Wisconsin Governor's Race: Doyle Lawyers Lobbied Election Board to Sanction Green Campaign
By Brad Smith Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Holy Cow! Check out this story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This is as unethical behavior as I have seen from a lawyer appearing before an administrative agency, or members of the agency itself.
The story begins:
"A lawyer for Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's campaign repeatedly lobbied three Democratic members of the State Elections Board before they voted with the majority to order Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green to divest $467,844 in donations from out-of-state political action committees, records show.
"Attorney Michael S. Maistelman bluntly told Democratic Party members of the board he contacted why they should publicly sanction or punish the Green campaign, according to documents obtained by the Journal Sentinel under the state's open records law.
"'Even if this ends up in Court it is a PR victory for us since it makes Green spend money and have to defend the use of his Washington DC dirty money,' Maistelman said in a 9:31 a.m. e-mail one day before the vote. He sent the message to Carl Holborn and Kerry Dwyer, board members appointed by Democratic leaders of the Legislature.
"Holborn, Dwyer and another Democratic appointee, Robert Kasieta, were part of a five-vote majority that gave Green's campaign 10 days to divest itself of $467,844 in donations from political action committees not registered in Wisconsin - an order the Green campaign will fight in a Dane County courtroom today."
As a former elections official, I would have recused myself immediately from voting after getting such emails. See my earlier post here for more background.
so that people can see that Doyle is trying to stack the deck in Wisconsin.