Caucus web snares Green, Walker staffers

The plot thickens, the web gets a little more tangled, and Mark Green and Scott Walker go to new lengths to avoid talking to reporters.

We're talking, of course, about the caucus scandal, a subject on which Green and Walker have both taken "See no evil, hear no evil" approaches and claim they never suspected that illegal campaign activity was going on under their very noses -- or perhaps in their own offices.

Scott Jensen's decision to go to trial and drag it all out there is, despite denials from the right, already doing a lot more damage to Republicans than Democrats, simply because the case is focused on the Republican caucus, which Jensen ran. Mark Green was caucus chairman, but to hear him tell it that was some sort of honorary position and no one told him anything. (And he didn't ask.)

Today's Journal Sentinel story on the trial includes this:

Also Wednesday, the names of three senior aides or advisers to the two Republican candidates for governor - U.S. Rep. Mark Green of Green Bay and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker - surfaced in court in connection with campaign materials prepared on state time. Only one of those three worked for a GOP candidate - Green - then, however.

"Everything I used was property of the (Assembly Republican) caucus - state materials" that included computers, printers, fax machines and other items in an office rented by taxpayers, said Eric Grant, who worked as an Assembly Republican designer from August 1995 until April 2000...

The aides or advisers to Green and Walker mentioned in court Thursday were:

• Chris Tuttle, who worked as media director for the Assembly Republican caucus in 1998. Grant said Tuttle regularly approved campaign materials the designer prepared. Tuttle, whose signature or initials were on campaign-related work orders shown to jurors Wednesday, is now Green's chief of staff in Washington, D.C.

Tuttle worked in Green's Assembly office after his stint with the Assembly Republican Caucus and joined Green's congressional office shortly after the congressman's first term started in 1999.

Tuttle was not in the office Wednesday because he is on paternity leave. He did not return calls to his home.

[Chris Tuttle? Where have I heard that name before? Oh, right!]

Green has denied any knowledge of campaigning on state time while he was a member of the Assembly. Wednesday marked the second day in a row that Green did not take calls about the matter, and spokesman Rob Vernon said Green was traveling both days.

Green said in a statement: "Chris Tuttle was not my employee when he worked at the Assembly Republican Caucus. . . . It was and is my office policy that any campaign work done by my legislative staff was done on their own time."

• Bruce Pfaff, on Jensen's staff during the 1998 elections and now Walker's campaign manager, was named on what Grant said was a work order for three campaign brochures.

On that work order were these notations: "Jensen wants to get these three (campaign) pieces out prior to our 9/28 poll" and "Bruce will pick up." Grant identified the "Bruce" as Pfaff.

Pfaff said Wednesday that he did not remember the incident, but that he did work on campaigns on weekends and evenings in 1998.

"Did I do things that somebody could construe as on-the-job campaigning? I don't know. Possibly," Pfaff said. "But I don't believe I did campaign work on state time."

Walker said he would review what was said in court.

Walker said that when he hired Pfaff as his campaign manager, he did not know that Pfaff had previously worked for Jensen. Walker and Jensen served in the Assembly together in the 1990s.

• Grant identified as campaign materials a list that included this notation: "Graul - 7/10 - Green stuff." That was a reference to Mark Graul, Green's campaign manager and a Green aide in the Legislature.

Green campaign spokesman Vernon said Graul was not available for comment Wednesday night.

But in his 1998 campaign for Congress, Green contracted with Grant to do design work, the campaign spokesman said. But Vernon said Green assumed that Grant "did everything on his own time," because the designer was still on the Assembly payroll.

Mark Green continues to be the only gubernatorial candidate in America who consistently cannot be reached by telephone.

His campaign manager, Mark Graul, isn't talking about this issue any more. A new campaign spokesman has taken on that terrible job.

Green says in a statement that his office policy was that staff should not do campaign work on state time. That's everybody's "policy." What is at issue is what the practice was.

And Walker's campaign manager, Bruce Pfaff, takes the sort-of denial, "but maybe someone could think I did something wrong" approach. He "doesn't believe" he did campaign work on state time.

Is this a big deal? Is it relevant to the governor's race?

It all depends. Republicans think it's relevant that Jim Doyle's campaign manager, Rich Judge, was Assembly caucus director long before he ever worked for Doyle. It's all the noise they've made about Judge that have caused people to look at whether Walker and Green live in glass houses. It looks like we are getting that question answered -- as if we didn't know.