If you can stomach it, listen to the entire exchange between Gov. Scott Walker and “David Koch” a blogger posing as the multi-billionaire Americans for Prosperity funder.
I admit, it’s difficult. Walker is so full of himself it’s hard to take. His ego is almost as big as Charlie Sykes’.
But if you listen to the second half of the conversation you’ll find that Walker asks “Koch” for help with constituent contact and messaging. It comes a few minutes into this segment.
“Koch” asked Walker if there was anything he could do to help. Walker told him a long, self-aggrandizing story about how he was giving pep talks to Republican lawmakers about hanging tough in the face of public criticism. Then he launched into his request:
WALKER: … One thing per your question is, the more groups that are encouraging people not just to show up but to call lawmakers and tell them to hang firm with the governor the better. Because the more they get that reassurance the easier it is for them to vote yes.
“KOCH”: Right.
WALKER: The other thing is more long term. That is the day after this, the coming days and weeks and months ahead, particularly in some of these more swing areas, a lot of these guys are going to needthey don’t [garbled] need events for them, but they’re going to need a message out reinforcing why this is a good thing to do for the economy and a good thing for the state. To the extent that that message is out over and over again, that’s a good thing.
“KOCH”: Right. We’ll back you any way we can. But what we were thinking about the crowds was planting some trouble makers
WALKER: You know, the only problem with that--because we thought about that--the problem, or my only gut reaction to that would be that right now the, the lawmakers that I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them. The public is not real fond of this. The teacher’s union did some polling and focus groups and found out that the public turned on them the minute they closed down school for a couple days. The guys they’ve got left are largely from out of state and I keep dismissing it in all of my press comments, “Ah, they’re mostly from out of state.” My only fear would be that if there was a ruckus caused is that that would scare the public and think maybe the governor’s got to settle to avoid all these problems….
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When I heard this exchange I thought: Wow! Is this legal? Because candidates for office cannot coordinate activity with groups that are placing independent expenditures in a race. So I called Mike McCabe at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. He was troubled by Walker’s request as well. But it “falls into the safe side of a gray area,” McCabe said. Walker isn’t a candidate for office. And even though it sounds like he’s requesting help in upcoming campaigns notice the mention of “swing areas” what he asked for is probably OK.
“It would be damning if he said it during a campaign season,” McCabe said. There isn’t a law on the books that says that a sitting governor who is not running for office cannot ask a multi-billionaire for “message” help. McCabe said he’s heard that the Koch brothers are putting $300,000 in TV ads supporting Walker’s union-busting proposal. He said the whole conversation was “very revealing,” not only because it shows that Walker has a tight, friendly relationship with one of the architects of the tea party movement, but because Walker repeatedly talks about how Wisconsin is part of a national push to destroy workers’ rights.
“This is not something that’s homegrown and Walker knows that,” McCabe. And if you want to know more about Koch Industries’ growing influence in the state, the Cap Times has a new report on its lobbying effort in Madison. And here's an article I wrote last year about Koch Industries' link to Wisconsin's tea partiers and its opposition to the Clean Energy Jobs Act.
