Scott Fitzgerald’s Fundraising Follies

MADISON, Wis. — Republican state Senate leader and U.S. Congressional candidate Scott Fitzgerald is showing his priorities, and according to One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Analiese Eicher, they don’t include doing his job in the state legislature. The state news service WisPolitics.com is reporting that Fitzgerald has scheduled five fundraisers in the first two weeks of December, exceeding the two days of Senate session to take up state business he has convened since announcing his Congressional bid in September.

“When Scott Fitzgerald schedules more fundraisers for himself in two weeks than Senate business over four months we can see what’s his priority,” said Eicher. “Wisconsin taxpayers aren’t paying for Scott Fitzgerald to run for Congress, they’re paying him to take care of state business. If that’s not what he wants to do, then he should have the decency to step down.”

Since announcing his candidacy for Congress in September, Fitzgerald, who controls the state Senate agenda as leader of the Republican majority, has convened the body to take up state business on two occasions. The meeting on November 5 was the last for the year, as he had announced earlier he did not intend to convene the Senate in floor session again in 2019.

Fitzgerald’s fundraising flurry kicks off with a Washington D.C. special interest shakedown on December 4 and concludes on December 16.

Meanwhile, state business left unfinished as Fitzgerald hit the campaign trial ranges from funding for homeless shelters and helping with the farm crisis to other pressing economic concerns for Wisconsin families like student loan debt, affordable child care, family and medical leave and health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

Fitzgerald also gavelled in and out of a special session on common sense gun control laws supported by the vast majority of Wisconsinites in mere seconds on the evening of November 7 after, according to media reports, spending the day working on his Congressional campaign.

Eicher noted that Fitzgerald’s Republican colleagues have been just as disappointing at fulfilling their state duties as has their leader. Not one Senate Republican has publicly called for Fitzgerald to step aside as he spends his time on his personal political ambitions for higher office instead of on state business and the job Wisconsin taxpayers are paying him to do.

She concluded, “By silently standing by and letting this happen, every single Senate Republican is just as culpable for this gross dereliction of duty as Scott Fitzgerald.”