Watching Scotty Blow: Things Go Boom

The fallout will be descending for weeks, and its reach will extend far beyond Wisconsin, the former state now doing business as the midwest subsidiary of Koch Industries and managed by Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired for that purpose. What we learned on Thursday, when the documents compiled by prosecutors were unsealed, is more than simply trouble for Walker and a shot below the waterline of both his local and national ambitions. It also is a window into the farce that the Supreme Court's decisions in various campaign finance and voting rights cases have made of our elections. Everything is a fake. Nothing ever happens by accident any more. "Grassroots" are now largely useful only as camouflage for the same old corruption.

The situation is fairly simple to understand; going back to his days at my alma mater, where he pursued a degree without making up much ground on it, Scott Walker has proven himself incapable of running a political campaign on the square. He has proven himself to be someone who believes that the laws governing elections simply do not apply to his own ambitions. This first resulted in a "John Doe" investigation into illegal politicking in his office when he was the Milwaukee County Executive and running for governor. Several of his former aides went to jail behind that one. Out of that came another "John Doe" investigation, this one guided by a Republican prosecutor, into the campaign conducted by Walker against attempts to recall him, and several Republican legislators, in 2011 and 2012. At question is the allegation that the Walker campaign coordinated its efforts with the kind of outside groups that have sprouted like mushrooms in our brave new world of campaign finance in violation of state campaign laws that are still on the books. On Thursday, with the files compiled by the prosecutors were opened up, that question found an answer that was clear and definitive.

The documents include an excerpt from an email in which Walker tells Karl Rove, former top adviser to President George W. Bush, that Johnson would lead the coordination campaign. Johnson also is Walker's longtime campaign strategist and the chief adviser to Wisconsin Club for Growth, a prominent conservative group. "Bottom-line: R.J. helps keep in place a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin. We are running 9 recall elections and it will be like 9 congressional markets in every market in the state (and Twin Cities)," Walker wrote to Rove on May 4, 2011. Rove runs American Crossroads, which backs Republican congressional and presidential candidates.

The gun, she smokes. "R.J." is R.J. Johnson, a Republican political operative, an aide to Walker and, once, the president of the Wisconsin Club For Growth. And, if Walker's campaign wasn't coordinating with outside groups, why in hell was he writing e-mails to Karl Rove in the first place?

(Ironically, the documents were revealed as a result of a lawsuit brought by the Wisconsin CFG to shut down the investigation forever. As part of that effort, they managed to get a favorable ruling from a federal judge named Rudolph Randa, a kindly soul who spends some of his vacation time on retreats sponsored by the kindly Koch brothers. Walker is blaming this on Democratic prosecutors and hanging his hat on Randa's decision. The documents were unsealed as part of a legal effort to end the investigation. The Walker side of things contend that the investigators treated many of the people caught up in the probe impolitely. That must be amusing to all those folks in Arkansas with fond memories of Kenneth Starr.)

What the investigators refer to as a "criminal scheme" is nothing more than the logical end that comes when all restraints on campaign finance are demolished, and when elections are turned into the playgrounds of plutocrats.

The prosecutors say the work amounts to illegal campaign contributions. They contend Wisconsin Club for Growth doled out money to other groups, who then used it to help Walker or other Republicans. For example, the organization gave $2.5 million to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which in turn placed ads supporting Walker and Republicans, and criticizing their foes. The club gave $4.6 million to Citizens for a Strong America—a sum that represented 99.9% of its revenue. The group then passed on some of the money to other groups—$1.2 million to Wisconsin Family Action, nearly $350,000 to Wisconsin Right to Life, and $245,000 to United Sportsmen of Wisconsin. In addition, Schmitz alleged, Citizens for a Strong America was the creation of Jordahl and Johnson. Johnson's wife, Valerie, was the treasurer and a signatory on the bank account, the brief alleges. Johnson directly controlled Wisconsin Club for Growth, and Jordahl was a signatory on the club's bank account, the brief states. "We own CFG," Johnson has stated, according to prosecutors.

This is simply the way of the world now. This is how we run our politics now. The only difference is that Wisconsin has laws forbidding some of this activity. However, sooner rather than later, I think, we will see a lawsuit based on the notion that Wisconsin's laws in this area violate some corporation's First Amendment right to freedom of assembly, and that a suit to that effect will reach the Supreme Court, and Wisconsin's election laws will suffer the same fate as Montana's century-old laws forbidding corporate political contributions did. This is the way the current Supreme Court believes that Constitution demands that elections be run, collateral damage and unintended consequences be damned. Scott Walker is nothing more than a creature of that brave new world, which indeed has such monsters in it.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below