Walker slips and slides, even on small issues

An issue that Scott Walker and his attorney have tried to dismiss as a non-issue that has already been decided in Walker's favor could come back to bite him at Wednesday's meeting of the State Elections Board.

At issue is a complaint that Walker's campaign paid for 40,000 calls to voters in November, urging them to call their supervisors and ask them to support Walker's county budget proposal.

Although it was being paid for by a campaign committee, Walker's calls went out without the required disclaimer saying who was paying for them. Two Milwaukee County supervisors filed a complaint.

Walker's camp has argued that the County Elections Board has already cleared him of any wrongdoing. Walker also used his favorite excuse -- it was someone else's fault.

Elections Board Counsel George Dunst, in a memo to the board, is skeptical of some of Walker's arguments, to say the least.

The board itself is free to do whatever it decides on the matter, including ignoring Dunst's advice or opinion, as it has been known to do at times. But Dunst makes these points:

1. The matter was never decided by the County Elections Commission, since the disclaimer issue never even came up there. The commission's decision was on an entirely different question -- as Walker & Co. well know.

2. Walker's claim that the disclaimer was supposed to be on the recorded calls, but was somehow left off by the vendor, doesn't hold water. In his filing, Walker says his campaign wasn't even sure if a disclaimer was required, but when someone called to tell his campaign there was no disclaimer on the calls, they contacted the vendor to add it. But the call center that did the calls does not confirm that, and has no explanation other then they ended up adding the disclaimer eventually after complaints.

It sounds like Walker did not initially think it was necessary, then got a complaint from someone who received a call, then tried to fix things after more than 20,0000 calls had already gone out in violation to state law.

Walker is claiming the disclaimer was always on there when his campaign sent it to the call center, but Dunst doesn't really believe that argument. His memo says:

The Markesan Group's [Walker's campaign consultants] statement that "A digital recording of the disclaimer was immediately added" together with CallingPost Communications' statements that "We have no information or explanation for the lack of a disclaimer on the Friends of Scott Walker recorded message that was initially distributed on November 4, 2004," and that "a disclaimer was added" are very tepid support, at best, for the campaign's contention that the original text of the phone message contained a source identification; and, at worst, suggest that disclaimer was added after complaints were received and the campaign realized that it would have to "add a disclaimer," -- especially in light of the campaign's statement that, "While it is not entirely clear if one was legally necessary or not, when the call was recorded it did include a disclaimer." One might have expected either (or both) Markesan and CallingPost to accept responsibility for the omission-- if the text distributed to them included the disclaimer.

That is lawyer talk for "I don't believe you."

Is this a big deal? Not in the grand scheme of things. It's not a capital offense, and may get Walker a reprimand or nothing.

But how he and his campaign have handled it -- slipping and sliding, backfilling -- however you want to describe it, it does not speak well for how Walker and his campaign people operate. If they bob and weave on a little issue like this, what will happen when they really get in trouble?

UPDATE: State Elections Board fines Walker $5,000. JS Story. Xoff post.