Friday, May 14, 2010

RPMCVP

Dan Bice has a story in today's paper about Darlene Wink, one of Scott Walker's county staffers, who got busted leaving comments on JSOnline.

I am not going into a lot of discussion into this, but did want to make a few observations.

One is this is not a one sided thing. This site has gotten a lot of hits from all levels of government, from the City of Milwaukee to the County to the State and even hits from the feds.

Sometimes these people would leave comments, but more often they don't.

I wouldn't classify what Wink did as campaigning per se. It is not like she was trolling for campaign donations or coordinating campaign events, at least not that we are aware of.

There would be room for suspicion on that though, considering that it was Wink that was involved in the incident in which the pseudo-non-official campaign site actually got a response to a question I had asked before I got the response.

Walker has a long history of paying fast and loose with campaign laws, often pushing the envelope to the line and even beyond, but carefully as not to leave a paper trail. He has slipped up a few times, and has gotten slapped for it.

But the thing I found most interesting was the reactions to this.

Many on the left predictably tried to tie this to Walker. I'll go on the record as saying that I don't think Walker told her to do this, or anything else that she did. Being an officer in the Republican Party, she probably did this on her own. Secondly, Walker is never around to tell anyone to do anything, as that he has been missing from his real job for at least two years as he campaigns.

Many on the right chose instead to just attack the messenger, tearing into Dan Bice and/or the paper as being partisan or being a hack. I lost track of how many people were whining that he didn't do this type of investigation into Tom Barrett's administration. I don't see Bice being particularly partisan, seeing how he dug into the trip that Supervisors Coggs and Clark took to President Obama's inauguration.

In summary, both sides do this sort of thing, often without notice. The only thing that made this story noteworthy was Wink's standing in the Republican Party. But either way, with all the other things going wrong for Walker, it's no wonder that he and his people seem to be a little more histrionic that usual lately.

3 comments:

  1. Maybe this matter will shed more light as to who is posting for Scottforgov.com. I wouldn't be suprised if one of the posters is from the county executive office.

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  2. First, nobody from the county office is posting for Scottforgov. This I can say with certainty, since I know who does the posting.

    Second, I must admit, I'm surprised about your rather reserved commentary on this issue. I actually think you're right here. She was not campaigning in any official capacity for Walker, but rather just posting opinions while working for the county, which by the way, is not illegal unless she is officially campaigning for a particular candidate. Would it make the news if she was arguing with someone at work about Walker? Why not? How would that be any different than posting on MJS? An opinion is an opinion.

    And third, for Holloway to ask Walker's campaign for a reimbursement is ridiculous. How much did Holloway expect to save, maybe 2 bucks? I didn't see him criticizing Jeff Dickert who actually broke federal law by campaigning for Tony Evers using a public email system.

    All I got to say is that Bice better be looking into those that work in Barrett's office to see what they're doing on the public clock. Although I feel like Walker's aid didn't break the law, or didn't do anything severe enough to lose her job, I feel that fair is fair.

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  3. Given all of Walker's past campaign infractions, this one is small potatoes. Furthermore, most of Walker's campaign staff were given jobs with the county, so what is one more or less.

    All County employees have to sign a form regarding the County's technology policy. What she did violates that policy. For a represented worker, on a first offense, it would usually end up in a verbal or written reprimand. That she resigned so readily raises questions about what else she was doing.

    Holloway has no jurisdiction over the state DPI, so why would he comment on that.

    As for the Barrett comment, now you just sound like a little kid with sour grapes.

    Oh, and for the reimbursement, yeah, that was silly. However, now that Walker is sending out campaign statements when he said he wouldn't, his campaign should reimburse the county for all the money being spent on the bike ride.

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