Whose Side Is Katrina Shankland On?

As I am sure the gentle reader is fully aware, I have already questioned the candidacy of Katrina Shankland who is trying to pass herself off as a Democrat in the 71st Assembly race.

I pointed out that Shankland, despite her claims of being grassroots, is anything but. I revealed that Shankland was receiving fundraising through a Washington D.C.-based PAC for which she works. If not technically illegal, it definitely is unethical and should raise red flags for anyone.

I then reported on how Shankland was trying to keep the voters from knowing the truth of her poor behavior by censoring me and preventing me from getting the information to them.

I compared her willingness to be influenced by out of state special interests and controlling what people are allowed to know to the current Republican regime.

I now have new information which confirms my earlier statements.

While it is true that Shankland did work on the campaign to recall Scott Walker, she also was a hindrance to said effort.

Yesterday, I was made privy to an email from Jennifer Dolan of Wood County to Gary Hawley, who is the head of the Portage County Dems. In the email, Dolan warns Hawley about Shankland and her behaviors. I reproduce it here with Dolan's permission:

Hello Gary,

I want to share some first-hand knowledge of Katrina Shankland with the good folks of District 71, so please forward this on to Democrats in the district. From November, 2011 through January, 2012, I ran a recall office from my home in Wisconsin Rapids. There was no money for a recall office in the southern part of Wood County, so I volunteered my own residence to serve as such and organized a volunteer team of more than 200, with 100 truly die-hard volunteers. Wisconsin Rapids, an area that no one was counting on for recall signatures became a star. Katrina Shankland may try to take credit for that, but her efforts very nearly killed the recall effort here, as she set out on a personal vendetta against me and the recall office that was ran from my house. After nearly sabotaging the recall effort here, state party officials decided to move her off of the Walker recall signature gathering in this part of the state to gathering recall signatures against Terry Moulton.

I was verbally harassed by both Katrina and her boss, Tyler Hendricks, It was something very upsetting to many progressives in this area, and very mentally and physically distressing to myself.

I must confess that I only became aware of the candidates for the 71st Assembly District today, because I live in the 72nd Assembly District and am focused on helping out with Justin Pluess' campaign here. If you remember me, you will recollect that I am a very progressive Democrat who has been very active in the party for quite sometime. I want to warn you that Shankland is nothing she purports to be. She is a political shill who will do the bidding of her major donors and not the constituents.

May this serve as a warning.

Jennifer J. Dolan

Ms. Dolan also left a comment on my endorsement of Laura Hauser-Menting. Dolan wrote:

There is more than one fake Democrat running against Laura. This is Jennifer Dolan, the Democrat who opened up her home as a recall office in Wisconsin Rapids. In South Wood County, I am credited with organizing a signature gathering effort that surprised everyone. Katrina Shankland may try taking credit for that, but she very nearly sabotaged the recall effort here out of a personal vendetta she launched against me, pushing to close down the recall office I set up in my home. There was no money for a recall office here, and many say that the recall effort would have been nil had I not opened up my home, but Shankland convinced founders of the Central Wisconsin for Democracy PAC to take the money they earned off of sales of a tee shirt that I designed and look to rent an office elsewhere. I GAVE my home as an office, but she was looking at having a grassroots group spend money they did not have. I was bullied to tell people that I felt it best to close the office in favor of a larger location, even though I never wanted to close this office and even contacted Mike Tate's office about this. A few days past, and I had received a message from the state party that declared that the state party wanted me to keep my office open and was sorry for the mess caused by Katrina Shankland, noting that she would be moved off of the Walker recall and sent to help gather signatures to recall Terry Moulton. What, you may ask, spurred Katrina's vendetta against me? A simple miscommunication. I expressed concern to her about a new volunteer, and she took that as me saying that I wanted to close the office ran out of my house. In reality, I had to fight to keep it open. Katrina had a hard time when it came to working with volunteers... possibly because she had never actually been a volunteer herself. She has a bad habit of talking at people, and not listening to the concerns of people. This is no one that you would want as your representative. She has collected a lot of money from out of state donors. That can be difficult to compete with, but it is also a big red flag. Seems to me that she is campaigning in Scott Walker's footsteps. I live in the 72nd District, so I had not followed this race closely, but I would advise the people in the 71st District to vote for Laura Hauser-Menting. She is a true progressive, and a true Democrat.

I was able to speak with Dolan this afternoon and asked her to fill me in on the details.

She told me that because of the distance between Wisconsin Rapids and Marshfield, there was concern that a lot of volunteers wouldn't be able or willing to make the trip to pick up and drop off supplies and petitions. To counter this issue, Dolan opened up her home to make it a base for the recall in Rapids.

Things were moving along well until a person who wanted to volunteer for the recall raised red flags for Dolan. The would-be volunteer in question was suspected of being a mole for the Republicans. The person was definitely not progressive and did not seem to be interested in doing much of the work that was needed.

Dolan expressed her concerns to Shankland, who was heading up that region's recall efforts. But Shankland, instead of listening to Dolan, chose to use that as an excuse to get a local PAC to spend money it didn't have in order to rent office space. As it turned out, none of the landowners, being in support of Walker, would rent them any office space. To the recall headquarters remained in Dolan's office.

Shankland didn't stop there though and started harassing Dolan via emails and on Facebook. The level of harassment was enough for Dolan to reach out to the Democrat's main office. Word came down that they wanted to keep that headquarters in Dolan's office. Furthermore, because of the number of complaints they were getting about Shankland, they pulled her from that job and moved her to the efforts to recall Senator Terry Moulton.

Dolan said that volunteers were complaining about Shankland because she would not listen to them or their concerns, would talk about them to other volunteers behind their back and that Shankland was generally very hard to work with. She said that Shankland was very power hungry and would do what would benefit herself regardless of whether it helped or hurt the recall effort.

While Dolan is very proud of the fact that due to selflessly giving up her home and sacrificing so much for the cause helped them surpass all expectations (Rapids even outperformed Marshfield), she feels that they could have done even better if it wasn't for the distractions and disruptions caused by Shankland.

In sum, if you don't want to take my word for it, listen to those who know and have worked with Shankland. Shankland may or may not do things that are good for the state or for her constituents. It depends on what the special interests who are funding her campaign tell her what to do.

In other words, Shankland is on only one side - her own. She will do whatever she feels is necessary to further her aspirations for more power, consequences to others be damned.

And that's just one more solid reason why I encourage people to continue to support Laura Hauser-Menting, the real grassroots candidate that puts people before politics. You can learn more about Laura from her Facebook page and you can help support her by donating to her Act Blue page.