Sgt. Louise Hackel secures Clark County jail inmate John Unz prior to a sentencing hearing on April 8, 2013. Shane Opatz/Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

One day last October, Sgt. Louise Hackel of the Clark County Sheriff’s Department was summoned to deal with an emergency.

A distraught woman at the central Wisconsin county’s Community Services office was being involuntarily committed for mental health reasons. Hackel, one of four jail workers who arrived on the scene, said the woman was “actively resisting.”

When Hackel and her partner each grabbed an arm to lift the heavy-set woman from a chair, she “dropped dead-weight to the floor,” Hackel said, and both officers tumbled down with her. Hackel sustained a muscle injury that required chiropractic care.

Faced with a similar scenario today, Hackel might not respond the same way. That’s because she now has less protection in the event of an on-the-job disability than she did a few months ago.

Now, if possible, she would wait for someone else to assume the risk: “I would probably call on law enforcement officers in protective status.”

Hackel is one of about two dozen Clark County communications and corrections workers who were recently stripped of protective status, a state employment classification available to workers in high-risk professions.

In recent months, this change has occurred in at least 10 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties; efforts to do the same are under way in several more. More than 80 reclassified employees have filed appeals with the state, a process that could take more than a year.

The issue has arisen in the aftermath of 2011 Act 10, the controversial law passed by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled Legislature that imposed sweeping changes on government employees. The act exempted public safety workers, elsewhere defined as those, minimally, with protective status. That has made this classification more coveted — and endangered.

Across the state, mini-Act 10 battles are being fought over which public employees qualify for protective status. For now, the focus has been on jail workers, but there is concern that this classification could be challenged for other public safety employees.

When their protective status classification is taken away, jailers lose most collective bargaining rights and may be required, like other public workers, to pay substantially more toward their pensions.

Clark County Jail Sgt. Joel Smith has calculated that, for him, this change amounts to a $3,500 annual kick in the wallet. “In addition,” he said, “our wages have been frozen and our insurance rates have increased dramatically.”

Protective status workers can retire earlier — at age 50 for partial benefits and age 54 for full benefits. Protective workers reclassified as general employees retain this ability, but new hires will face higher retirement ages — ranging from age 57 to 65 for full benefits depending on years of service.

The loss of protective status also ends workers’ eligibility for duty disability, a state program that provides a higher level of income reimbursement to disabled workers than does workers compensation. That’s a big deal to workers like Hackel — especially given a recent near-fatal attack on a jailer in Marathon County.

Andrew Phillips, a Mequon-based attorney whose firm does legal work for several dozen Wisconsin counties, has advised county officials around the state to revoke jail employees’ protective status, to save money and conform to the letter of the law.

Clark County Sheriff Greg Herrick opposes the reclassification, saying it is causing staffing problems. Shane Opatz/Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.

“This usually comes up in the context of collective bargaining,” Phillips said. When it’s time to negotiate new contracts, Phillips and others contend that some jail employees have mostly lost their rights to bargain.

The reclassification has been vigorously opposed by county sheriffs and the Badger State Sheriffs’ Association. They say it is based on misinformation, undermines recruitment and morale, and ends up costing counties more than they save.

“They didn’t understand what they did,” said Clark County Sheriff Greg Herrick, referring to the closed-door decisions made in his county. “I’m sitting here along with many other sheriffs struggling with staffing issues created by blunders they made.”

Illusory savings?

The employment classification “protective occupation participant” is used by the state Department of Employee Trust Funds, which manages pension benefits for public workers. Most work for local governments like cities and counties that voluntarily participate in the program; about a quarter are state employees.

Less than 10 percent of the fund’s roughly 250,000 active participants are considered protective. It is up to each employer to classify its workers, based on guidance in state law and ETF interpretations.

The classification has even been the subject of collective bargaining — before Act 10 made it a litmus test for full bargaining rights. While Phillips said the law is clear that “protective status has been a prohibited subject of bargaining for 20 years,” jailers in some counties have traded it for other gains.

“Over the years a lot of county jailers bargained away their protective status,” said Dean Meyer, executive director of the Badger State Sheriffs’ Association.

In some counties, the lack of protective status is a sore spot with jail workers.

“They do not appreciate us here at all,” said Kim Lavasseur, a veteran correctional officer in Ashland County, where jail staffers have long had general status. “We’re just considered pieces of crap.” Lavasseur says that, as a jail worker, “I’ve risked my life. I’ve been kicked, hit and spit on.”

Sgt. Louise Hackel is one of about two dozen Clark County jail staffers who lost protective status earlier this year. Shane Opatz/Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.

Currently, according to a review by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, 23 counties have protective status for jail workers, and 48 don’t. (One county, Menominee, contracts with Shawano County for jail services; workers there have general status.) Among those who don’t are some larger counties, including Milwaukee and Racine.

Ten counties — Bayfield, Chippewa, Clark, Green Lake, Kewaunee, Marquette, Ozaukee, Polk, Price and Waushara — have gone from protective to general status within the past two years, since the passage of Act 10. Phillips and his firm were involved in most of these cases.

There is ongoing discussion about changing jail employees’ status in at least four other counties — Buffalo, Douglas, Dunn and Monroe. And it is expected to arise elsewhere as current contracts with jail employees come up for renewal. (Phillips confirmed that he has been engaged by other, unnamed counties “to have this discussion.”)

Meyer, whose association believes counties should be listening to sheriffs on the impacts of classification decisions, said local officials “are looking for cost-saving measures, which is the responsible thing to do.” But he thinks Phillips has been providing incomplete information, and that promised savings may prove illusory.

“There’s no doubt in most of our minds that the information this attorney is sharing is very slanted, if not incorrect,” Meyer said.

In Clark County, where 22 workers (including Hackel) lost protective status in mid-January, Sheriff Herrick said the change has eliminated collective bargaining agreements that allowed the county to avoid overtime expenditures.

“The savings that they thought they were going to have by taking the protective away is being eaten up by the overtime hours,” Herrick said, adding that the change has also hurt morale. “I have deputies who are applying elsewhere. There’s a lot of hard feelings.”

Wayne Hendrickson, chairman of the Clark County Board, the county’s highest ranking official, said revoking the workers’ protective status “was a necessary thing for us to meet our budget for 2013.” He shrugs off Herrick’s concern about overtime, saying the county is looking to reduce outlays in this area by hiring two new employees.

In Ozaukee County last year, the sheriff warned that changes in benefits, including the reclassification of jail employees, would lead to resignations. The county imposed the changes anyway and a total of seven workers, including five jail employees, left their jobs suddenly late last year.

Ozaukee County Undersheriff Jim Johnson said the department incurred more than $80,000 in overtime costs in just the first two months of this year. He “conservatively” predicts total additional overtime costs of $180,000 before the vacancies are filled and new workers trained.

In Lafayette County, Sheriff Scott Pedley calculated that the county would incur heavy costs if it had to hire and train new jail deputies to replace those who would leave. The county is not currently pursuing the change, which Phillips had recommended.

“The deputies have been able to preserve protective status, with my blessing,” Pedley said.

“It is Illegal”

Attorney Andrew Phillips has advised county officials around the state to revoke jail employees’ protective status, to save money and conform to the letter of the law. Photo courtesy of Phillips Borowski, S.C.

Phillips, of the law firm Phillips Borowski, represents local governmental entities including school districts around the state. One of his listed specialties is helping these “transition from a union to non-union environment.”

In addition to his work for individual counties, Phillips serves as general counsel of the Wisconsin Counties Association, a lobby and support group for state counties. Phillips said his work on protective status with individual counties has “nothing to do with” his work for the association.

Counties association official Mike Blaska agreed, saying the group has no involvement in these battles. While it has opposed requiring that all jailers have protective status, it believes counties should make classification decisions based on statutory criteria.

In county after county, Phillips has argued against protective status for jail employees, saying they do not meet one of the tests set by ETF rules — that at least 51 percent of their duties consist of active law enforcement.

Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, a union representing law enforcement, accuses Phillips and his firm of distorting this standard by factoring only the time jailers spend on certain tasks, not how regularly they face certain risks.

“If you applied that same analysis to every police chief and sheriff in the state, none of them would qualify,” Palmer said. “Obviously, that’s an absurd result.”

Palmer suggests that firefighters and other law enforcement officers, like cops with desk jobs or even detectives, may find their claim to protective status similarly challenged. Phillips’ rationale, he said, “does clearly allow for a slippery slope.”

Sgt. Hackel, of Clark County, cited this as one reason she and others are challenging their loss of protective status.

“That’s part of our struggle here,” Hackel said. If the reclassification of jail workers is not successfully rebuffed, “There’s no guarantee that patrol staff will not be faced with this down the road.”

Jim Palmer of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association suggests that other public safety employees could see their claim to protective status similarly challenged, saying the rationale used for this change “does clearly allow for a slippery slope.” Photo courtesy of WPPA.

Phillips scoffs at this concern, saying firefighters are explicitly covered and any sheriff or desk cop would clearly meet the law’s test of being principally engaged in law enforcement.

Some of Phillips critics accuse him of suggesting that counties that continue to offer protective status to jail employees are breaking the law. It’s a charge he freely admits.

“It is illegal,” Phillips said of counties that grant this status to jailers who don’t meet the test. “Is anybody going to get arrested? No. There is no ETF police.”

In videotaped comments to Clark County officials last year, Phillips called the designation of jail employees as protective a “mistake” in need of correction. “Clark County as an employer has a duty under the law to properly designate,” he said.

County Board chairman Hendrickson, who was present for this session, said the county had a legal obligation to revoke the jail workers’ protective status.

“Apparently the (law) says if they don’t work 51 percent of their time on the road doing public safety work, then they shouldn’t be on protective,” Hendrickson said.

The Badger State Sheriffs’ Association recently wrote ETF asking whether there is, as some counties believe, “a prohibition in the law against finding that deputies or correctional officers who work in the jail are eligible” for protective status.

Matt Stohr, administrator of the ETF’s retirement division, replied that there is no such prohibition — provided that the jailers meet the necessary criteria.

Mike Huebsch, secretary of the state Department of Administration, fielded a similar inquiry from the sheriffs’ association. In a March 26 letter, he said his agency could “find no legislative directive whereby Act 10 requires a county to change, reclassify or remove its jailers” from protective status.

‘A high-risk job’

Critics of the reclassification, notably including county sheriffs, argue that jailers face risks and responsibilities similar to those of other law enforcement officers.

Lafayette County Sheriff Scott Pedley calls it “unconscionable” that jailers would lose protective status. Photo courtesy of Scott Pedley.

In fact, some of the jailers who have lost protective status remain sworn deputies with full powers to make arrests, do investigations and recommend charges.

In Dunn County, which is considering reclassifying about two dozen jail workers, Sheriff Dennis Smith said they often encounter people who are “kicking, fighting, spitting,” just like deputies on patrol. “They have a high-risk job,” Smith said. “Somebody gets fired up and all of a sudden the fight’s on.”

Hackel, who has worked in the Clark County jail for 15 years, agreed, saying “an increase in mental health and drug-related crimes” has made the job progressively more dangerous. And jail staff must often make arrests, as when people visiting others in jail are found to have outstanding warrants.

“It is unconscionable to me that county jailers do not have duty disability protection,” said Sheriff Pedley of Lafayette County.

On March 27, a 36-year-old Marathon County jail guard was left with life-threatening head injuries after being severely beaten by an incarcerated drug suspect. Another guard was also injured. Jailers in Marathon County have long lacked protective status, but the incident has been cited as an example of the dangers of the job.

Sheriff James Kowalczyk of Chippewa County, which stripped its jail workers of protective status at the start of this year, has a hard time expecting them to assume the same risks now that they no longer have duty disability coverage.

Although it hasn’t happened yet, and Kowalczyk doesn’t think it will, “They could put their hands behind their back and say, ‘This is above my job classification.’ ”

Bad for business?

Some of Phillips’ critics allege that he is pursuing a strategy to drum up business for himself and others at his firm.

“This is about the money that lines lawyers’ pockets,” charged Sheriff Pedley.

To date, according to the state Department of Employee Trust Funds, challenges have been filed by 84 employees from five counties: Bayfield, Chippewa, Clark, Marquette and Ozaukee. In each case, the counties are being represented by the law firm of Phillips Borowski.

And Palmer said the law firm has used the issue to build its client base: “The fact of the matter is that the Phillips firm has dramatically expanded its county representation through its ill-advised counsel on the protective status issue.”

But, according to Phillips, anyone who thinks that he is motivated by self-interest does not understand what his law firm does.

“We make money by collectively bargaining on behalf of our clients,” Phillips said. “The less people we bargain with, the less money we make.”

And so participating in a process that leads to fewer employees with collective bargaining power offers only short-term gains, not long-term stability.

Said Phillips, “It really isn’t in our best interest to do this.”

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

More than 4,000 applicants were denied a Wisconsin concealed carry license and more than 400 had their licenses revoked or suspended in the program’s first 14 months, records show. These included dozens of felons, domestic abusers, illegal drug users and “fugitives from justice.”

This story is a part of our Sunshine Week coverage.

Sunshine Week, March 10-16, 2013, is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.

TODAY: State weapons law conceals information

Day 2: State agency lags on records compliance

Chart:

Click the chart below to track concealed carry license denials in the past year.

Who were these lawbreakers?

The state’s lips are sealed.

“The Department of Justice is not able to provide the records that you have requested because they are not accessible under law,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Kevin Potter, in response to a request for the applications from felons, fugitives and others who were denied licenses.

The DOJ does produce annual reports listing the number of applications, denials and other information. The reports from the last two months of 2011 and all of calendar year 2012 show that of the 167,000 applications received, 4,062 were denied.

Most of these denials were for non-criminal reasons, such as the applicant’s address not matching other state records. But the denied applicants included 232 convicted felons, 435 people with a domestic abuse conviction or injunction, 81 illegal drug users and 64 fugitives.

DOJ spokeswoman Dana Brueck said fugitives from justice who apply for concealed carry licenses are “referred to law enforcement.” The agency does not have the authority to track why an applicant is deemed a fugitive or the outcome of these referrals.

Wisconsin’s concealed carry law shields the release of most data regarding license applicants and holders. The only exceptions are the DOJ’s bare-bones annual report and the prosecution of an offense “in which the person’s status as a licensee … is relevant.”

Potter said this might include the prosecution of a person caught carrying without a license. The DOJ, he added, “would not be authorized” to track instances where this has occurred.

The department maintains a database of concealed carry license holders but access to it is strictly limited. Even law enforcement officers could not routinely check, say, whether a person they are stopping in connection with a violent crime has a license to carry.

Auric Gold: “People who have concealed carry licenses are far less likely to commit crimes than the general population.” Credit: Eric Tadsen

Auric Gold, secretary of Wisconsin Carry Inc., a nonprofit group that advocates for gun-owners rights, is not troubled by the lack of information about licensee holders and applicants.

He noted that the Texas Department of Public Safety found that, in 2011, only 120 of that state’s 524,000 concealed carry licensees in the state were convicted of any crime that year, and cited articles indicating similar low levels of misbehavior by license holders in other states.

“People who have concealed carry licenses are far less likely to commit crimes than the general population,” Gold said. “I’m not aware of any study that has contradicted this conclusion.”

Jeri Bonavia, executive director of Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, a statewide advocacy group that focuses on gun-violence prevention, said the confidential rules are designed to keep such assertions from being truth-tested against the state’s experience.

“There’s no way of knowing whether what proponents of the law are saying is true or not,” Bonavia said. “I think this was intentional.”

Most states shield data

With the passage of its law in June 2011, Wisconsin became the 49th state to let citizens possess concealed weapons. (The remaining holdout is Illinois, where a concealed carry bill is pending.)

The National Rifle Association has hailed Wisconsin’s law as “one of the nation’s strongest.”

Bonavia said its restrictions on information reflect that: “The pro-gun lobby has made sure that the more recent bills have had a secrecy provision.”

According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a San Francisco nonprofit group, almost all concealed-carry states now have confidentiality provisions in place. New York joined this club in January, after a newspaper there published the names of licensees. The same thing happened in Florida in 2005 and Virginia in 2007 after news media in those states published databases of concealed carry licensees.

Bonavia stressed that her group does not want individual names to be made public. It just wants to enable law enforcement or researchers to “do an analysis that lets us know whether or not this has been a good public policy.”

Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., agrees research can be done using data that is “totally aggregated, with no personal information.”

For instance, the state of Michigan protects the confidentiality of individual license holders but produces annual reports tracking criminal charges against them. The latest report, for the year ending June 30, 2011, tallied more than 2,700 total charges, including 328 for “brandishing or use of pistol.”

Rand credited the gun lobby for the fact that most states, Wisconsin included, prevent any such analysis. “Information is their enemy,” she charged. “They do everything possible to foreclose access to information.”

The NRA, which helped write and worked to pass Wisconsin’s concealed carry law, did not respond to a detailed request for comment.

Between 1998 and 2002, Rand’s group used data then available in Texas to produce a series of reports titled “License to Kill,” detailing arrests of license holders there. The last report listed more than 5,000 arrests going back to 1996, including 41 for murder or attempted murder, 79 for rape or sexual assault, and 833 for assault.

The Texas State Rifle Association objected, saying this represented a “minute percentage” of concealed carry holders. In 2007, the state shut off public access to this information.

Ain’t misbehavin’?

How absolute are Wisconsin’s rules shielding information regarding concealed carry license holders and applicants?

So absolute that DOJ officials are forbidden to reveal whether Wade Michael Page, who last August murdered six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek before taking his own life, was licensed to carry. Page’s prior convictions for impaired driving and criminal mischief, both misdemeanors, would not have disqualified him.

Even a criminal conviction for carrying a concealed weapon without a license, a misdemeanor, would not necessarily bar a person from obtaining one legally or force revocation of an existing license. To have this consequence, it must be a felony conviction or a misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence, among a few other disqualifiers.

“Theoretically, a person could have a lot of misdemeanors but not be disqualified,” Gold said.

Of the 167,000 applications (including some resubmitted after being returned), the state granted 149,000 licenses through the end of last year. Of these, 432 were subsequently revoked or suspended, according to the annual reports. The most common reason for revocation was “no longer a Wisconsin resident.”

There were also 36 revocations for unlawful use of a controlled substance, 29 for felony convictions, 50 for misdemeanor convictions or injunctions related to domestic violence, and nine for involuntary commitment to a mental institution.

All 102 suspensions that occurred in 2011 and 2012 were imposed as a temporary bond condition.

But the Justice Department is not allowed to release identifying information on these offenders. In most cases, the only way state residents would learn of misbehavior by individually identified concealed carry licensees is if this comes out anecdotally. This has happened on several occasions.

Jeffrey Albrecht, the village president of Silver Lake, in Kenosha County, was arrested following an incident on March 30, 2012, in which he got into a spat with another man at a restaurant. He was carrying a gun and produced a concealed carry license; police determined that he was intoxicated.

Albrecht pleaded no contest to non-criminal disorderly conduct and was fined $515. The state’s concealed carry law prohibits licensees from carrying a gun while drinking in an establishment that serves alcohol. But Albrecht’s transgression, even if it had resulted in a misdemeanor conviction, would not have triggered revocation of his concealed carry license.

On Jan. 4 of this year, Michael Bukosky of Oconomowoc was arrested in Waukesha after he allegedly pointed a gun at another driver who had cut him off, saying “That’s right — don’t (expletive) around in a concealed carry state.”

Bukosky was charged with pointing a firearm at another person, a misdemeanor. His case is pending.

If Bukosky has a concealed carry license, which cannot be disclosed, being convicted of this crime will not result in revocation, unless a ban on firearm possession is imposed as a condition of bail or probation. Bukosky was released on a $750 signature bond with no such condition, court records show.

Another case in point

On Nov. 22, 2011, police were called to a home in the village of Caledonia, in Racine County, where a dispute erupted between two brothers over a package of cigarettes. It led to a standoff in which one brother was armed with a five-foot sword, the other a .40 caliber pistol.

The pistol bearer, Michael Yocco, told police he had a concealed carry license, according to a news account. Yocco, now 29, was charged with felony burglary in 2001 but avoided a conviction due to a deferred prosecution agreement, so he was legally able to obtain a license.

Caledonia police were quoted as saying that Yocco could lose his license as a result of this incident, because it involved domestic violence. But that didn’t happen, because only his brother Christopher was charged, with misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

“The Racine County District Attorney decided not to file charges against Michael Yocco in this case,” said Caledonia Police Sgt. Brian Wall. “As a result, there was no revocation or suspension” of his concealed carry license.

Six months later, in May 2012, Yocco was arrested in Chicago while protesting a NATO Summit there. Police said he and another man were wearing militia outfits and flying anarchist flags from Yocco’s car, which was found to contain “several spring-loaded knives, a gas mask and a bag containing a large amount of ammunition,” according to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Yocco was charged with carrying a dangerous weapon, unlawful use of a weapon and possession of ammunition without a Firearm Owner’s Identification card. In December he was found not guilty on all counts, a Cook County court official said.

But even if Yocco had been convicted, it would not have resulted in the loss of his Wisconsin concealed carry license, as the charges were all misdemeanors.

DAY 2: State agency lags on records compliance

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in a Dec. 19, 2012, interview at the governor's mansion. Kate Golden/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday apparently drove the final nail into the coffin of calls to end same-day voter registration in Wisconsin, vowing to veto any such bill that imposed additional costs.

“If it has a price tag, absolutely,” Walker told the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism in an interview at the Executive Residence, when asked if he would use his veto pen. “There’s no way we’re spending money on something like that.”

The idea of ending same-day voter registration gained currency after Walker made a speech in California last month in which he suggested ending the state’s practice of letting voters register on Election Day, citing the burden it placed on poll workers. Two Republican lawmakers began seeking sponsors on a bill to accomplish this in the GOP-controlled state Legislature.

But the idea drew heavy opposition from critics, including some local election officials, and the state Government Accountability Board estimated it would cost the state $5.2 million to develop alternative registration systems required by federal law. The idea also suffered a setback when it emerged that Walker’s son, accompanied by his father, registered at the polls last August.

Walker, a Republican, has previously said he would not sign a bill that included this price tag, but did not promise to veto it. In Wisconsin, bills neither signed nor vetoed become law.

Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc, has said he remains interested in exploring the idea.

But on Wednesday, as part of a series of year-end interviews with the news media, Walker said he would veto any bill that imposed any additional cost. Asked how much was too much to stave off his veto pen, Walker said, “To me, cost, period, I’m not interested.”

Walker also further distanced himself from talk that Wisconsin might pursue so-called right-to-work legislation, preventing unions from requiring employees to join or pay dues.

“Someday there may be a debate about that,” Walker said. “But in the next two years I don’t think there will be.”

Walker said the conditions that led to Michigan’s new right-to-work law are not present in Wisconsin, adding that he is eager to get past the protests, recall elections and uncertainty that have marked his first two years in office.

“All those things have been huge distractions towards employers, particularly small businesses, growing more jobs in the state of Wisconsin,” he said.

These protests and recalls, Walker said, greatly complicated his goal of adding 250,000 new private sector jobs by the end of his term, two years from now. He said these events, spurred by his curbs on collective bargaining and union rights for public employees, created a climate of uncertainty for state businesses, even though most of them “liked what we did.”

Walker took issue with a recent published report that the state has seen a net gain of just 25,000 jobs, saying “the raw data shows” that 86,000 jobs were created through June. (PolitiFact Wisconsin examined Walker’s job-numbers claim and rated it “Pants on Fire.”) But while Walker remains committed to his goal of adding 250,000 jobs overall, he acknowledged he may not make it.

“I concede it’s hard,” Walker said. “I have to hunker down. I have to double down. We talk about our budget, it’s going to be about creating jobs, developing the workforce, investing in education. Those are the things that will help us get to that goal.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Candidates and interest groups poured more than $78 million into Wisconsin’s recent U.S. Senate race that led to Democrat Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s Nov. 6 win over former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, making it the most expensive Senate election in state history.

New financial disclosure reports filed with the Federal Election Commissionshow that the candidates, including those who lost to Thompson in the Aug. 14 Republican primary, spent just over $34 million during the current two-year election cycle through Nov. 26, the reporting cutoff.

Tammy Baldwin

Baldwin led the candidate spending at $14.7 million. Thompson doled out $9.2 million, including $800,000 of his own money, the FEC filings show. Eric Hovde, who came in second to Thompson in the primary, was third in spending at $6.3 million, almost all his own money.

In addition, outside interest groups reported spending about $44 million on the election, according to a Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism analysis of FEC data. The money came from traditional political action committees, super PACs and nonprofit groups.

The $78 million total adds up to more than $20 per vote, including both the primary and general election. It more than doubles the previous record for a Wisconsin federal election, set in 2010, when Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold lost to Republican Ron Johnson. During the two-year cycle that included the 2010 election, the candidates spent $33 million and outside groups chipped in another $5 million, according to FEC filings and the Center for Responsive Politics,a nonpartisan watchdog.

Tommy Thompson

“This was the most expensive U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin history, by a longshot,” said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan elections watchdog. “What you see is this marauding horde of interest groups coming into the state and buying up all the

airtime.”

The 2012 Senate race nearly matches the $81 million spent on the June 6 recall election against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, as talliedby Democracy

Campaign. This figure includes estimates of expenditures made by groups that ran so-called issue ads and do not file reports with the state.

The $78 million figure in the U.S. Senate race includes only expenditures that were reported to the FEC. It includes some but not all of the spending on issue ads, which under federal law must be reported only if made within 60 days of the general election or 30 days of the primary. Just under $2 million of these outlays, called “electioneering communications,” were reported in Wisconsin.

Most of the $44 million in outside spending on Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race went for negative messaging. The FEC requires outside groups to list expenditures as being either for or against a given candidate.

Political action committees and other traditional sources accounted for about $16 million, led by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which spent $7.1 million to oppose Thompson and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which spent $5.5 million against Baldwin.

Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money so long as they act independently of a candidate’s campaign, spent another $14 million. Leading this field were the pro-Democratic Majority PAC and Women Vote!, a super PAC run by Emily’s List, which spent $4.9 million and $2.7 million, respectively, mostly to oppose Thompson. American Crossroads, a conservative super PAC, spent a total of $2.7 million for Thompson and against Baldwin.

The third category was 501(c) nonprofit groups, which can conceal their donors. These groups reported parting with more than $13 million, led by Crossroads GPS, which spent $4.7 million against Baldwin, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent $2.9 million, mostly to oppose Baldwin.

Overall, the spending by outside groups was nearly evenly divided between the two major candidates. About $20 million was spent to oppose Baldwin or support Thompson. Nearly $22 million was spent to oppose Thompson (some by groups favoring other Republicans) or back Baldwin.

Total spending, including the candidates’ own campaigns, came to $37 million for Baldwin and $29 million for Thompson. She won the election with 51 percent of the vote, compared to 46 percent for Thompson.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

In the 2012 election, Wisconsin Republicans were able to keep a 5-3 lead in the U.S. House of Representatives, reclaim control of the state Senate by a margin of 18 to 15 seats, and secure a commanding 60-39 advantage in the state Assembly, despite getting fewer votes statewide. This was the first election after the Republicans ran the state’s redistricting in 2011, and some suggest that the new boundaries played a key role in how the Republicans won significantly more seats with fewer statewide votes. The charts below show the seats won and the total votes for each party in the state Assembly, state Senate, and U.S. Congress elections. The interactive maps show the boundaries of the new districts and the election results there.

— Kate Prengaman

State Assembly

State Senate

U.S. Congress

Source: Wisconsin Government Accountability Board official election results.

Rococo, 2011. Three Madison-area Assembly districts, as redrawn by Republicans in 2011's Act 43. Graphic: Kate Golden

Interactive maps

Click to explore data visualization in a new page. In the 2012 elections, the parties' share of seats didn't match the share of votes they got.

Video: Tammy Baldwin and Paul Ryan’s redistricting deal

According to state Sen. Tim Cullen, D-Janesville, U.S. House members Baldwin and Ryan in 2001 agreed to redraw their respective districts for each other’s political benefit. He called the deal one of the “classic nationwide examples of gerrymandering.” (Baldwin and Ryan’s offices were contacted for comment Friday afternoon.) This excerpt is courtesy of wiseye.org; the full video of his Nov. 13 remarks is here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

By Bill Lueders and Kate Golden
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

In the aftermath of the Nov. 6 elections, words like “fickle” and “schizophrenic” are being bandied about to describe the Wisconsin electorate.

How else can anyone explain a group of voters who simultaneously picked Democrats Barack Obama for president and Tammy Baldwin for U.S. Senate while preserving a 5-3 Republican edge in its congressional delegation and giving the GOP a commanding majority in both houses of the state Legislature?

But the vote tallies in Wisconsin’s congressional and state legislative races were not nearly as lopsided as the parties’ resulting share of seats, according to a Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism analysis. The breakdown between Republican and Democratic votes was close even in the races for Congress and state Legislature, where the GOP scored substantial wins.

Some election observers say these results, which ensure that Republican Gov. Scott Walker will have strong GOP majorities heading into the next legislative session, owe largely to redistricting — the redrawing of voting district boundaries based on the U.S. Census.

“The outcome of this year’s U.S. House as well as state Senate and state Assembly elections testify to the power of redistricting,” said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan clean-government advocacy group.

For instance, Republicans received 49 percent of the 2.9 million votes cast in Wisconsin’s congressional races, but won five out of eight, or 62.5 percent, of the seats, according to the Center’s analysis. The Center analyzed unofficial 2012 results reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and official 2010 results from the state Government Accountability Board.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign executive director Mike McCabe. Michelle Stocker/The Capital Times

The vote breakdown in the state’s congressional races was comparable to that for president and U.S. Senate, where the Democratic standard-bearers won 53 percent and 51 percent, respectively.

Wisconsin’s experience is not unique.

Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, recently wrote in a Huffington Post blog that Republicans won 55 percent of all House seats nationally while capturing less than half of the total vote. Stone said the GOP “won control of a substantial majority of state governments” in 2010, then “used that power to redraw congressional district lines in such a way as to maximize the Republican outcome in the 2012 House election.”

Kenneth Mayer, UW-Madison political science professor. Photo: UW-Madison website.

In Wisconsin, redistricting based on the 2010 Census was done largely in secret by the Republicans who controlled the state Legislature. Democrats accused the GOP of using this opportunity to cement its electoral advantage, which in itself is not illegal.

In March, a panel of three federal judges upheld most of the state’s redistricting process, including the congressional component. The panel did strike down the redrawing of two Assembly districts, saying it diluted the power of Hispanic voters.

“There is no question — none — that the recent redistricting effort distorted the vote,” said Ken Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Nobody takes seriously the notion that the legislative plan for congressional districts wasn’t politically motivated.”

McCabe said the lines were “drawn in a way that squeezes most Democratic voters into a few districts and widely disperses their voting power across the rest of the districts.” That left GOP candidates “with a pronounced electoral advantage in congressional and legislative races.”

Rep. Robin Vos, state Assembly Speaker-elect.

But Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, the Assembly speaker-elect, didn’t agree that redistricting played a significant role in his party’s fortunes. He said there have always been districts that due to high turnout and other factors lean to one side and that the GOP simply did a better job of getting out the vote.

“Every district is on its own,” Vos said. “There are competitive seats in every part of the state. And I think that at the end of the day, voters made a choice to pick the best individual candidate.”

In the 2010 contested Assembly races, the GOP got a slightly larger proportion of seats than votes. In 2012, that pattern was even more pronounced.

This year, Republicans won 56 of the 76 contested Assembly seats in the Nov. 6 election. That’s 74 percent of the seats — which they won with just 52 percent of the 2.2 million votes.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin furnished the Center with data showing that if uncontested races were included in the analysis, Democrats actually received 200,000 more Assembly votes than Republicans. Most uncontested races were in Democratic districts.

The GOP’s new 60-39 majority in the Assembly is nearly the same as it was heading into the election: 59-39, with one independent.

In the state Senate, Republicans won six of 11 contested races, including two seats that had been held by Democrats. The Republicans now have a 17-15 advantage in the state Senate, which will likely increase to 18-15 after a December special election in an overwhelmingly Republican district.

But the Democrats actually outpolled the GOP in these contested state Senate elections, winning 50.5 percent of the 941,000 votes cast.

Cal Potter, a former Democratic state lawmaker who now serves on the board of Common Cause in Wisconsin, a nonpartisan watchdog group, noted that the redistricting after the 1990 and 2000 Census was done by the courts, because the Legislature and governor were split and could not agree on a plan. This time around, he said, the GOP ran the show and was able to maximize its electoral advantages.

The nonprofitWisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. This story was a produced in collaboration with Wisconsin Public Television.

All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

The battle between Republican Tommy Thompson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin is emerging as one of the most important — and costly — races in the country. It has drawn tens of millions of dollars from outside groups who see it as a race that could go either way and possibly determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Already, these outside expenditures, coupled with prodigious spending by the candidates, make this the most expensive U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin history.

The Federal Election Commission requires outside groups to promptly report independent expenditures; that means the database listing this spending is being continually updated. As of  midday on Friday, Oct. 26, data compiled by the FEC and analyzed by the Center for Responsive politics on its Open Secrets website reveal:

• Outside groups have spent more than $33.4 million on Wisconsin’s Senate race, more than for any other federal race nationally besides the one for president and a Senate race in Virginia. This total is reported, and may be updated, on the Open Secrets site.

Of this amount, all but about $2.6 million was spent either for or against Thompson or Baldwin, the two candidates who emerged from the Aug. 14 primary.

The biggest outside spenders on Baldwin’s side, to date, are the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which spent $5.7 million, Women Vote!, a super PAC run by Emily’s List, which has spent $2.2 million, and Majority PAC, which has spent $3.2 million. Thompson’s biggest outside backers were Crossroads GPS, which has spent $4.7 million on his behalf and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has spent $4.1 million.

• Spending by the two sides is almost evenly divided. Of the $30.8 million spent by outside groups on the two main candidates so far, $16 million has been spent for Baldwin or against Thompson, and $14.8 million has been spent for Thompson or against Baldwin. Most of this money has come in the form of independent expenditures made by political action committees, super PACs and nonprofit organizations. A small share was reported as “electioneering communications,” as federal law requires for “issue ad” outlays within 60 days of an election.

Tammy Baldwin

• Almost all of the money coming into the race from outside groups is for negative messages. Of the $30.8 million spent for or against Thompson and Baldwin so far, all but about $2.6 million was spent to oppose one or the other candidate. In other words, more than 90 percent of the money poured into this race by outside groups has gone toward negative messaging, primarily TV ads.

• Already, this is the most expensive U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin history, shattering the record set in 2010. Back then, Russ Feingold and Ron Johnson spent nearly $33 million (according to the FEC; see http://www.fec.gov/disclosurehs/hsnational.do), with outside groups spending about $5 million (according to Open Secrets, see: http://www.opensecrets.org/races/indexp.php?cycle=2010&id=WIS2).

Tommy Thompson

Through the end of September, Tammy Baldwin had spent $8.5 million and Tommy Thompson had spent $3.8 million. Add in spending by Thompson’s unsuccessful rivals in the primary (Eric Hovde, $6,277,420), Mark Neumann ($3,774,265) and Jeff Fitzgerald ($211,044) and the spending total reaches $22.6 million. Add that to the amount spent by outside groups and the total tops $50 million, well more than the $38 million spent in 2010.

And it will almost certainly go even higher. Through the Sept. 30 filing deadline, Baldwin reported having $3.5 million cash on hand and Thompson, who has contributed more than $800,000 to his own campaign, said he has $2 million on hand.

This report is part a collaborative project with WISC-TV in Madison.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett. Image from state website

By Paul Abowd and Alexandra Duzak
The Center for Public Integrity

At a campaign stop near Philadelphia early in his 2010 bid for governor, Republican Tom Corbett announced, “We’ve got to raise money,” calling this his campaign’s “No. 1” priority. That same July day, a $1.5 million contribution arrived — from Wisconsin.

Officially, the donation was from the Wisconsin affiliate of a national political organization called the Republican Governors Association (RGA). But the $1.5 million could not travel directly from the RGA to Corbett. Pennsylvania law bans candidates from accepting corporate money, and the RGA accepts millions of dollars from some of the nation’s largest businesses.

In a single day, the $1.5 million gift traveled from the D.C.-based parent organization to the RGA Wisconsin PAC, then to the RGA Pennsylvania PAC and finally to Corbett’s campaign account.

By the time the donation reached Corbett, it was impossible to identify the original source of the cash or whether the donation was permissible under state law.

Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, called this well-traveled donation a prime example of “an elaborate money-laundering scheme” used by the RGA with success in a number of races for governor in 2010. He added that it is legal.

The RGA’s funding played a central role in Corbett’s victory. By Election Day he had received a total of $6 million from the RGA — 21 percent of his total fundraising, making the RGA his campaign’s top donor, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Corbett’s campaign office did not return calls for comment for this story.

Corbett’s boosters crushed the competition from the D.C.-based Democratic Governors
Association (DGA), which used similar maneuvers to raise $1.9 million for Corbett’s opponent, Dan Onorato.

RGA a major player

The RGA emerged as a major player in the 2010 election, and not just in Pennsylvania.

“We can’t wait until 2012 to start taking our country back,” said Haley Barbour, then governor of Mississippi and chairman of the RGA, in a promotional video released 12 weeks before the landmark 2010 election.

In that election, 37 governors’ seats were up for grabs. Republicans won 23 races to the Democrats’ 13, including the Pennsylvania race that landed Corbett in the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion. Republicans knocked Democrats from 10 seats, and clinched 29 governorships nationwide.

During this election, the RGA raised $87 million, more than the previous three years combined, a Center for Public Integrity review of data from the Center for Responsive Politics reveals.

“It’s hard not to look at the numbers coming out of the RGA and not marvel/quake at the
Mississippi governor’s fundraising capacity,” wrote The Washington Post’s Chris Cilizza on the eve of the 2010 vote.

The spending has continued this election season. The organization has kept money flowing by circuitous routes into several states, including North Carolina, Indiana and Wisconsin. Gubernatorial races are being fought in 11 states, eight of which currently have Democratic governors.

Through September, the RGA has spent $40 million of its $43 million haul — nearly doubling the amount raised by the DGA.

Life would be simpler for the RGA if it could make contributions to gubernatorial candidates directly from its D.C. bank account. But it receives tens of millions of dollars in contributions from corporations — and corporate contributions to candidates are banned in 21 states, including Pennsylvania.

The RGA maintains that its activity in 2010 was legal, thanks to its use of state-level PACs.

“The RGA worked with both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin campaign finance authorities in 2010 to ensure we were complying with the law,” wrote RGA spokesman Mike Schrimpf in an email, responding to questions posed by the Center.

Playing a shell game

In Pennsylvania, corporations cannot give to candidates, but individuals can make
unlimited contributions to both PACs and candidates.

The RGA Pennsylvania PAC, which retained the same D.C. address of its parent organization and listed the same treasurer, filed reports with the state itemizing contributions from individuals and not corporations.

Six-and seven-figure donations came to the state PAC from some of the RGA’s most loyal contributors, but only 3 percent of the PAC’s total fundraising came from inside the state. They included $1 million from hedge fund managers Paul Singer of New York, Steven Cohen of Connecticut and Ken Griffin and wife Anne from Chicago. Texas home builder Bob Perry gave $500,000.

Those donations alone comprise more than half of the $6 million that went from the RGA to Corbett.

The DGA Pennsylvania PAC also took contributions from a smaller stable of mostly out-of-state donors, including Texas trial lawyer and Democratic mega-donor Steven Mostyn, who gave $400,000. Mostyn did not return numerous calls for comment.

Though these large gifts are permissible under Pennsylvania law, the RGA and DGA confirm that its donors give to a general fund, not to any specific state. The D.C.-based organizations then make the call on whose money is counted toward which race.

The result is a listing of donors to Corbett and Onorato who were not aware their donations were attributed to a specific campaign.

“It is legal,” said Ron Ruman, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, “as long as the contribution that went to Pennsylvania was from an individual.”

Still, the practice calls into question the accuracy of the governors associations’ disclosure reports.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Singer, for example, has spent years, and millions of dollars, advocating for the right of same-sex couples to marry. He has a gay son who married in Massachusetts, and The New York Times reports he gave $425,000 to back New York’s gay marriage bill.

Corbett ran as a staunch opponent of gay marriage in the state and has maintained that stance in office.

A spokesman for Singer declined to comment.

A weird hole in the structure?

Like the national political parties, the RGA is a nonprofit political organization, regulated and tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code Section 527. But because the RGA is focused on state, not federal, elections, it is largely unregulated by the Federal Election Commission.

“The governors associations are everywhere,” writes Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a legal expert at Stetson Law School, but “are regulated almost nowhere.”

The organization has spurred investigations and lawsuits in several states since it emerged as a force in state elections.

It’s “subterfuge,” said former FEC official Bob Biersack, now a senior fellow with the Center for Responsive Politics. “They’ve figured out this weird hole in the legal structure.”

The RGA has maneuvered skillfully, winning in court when states have challenged its practices. In the past four years, Schrimpf said, the organization has “in no state had a final judgment issued requiring us to pay a fine.”

In making its $1.5 million contribution to Corbett, the RGA used multiple accounts to effectively cloak the original source of the money, thanks to a loophole in Wisconsin disclosure laws.

Wisconsin only requires the PAC, which lists the RGA’s D.C. address, to report donations from Wisconsin residents. The vast majority of the RGA Wisconsin PAC’s money, however, came from out of state.

In the months ahead of the 2010 primary vote, the RGA Wisconsin PAC reported spending at least $5 million, including the $1.5 million gift that ended up with Corbett. The PAC listed its in-state donors, whose contributions amounted to barely more than $31,000.

“It’s very difficult to get to the bottom of where their money came from,” said Nathan Judnic at the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.

When the money arrived in Corbett’s campaign account, no one, including the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, could decipher the source.

The RGA attached a letter to its campaign filings with Pennsylvania in September 2010. While the origin of the $1.5 million Wisconsin donation was not detailed, the RGA assured the state that it was composed of individual, not corporate, donations.

“In the interest of complete transparency,” wrote RGA Counsel Michael Adams, the organization enclosed its full list of individual donors between January and June of that year. The list contained more than $1.5 million in contributions, but did not say explicitly which of those donations made up the $1.5 million that went to Corbett.

A friend in need

The mysterious July gift of $1.5 million from the RGA Wisconsin PAC came to Corbett just in time. The candidate had suffered a month of bad press after criticizing the state’s jobless for relying on unemployment benefits.

The money helped launch the Corbett campaign’s first ads and a bus tour, which shifted the focus away from the gaffe. By the end of August, his lead in the polls was again more than 10 points, and he was on the road to victory.

In the three weeks before the vote, the RGA would send about $3.6 million more to Corbett to help seal a victory.

Pennsylvania is not the only state where the RGA directed its funds.

The RGA was “the Laundromat and the repository for a lot of the money that was spent all over the country in 2010, there’s no question about it,” said Jay Heck, executive director of the good government group Common Cause in Wisconsin.

In Iowa, the RGA gave about $1.2 million directly to Terry Branstad, according to data from CRP. As in Pennsylvania, Branstad could not receive corporate money, but could take unlimited sums from individuals. As it did in Pennsylvania, the RGA fed it through its RGA Iowa PAC, and listed individuals as donors to the PAC.

Also as in Pennsylvania, the RGA Iowa PAC received donations from the RGA’s PAC in Wisconsin totaling $340,000.

In Texas, the RGA gave $3 million directly to Gov. Rick Perry, according to the CRP data. The donation was routed through its PAC in Michigan, apparently in an attempt to comply with a state law banning corporate donations.

On Perry’s campaign filings, the donation appears as a contribution from the RGA Michigan PAC — because PACs can give candidates unlimited funds to candidates in Texas, as long as the money isn’t corporate.

The seed money for the RGA Michigan PAC came again from wealthy individuals, including prolific political donor Texas homebuilder Bob Perry (no relation to Rick). The homebuilding magnate gave the RGA $4 million earlier in 2010.

The RGA also gave contributions in the millions directly to Republican parties in states where corporate contributions to parties are banned. Through its PACs in Michigan and Pennsylvania, it sent $5.3 million to Michigan’s Republican Party and $2.3 million to bolster the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s efforts.

By contrast, the RGA uses a more direct method in states where corporate contributions to candidates are unlimited.

The organization sent roughly $2.5 million directly to Oregon Republican Chris Dudley, according to both data from CRP and state campaign finance reports. Dudley, who lost a close race for governor, reported the donations as coming from the RGA’s “Corporate Unlimited Account” — no pass-through and no state-affiliated PACs were necessary for the corporate cash infusion.

A repeat performance?

Republican candidates are leaning heavily on the RGA again as 11 more governors’ races head to the November finish line. The organization continues its maneuvers through state and federal election law, and is on pace to break Barbour’s prodigious 2010 fundraising record.

It continues to tap the deep pockets of hundreds of donors who have pledged at least $25,000 annually as members of the RGA’s Executive Roundtable — led by venture capitalist Fred Malek, who worked in the White House under Presidents Nixon and Ford and served as campaign manager for President George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Hundreds of these executives met with Barbour, Malek, American Crossroads strategist Karl Rove and presidential candidate Mitt Romney in August for an Aspen fundraising and strategy session, according to Politico. Republican gubernatorial candidates Rick Hill of Montana and Rob McKenna of Washington were also present, as was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The RGA is devoting millions to four possible pickups as Democrats leave open governorships in North Carolina, Washington, Montana, and New Hampshire. The RGA has dedicated millions to challenge Democratic incumbents in four additional states, including Missouri and West Virginia.

Governor Scott Walker in a Dec. 23, 2011 portrait. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

The RGA also dropped about $8 million to protect Gov. Walker from being recalled, and has shored up incumbents in Utah, Puerto Rico and Indiana. Walker is a member of the group’s executive committee.

In the Hoosier State the RGA used its RGA Right Direction super PAC to sidestep the state’s corporate ban and give $1 million to candidate Mike Pence while obscuring the original donors.

The RGA has also used the super PAC, registered to make independent expenditures on federal races, to sponsor ads attacking Democratic candidates for governor in West Virginia and Montana. Donors and spending on these ads were not reported to the states in question after they ran. They were finally reported, however, in mid-October filings with the FEC.

Whether the RGA and the DGA are intentionally evading state laws is difficult to say because of the structure of the organizations.

“Their structure provides plausible deniability to underlying donors,” said Stetson’s Torres-Spelliscy. Donors can “pretend” they’re only giving to the associations and not influence policy in a particular state, “but only that donor and the staff at the governors association knows if this money is given without strings attached.”

John Dunbar contributed to this report.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) published this story in collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories go to Consider the Source.

All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.