Green staffer Graul denies freebies, but does recall one basketball game

Mark Graul, campaign manager of Rep. Mark Green's campaign for governor, now says he is "dumfounded" as to why his name is popping up on lists for free event tickets from Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm, WisPoliics.com reports in its subscriber newsletter.

We've posted two reports from Talking Points Memo, a national blog written by journalist Josh Marshall, in the last week. The latest said Graul had gotten tickets to basketball games and concerts from Abramoff's office.

Graul said earlier he wouldn't know Abramoff if he punched him in the face, but he does admit that he knows Jennifer Calvert, an Abramoff lobbyist who is identified as the writer of two e-mails asking for basketball tickets for Graul. But he never asked for tickets, he told WisPolitics.

Graul told WisPolitics that he did attend a Wizards-Milwaukee Bucks game while in Washington, which he said was well-attended by many Capitol staffers from Wisconsin, but said he couldn't recall how the tickets came to him. "I can't remember. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I have no clue if that was with Jennifer or not. I never asked for tickets for anything. Oftentimes people who had tickets would offer them," he said.

According to Talking Points Memo, this is how he got them -- an e-mail from Calvert to Abramoff's assistant: "May I get four tickets to this game for Mark Graul, COS for Rep. Green? If that works, I'd like to get two for myself as well, to host Mark. Thanks."

So if Mark Graul wasn't asking for tickets to Abramoff's skybox, and wasn't even going to events when there were tickets in his name, what do you suppose was happening? Do you think Jennifer Calvert was scamming Jack Abramoff? Was she pretending to get tickets for Graul and then giving them to someone else, or taking her kids to the game? Was she ripping off Abramoff and scalping skybox tickets outside the arena? Is an investigation in order?

Or is Graul's memory a little faulty?

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P. S. -- I will give Graul some credit for denying he asked for or got concert tix for Limp Bizkit. "I couldn't name one song by any of those people, if they even have songs."

That would be a relief to one of the people who e-mailed me on the entry about the concert tickets: "If your digging on Mark Graul has found anything, it is that he has absolutely abysmal taste in music. Limp Bizkit? Godsmack? DMX? He's willing to sell out to lobbyists for that garbage? Whether or not your ties to Abramoff actually hold up, his dedication to such bad music is of grave concern, and shows unspeakably bad judgment. What is he, 13 years old?"