity played a key role in Walker's elections, and we don't know how much of the group's expenditures came directly from the Kochs, another secretive billionaire was funneling money through the Wisconsin Club for Growth—and he saw some serious payoff from keeping Walker in office. The billionaire in question is John Menard Jr., owner of a chain of hardware stores, who reportedly gave more than $1.5 million during Walker's recall battle:
Menard’s previously unreported six-figure contributions to the Wisconsin Club for Growth — a group that spent heavily to defend Walker during a bitter 2012 recall election — seem to have paid off for the businessman and his company. In the past two years, Menard’s company has been awarded up to $1.8 million in special tax credits from a state economic development corporation that Walker chairs, according to state records.
And in his five years in office, Walker’s appointees have sharply scaled back enforcement actions by the state Department of Natural Resources — a top Menard priority. The agency had repeatedly clashed with Menard and his company under previous governors over citations for violating state environmental laws and had levied a $1.7 million fine against Menard personally, as well as his company, for illegally dumping hazardous wastes.
(That fine came after Menard was caught putting hazardous waste in his home garbage and sending it off to the regular landfill.)
There's nothing necessarily illegal about the contributions—under the law, billionaires are allowed to do their best to buy elections by giving giant piles of money in secret outside expenditures, and of course they give money to support politicians who will be likely, for ideological reasons, to give them big tax breaks. But Menard's $1.5 million is just another discovery stemming from the second John Doe investigation against Walker, the one charging that he personally solicited and funneled contributions from wealthy Republican donors to organizations, like the Club for Growth, that wouldn't have to disclose their donors. It's another sign that, even if the John Doe investigation doesn't result in criminal convictions, as the previous John Doe investigation targeting Walker's circles did, it will be a treasure trove of information for Walker's political opponents.