Fundraising 'scandal' recalls good old days

Gosh, what next? Now someone who works for the governor held a fundraiser for him, and some people who do business with the state came and made contributions? It must be pretty scandalous, because it made the front page.

The goo-goos, of course, are outraged.

State Dem Chair Joe Wineke did manage to shame the newspaper into reporting that Doyle's opponents, Scott Walker and Mark Green, have records of raising money from special interests who want favors:

Wineke said Green, for example, accepted $54,000 from drug manufacturers after he cast a key vote on the Medicare reforms that will begin to provide drug coverage to the nation's elderly, and Walker benefited from a fund-raising event hosted by former state official and investment banker Nick Hurtgen, who is now fighting federal corruption charges in Chicago. {The story neglected to mention Hurtgen's connections to Bear, Stearn, which was awarded huge underwriting contracts by Walker's government.]

It kind of makes you wish for the good old days, when Tommy Thompson was the governor, and things were simpler. You'd never see anyone who did any business with state government who wasn't sporting a $500 "Governor's Club" lapel pin.

Jim Klauser, secretary of administration, who was known as the Deputy Governor, oversaw the campaign, including its fundraising, and DOA awarded many of the state contracts for services. Klauser's wife was Tommy's campaign treasurer, processed the checks, and filed the finance reports.

Tommy, of course, insisted he never knew who contributed and paid no attention.

I recall in 1990 when Tom Loftus' campaign did the research to identify something like $800,000 in contributions to Thompson from people associated with would-be dog tracks in the state.

The state was in the process of deciding which tracks would be licensed, and at the time (before tribal casinos), everyone thought a dog track license was a license to print money. Thompson's campaign shook down everyone from investors in the projects to the people who would build them, blacktop the parking lots, and sell the hot dogs.

The Loftus campaign did the research and presented it to the Journal Sentinel, which spent a couple of weeks or more checking it out and finally ran a story. As I recall, it was a one-day story, while Tommy continued to amass millions from vendors doing business with the state of Wisconsin.

Do I think there's too much special interest money in politics? Absolutely. But if the same standard is applied to all candidates -- which would mean the newspaper plans a front page story every time any political candidate has an innocent event like the Doyle event in Saturday's story -- there won't be room for anything else.