Green: 'The dog spent my PAC money'

The State Elections Board has been asked to enforce limits on political action committee contributions, closing an apparent loophole that would let Rep. Mark Green raise and spend double the legal PAC limit in the race for governor.

In a memo to the board, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign says:

The limit on PAC donations in state law is there to protect the public. Wisconsin citizens have a compelling interest in preventing special interests from having too much influence over elections and elected officials...We believe you should take immediate steps to ensure that the Green campaign complies with the $485,000 limit on PAC donations. If you are unwilling to do that, you owe the people of Wisconsin an official explanation as to why the limit should not apply in this instance and why Emergency Rule 1.395 will not be enforced.

If the state law limiting PAC donations is not enforced, the Green campaign will be allowed to raise as much as $996,405 – more than twice the legal limit that is supposed to apply to candidates for governor. If the law is not enforced and the state limit on PAC contributions is not respected, not only will the other two candidates for governor be disadvantaged by the resulting double standard on PAC fundraising, but most importantly all citizens of Wisconsin will be harmed as we all will lose yet another piece of what little remains of longstanding protections guarding against special interest ownership of our state government.

Green has all of the extra PAC money because he transferred $1.3-million from his federal, Congressional campaign account to his governor's campaign. That transfer included $511,000 from federal PACs who were trying to buy favor with him in Congress. But those PACs could not have legally given to his governor's race because they are not registered in Wisconsin.

It's money laundering, pure and simple. When the elections board tried to stop it by passing a rule, a committee of the Republican-run legislature stepped in and suspended it. WDC believes that since the legislature has adjourned without acting on the issue that the rule is back in effect.

Here's my favorite part, reported by WisPolitics on Monday:

Green campaign manager Mark Graul said Elections Board policy traditionally has not subjected converted funds to those limits. He also says the money has already been spent.

I thought those words from Graul had a familiar ring to them, and sure enough, last September, when Green was asked to return tainted PAC money from Tom DeLay, Graul said:

"that money has been since spent, so there is no contribution to return."

I called it weasel words at the time, and it turned out the DeLay money hadn't been spent after all. Just last week, Green's campaign finally gave it away to several charities.

The "already spent it" answer was just one of many lines Graul and Green tried out when doing the fast shuffle on the DeLay money. They pretty much said everything except. "The dog ate it." Maybe the dog spent it?

It is no more true now, talking about the questionable money from federal PACs, than it was when Graul said it last year to try to keep DeLay's money. If they still have $511,000 in their account -- and they have several times that -- they haven't spent the money.

It's unfortunate that WDC was not as aggressive in the last governor's race, when Tom Barrett basically did the same thing Green is doing with the PAC transfer. Graul argues that sets a precedent. But even in politics two wrongs still don't make a right.