As everyone predicted, the four members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court who benefited from $8 million in campaign spending by special interest groups ruled in favor of those same special interests groups and shut down the John Doe investigation into the groups’ coordination with Gov. Scott Walker.
But the majority went one step further and ordered that prosecutors return all property seized to their owners and permanently destroy all copies of information and other material gathered.
So that kills off the Doe. Or does it?
There’s talk of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Right-wing legal expert Rick Esenberg says that the U.S. high court doesn’t take on state matters so this is the end of the road for the Doe. But this case could be appealed. If you read the decision, you’ll see that it goes far beyond other court decisions on political speech and campaign finance. It doesn’t just build on precedent—it creates a precedent. Wisconsin’s bought-and-paid-for majority has written a new campaign coordination law, one that no lower court in the country has recognized, according to Common Cause in Wisconsin’s Jay Heck. In fact, no lower court in Wisconsin has come to the same conclusion as today’s state Supreme Court decision, since the campaign coordination part of the decision was an original matter and one not developed in a lower court that made it up to the Supreme Court on appeal.
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Then there’s the matter of judicial recusal. There’s talk that the decision could be appealed on the basis of the four bought-and-paid-for justice’s refusal to recuse themselves in this case. That flies in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Caperton v. Massey, which asserted that a state Supreme Court justice who sat on a case involving a major campaign donor presented a “serious risk of actual bias” and violated the opposing party’s right to a fair trial.
Until all of that happens, the majority’s decision has the effect of being law. Now, candidates can coordinate with special interest groups on fundraising, messaging and spending as long as the ads in question don’t explicitly say the magic words of “vote for” or “vote against.”
And what about Scott Walker? The presidential wannabe had no problem dialing for dollars to drum up contributions for Wisconsin Club for Growth during the recalls. Wonder if he’s already got big donors on the line for more contributions for “independent” groups that just happen to share his agenda.
