Scott Walker’s Wisconsin and the End of Campaign-Finance Law
To understand how the Wisconsin court came to this decision, Gableman is the ideal justice to focus on. As an undistinguished county trial judge, he was recruited by business organizations to run against Louis Butler, a liberal and the court’s only black member, in the 2008 election. He narrowly won, giving the conservatives a majority, in a campaign so ugly that the Wisconsin Judicial Commission brought charges against Gableman for “reckless disregard for the truth.” He had run TV ads that gave the false impression that Butler had tried “to put criminals on the street.” (In two reviews of the charges, Gableman was not sanctioned for reasons better explained by politics than logic.)
.. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog group in Wisconsin, Gableman would not have been elected without the support of Wisconsin Club for Growth, the state arm of the national Club for Growth, and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state chapter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These two groups spent a total of $2.75 million on so-called issue ads during the campaign, more than five times what the Gableman campaign spent. They are, as the center noted, the “same groups that allegedly coordinated with Walker and brought the challenge to these coordination rules.”
.. A September 7, 2011, e-mail from Doner to Walker, Johnson, Rindfleisch, and Keith Gilkes, who ran Walker’s 2010 campaign to be governor, became the governor’s chief of staff, and was a senior adviser to the 2012 recall campaign, containing “quick thoughts on raising money for Walker’s possible recall efforts.” Doner suggested the following for Wisconsin Club for Growth: “Take Koch’s money.” “Get on a plane to Vegas and sit down with Sheldon Adelson. Ask for $1m now.” “Corporations. Go heavy after them to give.”