I once lived in Wisconsin, and it seems like a whole different state. After living a while in Minnesota, it seemed that the states would be indistinguishable without a map (or a sports rivalry). No longer. It would be exaggerated to blame it all on Scott Walker. After all, there had to be muck there for him to crawl out of.
Though was Walker was definitely muck-covered early on. Back in 1998, when few people besides conservative legislators and corporate funders had heard of ALEC, Walker carried a "truth in sentencing" bill to lengthen prison sentences:
Walker's longstanding association with the group dates back to his first days as a state legislator in the early 1990s. One of the very first high-profile bills Walker was associated with during his time as a state legislator was a 1998 tough-on-crime 'truth in sentencing' bill that caused Wisconsin's prison population to balloon.
Graph is from linked article. Click it to enlarge.
At the time, Walker claimed original authorship of the law. But it wasn't really his bill; ALEC's policy shop wrote it at the behest of two ALEC funders: the Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, formerly called Wackenhut. Soon after Gov. Tommy Thompson signed it into law, Walker introduced a second piece of legislation to open the state's soon-to-grow prison system up to the two private prison companies.
At the time, Walker never publicly mentioned ALEC's role in this legislation. State corrections officials say he never mentioned it privately either.
Though Walker's efforts to legalize private prisons failed,
he managed to pass legislation shipping prisons to private prisons in other states. Of course, he couldn't have done it without the signature of Gov. Tommy Thompson. I remember Thompson from when I still lived in Wisconsin, specifically form seeing him on public TV coverage of the legislative sessions. I wondered what anyone saw in that empty jacket. He got elected somehow anyway, and apparently he was just fine with ALEC laws. Yes, this problem of Democrats skipping midterms is not a new one (no, not me --- I even showed up for the odd-numbered year local elections in the small town where I lived).
Two "John Doe" investigations (John Doe investigations operate with the same sort of secrecy as federal grand jury investigations). One produced multiple convictions, mostly for doing political work on County time when Walker was the Milwaukee County executive (elected in a bluish county in a special election when, once again, Democrats chose not to show up):
The probe led to six convictions. Rindfleisch was sentenced to six months in jail. Wink pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors. A Walker aide and an appointee both received two-year prison sentences after admitting to embezzling more than $70,000 from Operation Freedom. And a railroad executive who'd donated to Walker's campaigns admitted to an illegal scheme in which he pressed his employees to donate to Walker and reimbursed them for it; he received two years of probation.
Walker, though, insisted he had no knowledge of any of the abuses going on under his nose. (Rindfleisch's desk was 25 feet from his office.) As his former employees and associates were sentenced, he catapulted to national stardom as a conservative governor in a blue state who took on organized labor and survived. But he wasn't in the clear yet.
The second investigation regarded illegal coordination between the Walker campaign and dark money groups on his recall election. These same groups had spent millions to put conservative justices on the state supreme court, and their suit to have the investigation dropped went to these same justices. Recuse themselves? In Wisconsin? In the past, sure, a Wisconsin that sometimes seems thoroughly dead and buried. Sure enough, the justices' funders got the "justice" they paid for, with their beholden conservative justices not merely refusing to recuse themselves, but stopping the investigation, taking the plaintiffs' word as fact and ignoring the investigators' request for a hearing on competing claims.
Daniel Weiner, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said in a statement the court "has made campaign finance law extraordinarily easy to evade. No other court has gone this far and for good reason --- it is a misreading of the law and threatens fair and transparent elections."
Justices' recusal sought
Weiner's center filed a brief in the case supporting a February motion by the special prosecutor asking that Gableman and Prosser drop out of the cases because of spending by groups involved in the probe.
The Wisconsin Club for Growth is estimated to have spent $507,000 for Gableman and $520,000 for Prosser. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce spent an estimated $1.8 million for Gableman and $1.1 million for Prosser.
In addition, Citizens for a Strong America --- a group funded entirely by the Wisconsin Club for Growth --- spent an estimated $985,000 to help Prosser.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Walker and his supporters are technically right that he wasn't convicted of anything, nor indicted, and the investigations were stopped. Democrats can truthfully point out that he was protected by cronies on the bench, so the investigation was blocked, not resolved. So far however, Walker hasn't been able to make the WEDC scandal go away.
What's the WEDC scandal?
One of his first acts in January 2011 was to call an emergency session of the state legislature. One of the first pieces of legislation he signed as governor, Act 7, privatized the state’s department of commerce by turning it into a public-private hybrid called the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. WEDC's board of directors was to be chaired by the governor himself to help him make the state more "business friendly" by doling out grants and tax incentives to businesses, helping Walker fulfill a campaign promise to add 250,000 new jobs to the state during his first term.
...
All of which raises an obvious question: if this agency isn't creating jobs, what is it actually for?
Well, the list of recipients of WEDC grants and its generous taxpayer-funded forgivable loans is populated with Walker campaign donors. Five awards worth $10.5 million went to cheese manufacturers who gave $104,000 to Walker's campaigns. Diane Hendricks, a billionaire involved in construction who gave $500,000 to Walker's 2012 recall campaign, won a $2 million tax credit. Another smaller, $500,000 loan was given to different construction firm, also owned by a Walker donor, who met with Walker's chief of staff and the man Walker eventually put in charge of WEDC, Mike Huebsch. Huebsch was pushing for a $4.3 million package for the donor, William Minahan, even though his company was on the verge of collapse. The $500,000 loan was extended instead -- and without review.
These are just a few examples from a very long list.
The WEDC has even made some Republicans realize there's a problem, though it's not the scandal that has Walker in the most political hot water. He's being plagued now by suspicious timing between approval of new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks and a
big donations to Walker's superPAC by Bucks' owners:
On the very day that Walker began pushing for taxpayers to foot much of the bill for the new arena, one of the team's owners donated $150,000 to his super PAC. The investor, Jon Hammes, has donated directly to Walker's past campaigns, as well, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, and this year, Walker hired him as his national finance co-chairman. Another Bucks owner, Ted Kellner, gave $50,000 to Walker's Super PAC.
Aides to Walker have denied any pay-for-play connection, noting that other Bucks owners have donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
If you can look at the suspicious timing between Walker approving a new arena for the Bucks' owners and a couple Bucks' owners donating to Walker's superPAC and think "Hillary Clinton is to blame", you might be a Republican. Just to be clear, it takes more to prove a quid pro quo than timing. That's a basis to investigate, but not to convict. Likewise when businesses slurping from the WEDC trough of goodies without strings happen to be owned by Walker contributors, that proves nothing. But it's sure a good reason for a hard look. And maybe take bets on which scandal finally lands Walker in jail (but don't bet a lot given the judges he has in his pocket).
I offer no comment on whether the arena is a good idea. Maybe the right thing is being done for the wrong reasons. Since it's a done deal, for the city's sake, I hope that's the case. Remembering attitudes toward Milwaukee, with that pervasive contempt for "Milwaukee blacks" (thus the restrictions on voting rights), I'm only half in snark when I say an arena might be the only way to get Wisconsin Republicans to invest in Milwaukee. But the Republicans back then wouldn't have resorted to trying to stop black people from voting, wouldn't have banned unions, wouldn't have tried to roll back transparency, wouldn't have wanted a partisan judiciary. So it feels like Wisconsin has been swapped out with some mirror universe version. Maybe the badger as a state symbol should be replaced with Spock in a goatee.
Cross-posted at MN Progressive Project