Still No Answer From Gov. Walker to One Simple Question

MADISON, Wis. — Court documents released last week have shed new light on Gov. Walker’s effort to evade state campaign regulations using a scheme prosecutors have called “criminal.” In response, the Governor along with his well-funded right-wing allies and sympathetic media outlets launched an all out damage control spin operation. Yet for all their bluster, Gov. Walker refuses to answer one very simple question: is he still doing it?

One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross commented, “Gov. Walker and his allies have been aggressively attacking anyone raising questions about conduct described by prosecutors as criminal. Yet he’s failed to answer the very simple question, is he still doing it?”

In the hundreds of pages of documents released last week under order of a federal judge, state prosecutors describe the operation run by Gov. Walker. In it, Walker and members of his campaign staff reportedly solicited unlimited, undisclosed donations for a web of right wing groups. These same groups, again in coordination with Walker’s campaign, spent millions of dollars advertising on behalf of Gov. Walker’s policies and positions on issues both during the legislative session and his elections. In response to media questions about the scheme, Walker has been less than forthcoming.

Ross noted that more recently the corporate funded Republican Governors Association, the state big business lobby the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity Foundation have collectively spent millions of dollars promoting Gov. Walker and his policies or attacking his 2014 election opponent.

He concluded, “Gov. Walker and his allies spent the weekend desperately try to deflect attention from the cronyism, corruption and incompetence that pervade his administration. But he still owes the people of Wisconsin an answer to the simple question, are you still doing it?”