The slime runs deep in Wisconsin, and the documents leaked to The Guardian yesterday (“Because Scott Walker Asked”) provide mind-boggling evidence of the pay-to-play — which we used to call “bribery,” wonder whatever happened to that fine word? — and the very kind of campaign-coordination that was supposed to be the firewall that would keep Citizens United from destroying our democracy.
Speaking of democracy-destroying, though…. the documents (peruse the collection here) also show that WI GOP operatives invented a voter-fraud story line out of whole cloth in 2011 to ensure the election of David Prosser to the presumably non-partisan Supreme Court. Prosser later was among the justices who refused to recuse himself from the John Doe case in which he ruled that these very documents should be destroyed, despite having received upwards of $3.6 million in campaign-spending from the groups involved in the case.
Here’s the genesis of the lying scheme (via the Wisconsin State Journal this morning):
Steve Baas, a lobbyist for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and former Republican legislative staffer, floated an idea on the email thread:
“Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number? I obviously think we should.”
Here was the response from disgraced GOP ex-Assemblyman and school-piratization lobbyist Scott Jensen, who got his felonies dismissed with a change of venue to Waukesha county, the same county at the center of the Prosser recount fiasco:
“Yes. Anything fishy should be highlighted. Stories should be solicited by talk radio hosts.”
In another email, Jensen writes that Prosser “needs to be on talk radio in the morning saying he is confident he won and talk radio needs to scream the Dems are trying to steal the race.”
And, as Media Matters reports today, no sooner said than done:
Interestingly, the day after Jensen and Baas discussed using radio outlets to push voter fraud to challenge the legitimacy of Prosser’s election results, then-Daily Caller reporter Matt Boyle penned an article titled “Election Fraud Allegations Fly In Close Wisconsin Supreme Court Race.”
In his piece, Boyle cites “Madison and Milwaukee conservative radio host Vicki McKenna,” writing McKenna told the Daily Caller “she spent almost her entire two-hour show taking audience calls, in which listeners detailed what may be considered full-blown voter fraud.”
And here we are, with a conservative WI Supreme Court elected on deliberate lies and washed in on waves of corporate cash, doing the administration’s bidding.
Whoever leaked these documents is in a world of hurt if he or she is ever identified. Personally, I think he or she deserves a medal.
Update: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is now running this headline: GOP operatives discussed ginning up "voter fraud" reports