Press Release
April 23, 2010
CONTACT:
Jay Heck – 608/256-2686 WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE STILL NEEDS TO REFORM PHONY ISSUE ADS
The Wisconsin Legislature ended its 2009-2010 regular legislative session early this morning -- not with a bang, but with a whimper regarding campaign finance reform.
It failed to pass legislation to require the disclosure of the amount of money and the donors to outside special interest groups who run those nasty campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy which increasingly dominate our statewide and legislative elections in this state.
In January, the Wisconsin State Senate overwhelmingly passed
Senate Bill 43, bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation requiring disclosure of the donors and regulation of the money utilized by outside special interest groups and individuals that run widely-disseminated campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy during the period of 60 days or less prior to an election. The Assembly needed to modify the measure somewhat in the wake of the January 21st United States Supreme Court decision in :
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
But it never got done.
Even as late as this morning, after the State Senate adjourned for the session, the Assembly could have brought Senate Bill 43 to the floor and passed it (and those parts of the legislation rendered unconstitutional by the
Citizens United decision would have been excised from the law). But the leadership declined to do so. And so disclosure of phony issue ads didn't get considered or passed.
Governor Jim Doyle, who has been a consistent vocal supporter of requiring the disclosure of phony issue ads, should call the Legislature back into Special Session to finish the job and pass a modified version of Senate Bill 43. Senator Jon Erpenbach (D-Waunakee), a long-time leader on this matter, has draft legislation ready to be considered. It could be accomplished by both legislative chambers in less than an hour.
Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan (D-Janesville) and State Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Schofield) also have it within their power to call the Legislature into Extraordinary Session to pass a modified version of Senate Bill 43.
Doyle, Sheridan and Decker need to show leadership on the issue of issue ads. Will any of them step up to do so?
__________________________________________
Jay Heck, Executive Director
Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
608/256-2686
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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
May 2, 2010
By Bill KrausA largely unnoticed and unremarked upon drift of power has been taking place within our democratic system for more than 30 years.
It is mostly a result of the unintended consequences of the Watergate reforms. These reforms were meant to punish the political parties for multiple abuses of the powers that had accrued to them over time.
The punishment exceeded the crime by largely destroying the parties’ longstanding ability to recruit and slate candidates and to fund and manage their campaigns.
The reform took away the parties' near monopoly on funding campaigns, and all the other roles that attended that one went away as well.
The money got loose.
This meant that the people and organizations who had been funding candidacies indirectly could now fund them directly.
An era of entrepreneurial candidacies began and was quickly squelched by the legislative leaders whose ability to control their caucuses was eroded by the candidates’ new freedoms.
The leaders set up legislative campaign committees and re-funneled the money flow so it got to the candidates through them because they controlled these organizations instead of getting to the candidates directly. They became what the parties had been before they went too far. They became the rainmakers.
This restored and enhanced their power. Once they got their hands on the money they took over the responsibility to recruit and slate, fund and manage from the displaced and weakened parties.
Like most people and organizations who are given too much power they overplayed their hands. Toll booths were set up. State employees’ jobs were expanded to include campaign work. And jail sentences followed. But, oddly enough, the power which had fallen into the laps of the legislative leaders pretty much stayed there. The parties did not resurrect. The crucial flow of the serious campaign money was not redirected away from the leadership offices.
So now we have a new set of legislative leaders who have pretty much the same power those they replaced had and misused.
Proof of malfeasance is not offered, but a weakened and understaffed print press corps has raised questions about why some legislation disappeared into wastebaskets in the leadership offices and other less or equally worthy proposals got what can only be described as favorable treatment in the chaotic last days of the legislative session.
These stories are a valuable reminder that the most desirable side effect of having a vigorous free press is that its practitioners provide the great public service of seeing that those with power are turning square corners.
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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
April 26, 2010
By Bill KrausSenate Bill 43 died quietly last week. If an important newspaper ran a news story about its demise, it didn’t come to my attention.
The bill was known by those familiar with it as “the disclosure bill.” What it says in essence is that if you want to participate in political campaigns with advertisements for or against a candidate, you must tell everyone where you got the money to pay for these advertisements.
The state Senate passed it with a substantial bi-partisan majority. It didn’t survive a trip to the Assembly. It died in the Speaker’s office.
A lot of important political players showed up for the funeral. Some came to mourn the passing and others came to make sure it was really dead.
The mourners were:
1. The Supreme Court, which urged disclosure as the real and really constitutional reform when it issued the decision on the Citizens United case which allowed corporations and unions to do the kind of campaign advertising heretofore prohibited.
2. The GOP stalwarts who have always been leery of spending limits, public funding, and other regulatory palliatives and whose war cry was, is, and always will be Disclosure is the Answer. The death of disclosure means they lose the chance to prove their assertion that this is the ideal and only required campaign reform.
3. Candidates who come under attack from single-issue (usually) zealots with money who have become eminent to dominant participants in political campaigns recently.
4. The press, which supports political openness on its own behalf and, with the notable exception of many editorial-page editors, pretty much ignored this companion political openness effort which would have shown who the participants in campaigns really are.
5. Fairness advocates, who pointed out that candidates must reveal where they get the money they spend to promote their candidacies, but their non-candidate enemies and opponents are under no such obligation.
The “Were glad you’re dead crowd” included:
1. Free-market fanatics, including our current governor, who kind of like the high-spending, raucous, media-driven, corruption inducing system.
2. Free-speech protectors who consider anonymity a necessary part of that guarantee. They do not think free speech is really free unless it can be done without attribution, so it is free from backlash by those who are offended by it.
3. Organizations whose members’ commercial interests are protected from the consequences of their spending on their political interests.
4. Anyone who wants to put their money where their mouth isn’t. Strange bedfellows of all kinds. Right-To-Life organizations must have a lot of them judging from their vehemence about keeping the identity of their funders secret. Collateral partisan groups like Club for Growth and The Greater Wisconsin Committee also fall into this category.
5. Candidates who expect to be rewarded for letting the foregoing beneficiaries of non-disclosure maintain their anonymity in the expectation that those who they protect from this unwanted publicity will lavish praise and money on them.
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Press Release
April 22, 2010
CONTACT:
Jay Heck – 608/256-2686 WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE MUST PASS CAMPAIGN FINANCE DISCLOSURE REFORM
ON LAST DAY OF SESSION - TODAY - THURSDAY, APRIL 22ND!
Today is the last day of the 2009-2010 legislative session of the Wisconsin Legislature. This is likely the last opportunity to pass and enact into law a long-needed measure to require outside groups who are attempting to influence Wisconsin elections to make public the amount of money they are spending and who they are. The State Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation to do this in January but it needs to be modified and passed in the Assembly and the State Senate again to be in place for the upcoming 2010 elections. And it must be done Today - Thursday!
On January 19, 2010, the Wisconsin State Senate debated and then overwhelmingly passed
Senate Bill 43, bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation requiring disclosure of the donors and regulation of the money utilized by outside special interest groups and individuals that run widely-disseminated campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy during the period of 60 days or less prior to an election.
The huge, bipartisan pro-reform vote was 26 in favor and only 7 opposed. Eight Republicans joined all eighteen Democrats to pass this sweeping reform measure. This electioneering disclosure and regulation legislation mirrors rules approved by the state Government Accountability Board in November 2008. An identical Assembly version of the legislation,
Assembly Bill 63 was passed in the Assembly Committee on Campaign Reform and Elections in June of 2009 on a bipartisan 6 to 1 vote. The Assembly would have considered and passed the measure soon after the Senate action -- and Governor
Jim Doyle, who has repeatedly said he supported this measure, would have signed it into law.
Common Cause in Wisconsin (CC/WI) was the first state reform organization to recognize the critical importance of this reform and we first proposed a version of this measure back in 1997 -- and have been a leader in the effort to get it enacted into law ever since.
But then, on January 21st, a hugely destructive volcano erupted in the nation when the United States Supreme Court issued one of the worst decisions in American legal history -- in a critical, landmark case: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In this bitterly divided 5 to 4 decision, the hypocritically activist majority needlessly and recklessly opened the floodgates to allow corporations and unions to spend vast sums of general treasury money to buy federal and state elections. In one misguided stroke, a one-vote majority reversed more than 100 years of settled law under which federal and state governments could prohibit corporations and unions from spending their general treasury funds to directly influence federal and state elections -- in order to deter corruption and the appearance of corruption by corporations and unions. Chief Justice John Roberts and the disingenuous majority on the court equated corporations with real, individual people and in doing so they have given these new “corporate persons” the ability to influence and even control the outcome of elections through unlimited, unregulated campaign spending.
Roberts and company defied the century-old wisdom and logic of pro-reform champions like President Teddy Roosevelt and Wisconsin’s “Fighting Bob” La Follette who long ago recognized the inherent danger and inequality in allowing corporations to have the same rights as citizens in elections. They had led the way toward the enactment into law of legal, solidly-grounded and reasoned reforms in the early 1900’s to safeguard the nation and this state from total corporate hegemony and domination.
Now, those safeguards have been swept away.
But while we can no longer prohibit corporations and unions from spending on campaigns from their general treasuries – we can and must require the disclosure of the donors funding outside election-oriented expenditures. By providing citizens with knowledge of who may be behind all of the increased outside spending in our elections, they will at least have some idea who is influencing and even buying our elections. This is information citizens are currently missing in Wisconsin when groups run campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy. Under current law, these groups are not required to disclose their donors.
CC/WI has been working with reform leaders in both the State Senate and the Assembly to adjust Senate Bill 43 to bring it into compliance with the horrendous U.S. Supreme Court decision - Citizens United. Now they must act.
The Wisconsin Legislature needs to consider and pass revised Senate Bill 43 today!. Enactment into law of this major campaign finance reform measure would close the single largest loophole in Wisconsin's loophole-ridden campaign finance laws. And it is absolutely necessary to counter the numerous cancerous and anonymous campaign communications that have undermined legislative, gubernatorial and other statewide elections and, more recently and alarmingly, Wisconsin State Supreme Court elections.
State legislators need to hear from the citizens of Wisconsin ASAP about this issue.
Please contact both your State Senator and your State Representative and tell them to demand that the revised campaign disclosure legislation SB 43 be considered and passed on Thursday so that it will be in effect for the upcoming 2010 elections.
To contact your legislators go here.
If you are not sure who your State Senator and State Representative are, go here
Your voice is crucial and will have a big impact on whether or not this important reform is accomplished!
__________________________________________
Jay Heck, Executive Director
Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
608/256-2686
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Join Common Cause in Wisconsin!
www.CommonCauseWisconsin.org
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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
April 18, 2010
By Bill KrausDilemma #1When the state needs more revenues, the Democrats turn to the income tax for either a straight increase in the tax rate or a temporary surtax if the need looks like it is going to be temporary. The Republicans favor increases in the sales tax rate.
Since the onset of the taxophobia epidemic, this stalemate has been resolved by doing little or nothing about the big two revenue sources and sort of letting the property tax take the fall.
The reasoning(s) are: the sales tax is regressive, and the income tax is a deterrent to business executives and rich people who want to move here or stay here.
The flaw of letting nature take its course is that property taxes are regressive deterrents as well. The appeal to legislators and governors is that local governments assess them; they are somebody else’s problem.
Dilemma #2
Property tax dependency is really driven by the fact that it is used to fund K12 and technical college education. Education is constitutionally a state responsibility.
The most effective route to more tolerable property taxes is by expanding and increasing the sales tax and/or raising the income tax to pick up this state responsibility.
Dilemma #3
The biggest reason the state needs more revenues is we can’t cut our way to retaining our reputation as an education state without a new economy to buttress the traditional sources of jobs and money which are stagnating or faltering or both.
There are things that governments can do to build a new economy, but they are limited by resources and skills. What governments know how to do is welfare and infrastructure. Both can be used to create jobs, but both mostly require more tax revenues to do so. And, worse yet, the jobs they create are old economy jobs not new economy jobs.
There are, however, things governments can do to support and inspire and even help people in the private sector who do know how to create new economy jobs. The trouble is that this is high-risk stuff. A baseball analogy is apt. Even the best job creators bat something like .300, and that .300 is composed mostly of singles. Home runs are scarce.
Candidates are more likely to prefer other solutions. Lower taxes are said to be helpful in creating this new economy, and a friendly regulatory climate also has its adherents. Less spending without getting too specific about “on what?” gets a lot of lip service as well. The real stimulus, though, is something a revenue-short government doesn’t have much of: capital investment money.
Dilemma #4
The members of the Legislature who will have to approve whatever proposals the governor suggests to deal with these dilemmas are risk averse and occupy safe seats. This reduces appetites for anything adventuresome that might not work, disturb the status quo inordinately, or feed the anti-incumbent forces already in motion.
Dispassionate redistricting, anyone? It may be a necessary precursor to dilemma dismemberment.
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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
April 15, 2010
By Roger Utnehmer The West Virginia mine tragedy that recently claimed 25 lives is prompting calls for new safety rules and a review of our country’s dependence on coal. What the explosion absolutely should prompt is a call for campaign finance reform.
The CEO of Massey Energy, owner of the mine in which the fatalities occurred, has bribed and bought his way around West Virginia politics for years. Don Blankenship donated $3 million to a candidate for the state supreme court who then provided the one-vote margin to over-rule a $50 million judgment against Massey Energy. The contribution was so offensive the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that it created an appearance of bias.
In 2006 Blankenship spent millions of dollars of his own money attempting to defeat legislators who supported worker safety and environmental regulations he opposed. Last year a subsidiary of Massey Energy spend $5.8 million trying to influence regulation of the coal industry.
Campaign contributions on the scale typical of Ron Blankenship are nothing but sanitized corruption. When a single candidate for a seat on the court takes $3 million from one individual and then votes to save him $50 million in damages public confidence is severely sacrificed.
Don Blankenship has engaged in a pattern of legalized bribery. Unfortunately, that same corruption is common in judicial and legislative races throughout America. The only solution is to crowd out the special interest money and replace the bribery and corruption with public financing of campaigns.
That’s my opinion. I’d like to hear yours. I’m Roger Utnehmer.
Roger Utnehmer is President and CEO of DoorCountyDailyNews.com, and a member of Common Cause in Wisconsin's State Governing Board.
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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
April 14, 2010
By Bill KrausAfter an interlude of unseemliness, high-level judicial elections in Wisconsin seem to have come home to our longstanding tradition of civility and non-partisanship. To at least some extent this is a reaction to the revulsion at the slide into the partisan election mode which features mass media attacks, big money campaigns, and advertising that is designed to deceive more than to inform.
Although the coat holders in the press decry it, judicial elections are largely beauty contests where the voters get to choose the most qualified and fairest candidates. They are not and should not be slugfests on issues and wildly exaggerated promises.
Candidates usually come to the contest with some partisan baggage. So the first thing they do is put names at the top of their campaign letterheads of prominent partisans from both parties. The ideal is to be regarded as “non-partisan.” The reality is in most cases to achieve the reputation of being or aspiring to being “bi-partisan.”
The campaigns seek endorsements from prominent members of the community like judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officials who are chosen to represent as many partisan sectors as possible and establish bi-partisanship as well. This is probably impossible, but worth trying.
The stump speeches and campaign ads talk about credentials and readiness to perform the job without making any pre-judging promises of any kind on any subject or issue or person that may appear before them if elected. Partisan elections seek people with common interests. Judicial elections seek people who will make disinterested rulings on the facts and the law, who will come to the job with an open mind.
A popular objection to judicial elections is when they are held and the numbers of voters they attract. They are held in the spring (which means campaigning in the winter) and they don’t attract flies. The commonly recommended remedy is to move them to the fall when the turnout is higher. This would mix two disparate kinds of elections, and it overlooks the desirable side effects of low-turnout elections.
Low-turnout elections can be shoe leather and word-of-mouth based, where media is used for name identification and resume presentation not for scorched-earth attacks on opponents and implied promises to be strong on crime (does anybody ever claim to be weak on crime?) and to construe the law “strictly,” whatever that means. This kind of person-to-person campaigning tends to be polite and appeals to the intellect instead of the emotions.
Another heartwarming development is that the recent winners have not been tempted to follow Judge Barbara Crabb’s wrongheaded suggestion that it is acceptable to become overtly partisan. This is good. Overt partisans are offering the kind of bias that attracts partisans and that is unwanted and unwarranted from the judiciary.
Overt partisan candidates also do a dumb electoral thing. The non-partisan elections do not appeal to the yellow dogs of either persuasion perhaps, but to ignore the partisan tendencies of the more independent voters who make up this limited turnout is to limit your appeal. Half the voters lean one way or the other. So any candidate who makes an appeal to a Democrat or Republican constituency turns off at least half of the potential voters.
I, for one, accept the fact that an elected judiciary is in the genes of Wisconsin voters, like an elected judiciary for other reasons as well, and applaud the fact that those who have sought judicial office recently have done so in the judicial equivalent of going door to door, one-vote-at-a-time personal campaigning.
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Press Release
April 8, 2010
CONTACT:
Jay Heck – 608/256-2686 CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM PUBLIC FORUM
TO TACKLE TIMELY POLITICAL REFORM ISSUES
Monday Evening, April 12th at UW-Stevens Point
6:30 - 8:00 PM
Dreyfus University Center, 2nd Floor (Laird North - Rm 230)
University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point
1015 Reserve Street, Stevens Point, WI
Campaign finance and political reform has been a major focus in the Wisconsin Legislature and in the media over the last six months -- and with good reason.
On December 1st, the most significant, substantive campaign finance reform in Wisconsin in 30 years
became law when the Governor signed the “Impartial Justice” Bill after the Wisconsin Legislature passed it in November. This new law will provide full public financing to qualifying candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court who voluntarily agree to abide by a spending limit of $400,000.
Not surprisingly, within weeks of its enactment, opponents of campaign finance reform launched counterattacks in the form of two separate
lawsuits against the “Impartial Justice” Law.
While these attempts to preserve the corrupt status quo are troubling, momentum remains on the side of continued, meaningful campaign finance reform in Wisconsin. On January 19th, the State Senate passed a bill that would require the disclosure of the donors and regulation of the money utilized by outside special interest groups running widely-disseminated campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy 60 days or less prior to an election. Senate Bill 43 (SB43) was passed by an overwhelming, bipartisan 26 to 7 margin.
An identical Assembly version of this legislation -- Assembly Bill 63 (AB63) -- passed 6 to 1 in the Assembly Committee on Campaign Reform and Elections in June of 2009, and was well on the way to passage in a full Assembly vote. Further, Governor Jim Doyle indicated that, once passed, he would sign SB43/AB63 into law.
But then, on January 21st -- just two days after SB43 passed in the State Senate -- the U.S. Supreme Court issued a shocking, bitterly divided 5-4 decision in the landmark case: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The Court's decision -- reversing over 100 years of settled law -- equated corporations and outside interest groups with real individuals, and in doing so, gave these entities the ability to directly influence the outcome of elections through unlimited, unregulated campaign spending.
How will the Citizens United decision affect Wisconsin? What is the future of the now revised versions of SB43/AB63? Can the "Impartial Justice" Law withstand the lawsuits filed against it? And what other political reforms (including redistricting reform) are needed in Wisconsin?
These important and timely issues will be the focus of discussion in Stevens Point this coming Monday during a "Reform Forum" organized by CC/WI entitled:
What Ever Happened to Good Government in Wisconsin?
**And How Should We Fix It?**
Panelists will include:
State Senator Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point)
State Representative Louis Molepske (D-Stevens Point)
Republican Strategist and CC/WI Co-Chair Bill Kraus
Executive Director Jay Heck of Common Cause in Wisconsin
UW-Stevens Point Political Science Professor Dennis Riley will serve as Moderator.
Please join us at this free public forum for what we anticipate will be a lively discussion.
Full details can be found here.
__________________________________________
Jay Heck, Executive Director
Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
608/256-2686
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Join Common Cause in Wisconsin!
www.CommonCauseWisconsin.org
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Press Release
March 31, 2010
CONTACT:
Jay Heck – 608/256-2686 WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE MUST PASS CAMPAIGN FINANCE DISCLOSURE REFORM
BEFORE LAST FLOOR SESSION ENDS ON APRIL 22
On January 19, 2010, the Wisconsin State Senate debated and then overwhelmingly passed
Senate Bill 43, bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation requiring disclosure of the donors and regulation of the money utilized by outside special interest groups and individuals that run widely-disseminated campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy during the period of 60 days or less prior to an election.
The huge, bipartisan pro-reform vote was 26 in favor and only 7 opposed. Eight Republicans joined all eighteen Democrats to pass this sweeping reform measure. This electioneering disclosure and regulation legislation mirrors rules approved by the state Government Accountability Board in November 2008. An identical Assembly version of the legislation,
Assembly Bill 63 was passed in the Assembly Committee on Campaign Reform and Elections in June of 2009 on a bipartisan 6 to 1 vote. The Assembly would have considered and passed the measure soon after the Senate action -- and Governor
Jim Doyle, who has repeatedly said he supported this measure, would have signed it into law. Common Cause in Wisconsin (CC/WI) was the first state reform organization to recognize the critical importance of this reform and we first proposed a version of this measure back in 1997 -- and have been a leader in the effort to get it enacted into law ever since.
But then, on January 21st, a hugely destructive volcano erupted in the nation when the United States Supreme Court issued one of the worst decisions in American legal history -- in a critical, landmark case: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In this bitterly divided 5 to 4 decision, the hypocritically activist Conservative majority needlessly and recklessly opened the floodgates to allow corporations and unions to spend vast sums of general treasury money to buy federal and state elections. In one misguided stroke, a one-vote majority reversed more than 100 years of settled law under which federal and state governments could prohibit corporations and unions from spending their general treasury funds to directly influence federal and state elections -- in order to deter corruption and the appearance of corruption by corporations and unions. Chief Justice John Roberts and the disingenuous conservatives on the court equated corporations with real, individual people and in doing so they have given these new “corporate persons” the ability to influence and even control the outcome of elections through unlimited, unregulated campaign spending.
Roberts and company defied the century-old wisdom and logic of pro-reform champions like President Teddy Roosevelt and Wisconsin’s “Fighting Bob” La Follette who long ago recognized the inherent danger and inequality in allowing corporations to have the same rights as citizens in elections. They had led the way toward the enactment into law of legal, solidly-grounded and reasoned reforms in the early 1900’s to safeguard the nation and this state from total corporate hegemony and domination.
Now, those safeguards have been swept away.
But while we can no longer prohibit corporations and unions from spending on campaigns from their general treasuries – we can and must require the disclosure of the donors funding outside election-oriented expenditures. By providing citizens with knowledge of who may be behind all of the increased outside spending in our elections, they will at least have some idea who is influencing and even buying our elections. This is information citizens are currently missing in Wisconsin when groups run campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy. Under current law, these groups are not required to disclose their donors.
CC/WI has been working with reform leaders in both the State Senate and the Assembly to adjust Senate Bill 43 and Assembly Bill 63 to bring it into compliance with the horrendous U.S. Supreme Court decision - Citizens United. They have told us that there is essential agreement between the State Senate and Assembly on the language and that the expectation is that this revised and enhanced disclosure legislation will be considered (and presumably passed) by both legislative chambers during the last floor session of the Wisconsin Legislature for the 2009-2010 session -- which runs from April 13-22.
Last week, as expected, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) unanimously approved a new administrative rules to force interest groups to disclose election-related activity. This is a reform CC/WI first proposed to the then-State Elections Board in 1997 and has worked for years to achieve. It is an important step toward repairing the damage done by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. GAB approved the rule in November, 2008 and submitted it to the Legislature for approval before asking legislators to return it to GAB pending the outcome of the Citizens United case. GAB has now rewritten the rule to reflect the Supreme Court decision (by voting to no longer enforce the 1905 ban on corporate spending). The Legislature will have 30 days to act on the new rule and if no action is taken it will take effect.
But for a number of other reasons, the Wisconsin Legislature needs to consider and pass revised Senate Bill 43/Assembly Bill 63 as well. Enactment into law of this major campaign finance reform measure would close the single largest loophole in Wisconsin's loophole-ridden campaign finance laws. And it is absolutely necessary to counter the numerous cancerous and anonymous campaign communications that have undermined legislative, gubernatorial and other statewide elections and, more recently and alarmingly, Wisconsin State Supreme Court elections.
State legislators need to hear from the citizens of Wisconsin about this issue.
Please contact both your State Senator and your State Representative and tell them to demand that the revised campaign disclosure legislation (SB 43 and AB 63) be considered and passed in April so that it will be in effect for the upcoming 2010 elections.
To contact your legislators go here.
If you are not sure who your State Senator and State Representative are, go here
Your voice is crucial. Thanks for being active in pursuing reform!
__________________________________________
Jay Heck, Executive Director
Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
608/256-2686
Want Good Government?
Join Common Cause in Wisconsin!
www.CommonCauseWisconsin.org
Stay informed - Follow CC/WI on Twitter!
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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
April 4, 2010
By Bill KrausIn 2010 there is an open seat in the governor’s office.
In the state Legislature there are 132 incumbent office holders, none of whom are candidates for governor.
The Legislature a generation ago was a virtual spawning ground, a stepping stone, for politicians ambitious for higher office.
If there was a complaint about the make up of those long-ago bodies, it was that the members were climbing over each other in search of shots at the few higher offices that were available for which they could run.
A fast count reveals that this generation-ago group of state legislators produced eight members of the U.S. Congress, one U.S. Senator, three governors, two Supreme Court justices, one ambassador, and uncounted mayors and county executives.
The current crop, if 2010 is an indication, will produce none of the above.
For lack of ambition if nothing else.
What happened?
For one thing, the recruiting, slating, and electing of the talent pool that produced large numbers of the restlessly ambitious was taken over from the diminished-role-parties by the enhanced-role legislative leaders. The party leaders wanted the best and the brightest with the most promising prospects for higher office.
What the legislative leaders wanted were people who could win legislative elections and, once that was accomplished, would obey orders.
The jobs themselves changed as well. A generation ago most of the members of the Legislature had other lives, other jobs. The legislative pay scale was set on the assumption that the members would be part-timers. Most were. For most, it was not a career destination. It was a temporary trip into public service for some, a first or second step up the ladder of political power for the rest.
Many state legislators came from service on county boards, city councils, and school boards where they got their first appetizer-sized taste of political power and developed an appetite for a larger entree-sized serving. One interesting exception to this progression was the several members of the Milwaukee caucus whose ambition was to use the Legislature as a stepping stone to more lucrative and long-term careers on that area’s county board or city council.
When it became economically possible to live well as a full-time legislator and when self-serving redistricting made perpetual re-election almost a certainty, more and more members of this latter-day crop of legislators decided to career out in Madison.
Those are the real reasons the 132 are staying put except for the few who are opting out altogether for reasons of their own.
The popular explanation that the candidate shortage from this traditional source is that the next governor is going to face an impossible challenge is an excuse not a reason.
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