Walker slips and slides on ticket giveaway; When is a cycle dealership a media outlet?

The Scott Walker Harley campaign tour of Wisconsin and adjacent media markets only lasted five days, but the questions and controversy already have a lifespan twice that long and appears headed for a much longer run.

Now, the Journal Sentinel reports today, a Wausau TV station has become the second media outlet in the state to return freebies from Walker. It's the station Walker had cited as a success story, claiming his trip was responsible for a crew coming to do a story on the Mitchell Park Domes.

In defending the trip, Walker said it already had yielded a benefit because Channel 7 had followed up by sending a crew to shoot a travel piece at the Domes and interview him. Records show the station received $725 in free tickets.

But in a letter to Walker's office, Station General Manager Allan Lancaster wrote:

"We had been planning for several months to do that story, and interviewed you only because your staff refused to allow us to speak with any other official from the Domes."

Lancaster said the story will not air.

The more questions Walker tries to answer, the more questions he raises. His explanation of how $19,000 worth of free tickets were distributed has shifted more times than his borrowed Harley did during the trip.

This from the Walker campaign blog:

At each stop on my Harley tour, we handed out packets to each media outlets (sic). Along with information about the various attractions, we included tickets to various spots. All of the tickets were donated to us.

That has been the story ever since details of Walker's "Sleazy Rider " tour first came to light. Walker and his staff have maintained that free tickets went only to media organizations, but now it seems clear they haven't been telling the full story.

In the original Green Bay Press Gazette story, "Walker defended the giveaway as a promotional gimmick to get the media to pass along the tickets to their readers, listeners or viewers. Or, he said, individual reporters could use the tickets and craft a story from it."

In fact his Communications Specialist, Fran Rudig, said "the office was required to track all tickets and record which news organizations received which tickets." Rudig said, "None of the tickets, she said, were given to the public. If ordinary citizens requested a packet along the tour, she said, they were given information only." Story.

In his letter to the editors of the Press Gazette, Walker said, "In addition to talking with local media, our staff gave out promotional packets with information on the various vacation spots... In fact, an inventory was taken to insure that all of the tickets went out to the various media outlets and not to me, staff or other riders." Letter

Notice Walker's careful use of words as to who didn't get tickets. It's a rather carefully crafted, Clintonian use of language. "It depends on what you mean by tickets," or "it depends on what you mean by the public."

And just the other day, Walker said to the Press Gazette, “I think it’s completely legitimate to give free tickets to news organizations." Story.

But now we learn that it wasn't just media organizations that received the freebies from Walker. The Journal Sentinel reported that, "In addition to the Press-Gazette and WRLO, tickets went to two newspapers, 10 television stations, 14 radio stations, two Platteville business groups, three Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealerships and two other businesses, records show. JS story.

But the JS doesn't identify the business groups, three Harley-Davidson dealerships or other businesses.

What's Walker's excuse for giving freebies to businesses, which might fit under the definition of "the public" and "ordinary citizens"?

What is the Walker campaign's relationship to the non-media organizations that got free tickets?
Can we expect the three Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealerships to be sending their television new crews down to Milwaukee to do a story the Betty Brinn Children's Museum?

Clearly this is not, and should not be the end of the story.

"Get your motor running..."

UPDATE: Walker offers a new defense; the governor's office knew about the plan and let the State Fair participate. But State Fair says differently. And another TV station returns the freebies. JS story.