No halos for GOP 'independent' campaigns

I've been called a jackass, I think, by Ragnar Mentaire, for suggesting that Assembly Republicans, including some current Mark Green staffers, engaged in illegal campaign activity on state time. He/she writes:

Republican staff, on the other hand, actually created groups to support the GOP cause independently and outside of the control of their leadership. Rongstad's Teddy Roosevelt Fund and its successors spent aggressively and were successful (as Bjork, Judge et al note in their testimony), but they did it all outside the line of the oversight, control, knowledge of Scott Jensen or anyone else. BECAUSE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ILLEGAL TO DO IT ANY OTHER WAY!

Jensen wasn't charged with coordination, because he did not coordinate or control independent groups, as the John Doe testimony will show. But Doyle and Xoff's crowd, Gussert-Burnett-Bjork-Krug-Richards-Chvala-Judge and many others, ignored the coordination rules and ran their I.E. campaigns from the same taxpayer-supported offices from which they ran their targeted campaigns.

As the Journal Sentinel reporter on this story discovered, the Assembly Republicans are the clean ones in the independent expenditure business. Which is why there was no real story.

I am at a disadvantage, because I wasn't in the Capitol, as Ragnar apparently was, judging from his first-hand knowledge of how pure the Assembly GOP caucus was.

But how do you explain this 2001 Wisconsin State Journal story about a successor to the Teddy Roosevelt Fund?

One Caucus May Have Illegally Helped Group

A Former Employee Of An Assembly Legislative Caucus Says The Caucus Helped An Independent Organization Coordinate Ads Attacking Democratic Candidates.

A former legislative caucus staff member said she and other state workers secretly helped a private group coordinate attack ads against Assembly Democratic candidates last fall, in possible violation of state campaign finance laws.

Lyndee Wall, former executive assistant to the Assembly Republican Caucus, said she and at least two other caucus employees helped a group funded by the state Republican Party to produce, address and mail controversial campaign radio ads before the Nov. 7 election.

Much of the work took place in the caucus's state office at 17 S. Fairchild St.

The ads, run in 12 races statewide by the group Project Vote Informed, included one highlighting a candidate's past marital problems that was so controversial some radio stations refused to air it. The ad, directed against Rep. Lee Meyerhofer, D-Kaukauna, set off renewed calls to further regulate so-called "independent expenditure groups" such as Project Vote Informed.

If Wall's allegations are true, the implications could be "monumental," said Jay Heck, director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, which advocates further restrictions on spending by independent political groups.

"This would demonstrate, at the very highest level of legislative leadership, collusion in violation of Wisconsin statutes," Heck said...

In the case of the Assembly Republican Caucus, Wall said staffers went even further by working directly with Project Vote Informed. Like other independent groups, Project Vote Informed was required to file an oath with the Elections Board that it would operate independently of any candidate in the races it targeted...

She said the two employees who enlisted her help with the Project Vote Informed ads -deputy director Mark Jefferson and media director Heather Smith - worked as key advisers in many races, acting "like overseers" across the state...

Wall said her involvement with Project Vote Informed began last October, when a fax arrived at the caucus office from Jensen's Capitol office. The material included an Outagamie County Circuit Court transcript and an Antigo Police Department report, parts of which later showed up in Project Vote Informed ads against Democratic Assembly candidates Meyerhofer and Sarah Waukau of Antigo.

Wall said that shortly after the material arrived, Smith and Jefferson asked her to deliver a sealed envelope from the caucus office to Project Vote Informed director Rongstad at his office at 10 E. Doty St.

She said she made the delivery at the request of Smith, who is Rongstad's ex-wife. Wall said she didn't look inside the bulky envelope, so she couldn't say whether it contained the faxes from Jensen's office. The information in the faxes eventually showed up in Project Vote Informed ads against the two Democratic candidates.

"Heather didn't want to be seen delivering anything to that office, and neither did Mark," Wall said, referring to Smith and Jefferson. "They thought I was a face no one would recognize."

After the delivery, Wall said, Smith spent two days producing a series of radio ads for Project Vote Informed at Abella Audio Productions Inc., 2302 W. Badger Road in Madison. The group's campaign spending report shows payments to Abella and several people who provided "radio voices" for the ads on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1...

After the ads were finished, Wall said Smith asked her to help address envelopes containing audiotapes to "30 or 40" radio stations in and around Wisconsin with the return address listed as Project Vote Informed. She said Jefferson provided the addresses, the cost of buying the radio airtime and instructions for running the spots.

Wall said Smith placed checks in each envelope written from a Project Vote Informed checkbook.

"The checks themselves - the payments - were written out of Todd's checkbook," Wall said. "I watched her (Smith) write them out."

Wall said Assembly Republican Caucus staffers used her personal cellular phone to call Rongstad and radio stations to avoid having those phone numbers show up on state telephone bills. She provided copies of her cell phone bills to the State Journal showing five phone calls to Rongstad's home and office in October and early November and four phone calls to radio stations that aired the radio ads.

Here's my theory on why the prosecutors made the charging decisions they did:

Although they turned up all sorts of illegal activity by legislators and staff, prosecutors focused on fund-raising. Those charged were those who did illegal fund-raising of one kind or another, even though the charges against them may have been for other violations.

With Chuck Chvala it was pay-for-play, including directing contributions to "independent" groups.

Brian Burke was accused of shaking down lobbyists in his Capitol office for campaign contributions.

Scott Jensen, Steve Foti, Bonnie Ladwig, and Sherry Schultz were charged with putting Schultz on the state payroll as a full-time political fundraiser for Republicans.

It's all about money. That's what the charges have in common.

Why weren't Assembly Dems and Senate Repubs charged? My guess is that because they were in the minority, they really did not have the leverage to squeeze money out the way Jensen and Chvala did. Krug and Panzer were in the minor leagues, even somewhat dependent on the help, or at least the acquiescence, of their majorities in the other houses to raise money.

There could have been endless charges against lawmakers and staff. Prosecutors decided, apparently, that taking down a few of the biggest offenders would send shock waves through the Capitol and frighten others into cleaning up their acts. The jury is still out on whether that has been successful. And Jensen and Schultz trial is still to come, unless there is a deal in the next seven days.