Milwaukee Biz Blog

Five special interest groups spent close to $8 million in the last two state Supreme Court races on what most of the groups insist on calling "issue advocacy." To you and me, that means a truckload of money was spent on loads of TV ads smearing the candidates.

The advertising was trashy and demeaning. It was highly misleading, repeatedly took liberties with the facts and sometimes was downright untruthful. (To see what I mean, check out FactCheck.org's "Court Watch" series.)

The ads were deceiving in two other very important ways. They focused almost exclusively on a single issue - crime and public safety. But fighting crime is not the Supreme Court's job. That's what the police and prosecutors and trial courts do. Voters were repeatedly told a good Supreme Court justice will lock 'em up and throw away the key when, in truth, the Supreme Court doesn't conduct criminal trials or sentence convicts.

Not only did virtually all the ads have very little to do with the actual work of the Supreme Court, but they also had next to nothing to do with the groups' own policy agendas.

In preparing the new report "Justice for Just Us," the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign compared the five groups' lobbying reports, legislative agendas, public statements and activities on the issues they are working on to the agendas of eight groups representing police, sheriffs, state troopers and criminal prosecutors. We found 77 legislative proposals relating to crime fighting or public safety the eight law enforcement groups were working on. And we found that the five groups that spent millions preaching about crime in the 2007 and 2008 Supreme Court races had virtually no interest in any of the 77 bills.

Three of the electioneering groups - the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee and the conservative Club for Growth Wisconsin and Coalition for America's Families - did not weigh in on any of the crime-related proposals.

They did not even bother to register as lobbying groups which would have allowed them to actively work to persuade lawmakers to take action. The Club for Growth and the Coalition for America's Families also did not use their web sites or any other public means to identify or take credit for work on any crime or safety issues. Greater Wisconsin Committee does not even have a web site to determine what - if any - issues it is interested in other than electing Democratic candidates.

The other two groups - Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) and the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) - lobbied on more than 240 business, union, tax and education measures in the 2007-2008 legislative session but took positions on only three proposals that could be remotely considered related to crime and public safety. And WMC opposed a measure to protect the jobs of first responders.

Simply put, WMC and WEAC didn't put their lobbying muscle where their TV ads were. And it's obvious that phony front groups like the Greater Wisconsin Committee, Club for Growth and Coalition for America's Families exist for the sole purpose of doing election advertising. They don't work on issues at all, they just exploit them for electoral gain.

They call it "issue advocacy" and claim with a poker face that they are not seeking to influence the outcome of the election but are merely educating voters. They live this lie because it allows them to get around campaign finance disclosure laws and contribution limits. Wisconsin once had some of the strongest such laws in the nation. They now aren't worth much more than the paper they're written on, thanks to the issue ad loophole.

I don't know which is worse, those who are hijacking elections by gaming the system or the public officials who've let them get away with it. What I do know for sure is that the politicians and their wealthy special interest patrons are winning this game, and ordinary taxpaying citizens are the losers.

Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics and works for campaign finance reform and other pro-democracy reforms. WDC's web site is www.wisdc.org.

A war is being waged for control of our courts. And, as with all wars, there are casualties. It's said that truth is the first casualty of war, and that certainly was the case in this year's Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

The campaigning was ceaselessly deceptive and misleading, often downright untruthful, and with very few exceptions unrelentingly trashy.

Two other casualties also stand out. One is judicial independence. Wisconsin is well on its way to special interest ownership of our courts. A handful of special interest lobbying groups and phony front organizations did over 90 percent of the campaign advertising in the race, spending over $4 million to gain control of the Supreme Court.

The candidates were for the most part bystanders in this election. The interest groups defined the candidates, decided which issue would be discussed and controlled what was said about that issue. The issue was crime, even though it has virtually nothing to do with the work of the Supreme Court.

Another casualty is the state's judicial code of ethics, which is no longer worth the paper it's written on. This election was conducted in a way that is not remotely in keeping with the requirements of the ethics code. The code is dead as a doornail unless the state Judicial Commission and ultimately the Supreme Court itself takes forceful action to enforce these rules and hold candidates for the high court accountable for obeying them.

The court is in a no-win position. If the justices vigorously enforce the code, that means punishing one of their own (well, actually, two of their own). That would require them to throw cordiality out the window and let the chips fall where they may. If on the other hand they opt to maintain constructive working relationships (if that's even possible anymore), they sign the ethics code's death certificate.

They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

The Supreme Court is in the midst of a hostile takeover. Many in the legal community and many more in the broader community of Wisconsin citizens have pulled a Switzerland.
But as Dante famously said, the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, remain neutral.

Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics and works for campaign finance reform and other democracy reforms. WDC's web site is www.wisdc.org.

The trouble with Wisconsin Supreme Court elections nowadays is not just how they eerily resemble John Grisham's latest novel.

It's not just that a single lobbying group and three shadowy front groups are doing 95 percent of the advertising in this year's race, filling the airwaves with twisted facts, deceptive insinuations and outright lies.

It's not just that what little advertising the two candidates are doing dwells on a subject - crime fighting - that the Supreme Court rarely if ever deals with. Watching the ads, you'd think they were running for sheriff or district attorney or trial court judge, not for a seat on the state's highest appeals court.

It's not even that the challenger (Mike Gabelman) in this race chose to put his name and reputation behind a race-baiting, Willie Hortonesque ad that the State Bar Association's judicial campaign integrity committee called "highly offensive and deliberately misleading," "disgraceful" and "contemptible."

The full measure of the problem is found in polling done in Wisconsin by American Viewpoint, a leading Republican polling firm, showing more than three-quarters of state residents believe campaign contributions significantly influence the decisions judges make in the courtroom. Only 5 percent said they don't believe donations have any influence at all on judges' decisions.

Judges are supposed to be impartial. They are supposed to be accountable only to the law and the constitution, not party bosses or big campaign donors. The growing public perception that judges rule the way their special interest backers want them to rule is a disaster for the court.

The crisis of confidence facing the high court has its roots in last year's election. Wisconsin has elected its Supreme Court since 1852 and for more than 150 years these elections produced a high court that enjoyed the citizenry's trust. Supreme Court races were relatively inexpensive, dignified affairs. It was not until the April 2007 election that the public's confidence was profoundly shaken. That race shattered the mold.

Nearly $6 million was spent, more than four times the previous record. Three highly partisan interest groups secretly spent over half of the total.

I was quoted last year saying the 2007 race was a "cash-soaked, special interest-contaminated smearfest." It was all of those things, and I stand by my words. But this year's race is actually worse. What adjectives can do it justice?

As bleak as it's gotten, there is no reason we cannot repair what's gone wrong with our judicial elections and restore them to good working order so they once again serve the state the way they did for a century and a half.

All seven current members of the Supreme Court - from the most conservative justice to the most liberal - signed a letter calling for publicly financed judicial campaigns. Our Supreme Court is not unanimous about much of anything. But the justices are unanimous about this.

The public agrees. American Viewpoint's polling done showed that 65 percent of Wisconsin residents support publicly financed Supreme Court elections. After hearing arguments both for and against such reform, support for it went up to 75 percent.

Such reform would free candidates from the money chase and allow good judges to get their message to voters without cozying up to partisans and special interests, thereby compromising their independence.

It also would get the candidates back in the game. Today, they are bystanders in their own race. They are defined by the interest groups, and any attempts they make to respond are drowned out by those interest groups.

Candidates need to be put back on a level playing field with the outside groups. There are limits on what candidates can take from individuals and political action committees, and they can't accept a penny from the general treasuries of corporations and labor unions. They also have to disclose everything. The partisan and special interest front groups that have taken over Supreme Court campaigns don't play by those same rules. They can take money from anywhere, in any amount. And they can keep the public in the dark about where the money comes from and how it is spent.

It doesn't have to be this way. Publicly financing judicial elections and closing the gaping loophole in our campaign finance laws that is allowing special interest groups to run roughshod over our democracy would put voters back in the driver's seat and go far toward rescuing our Supreme Court from the partisan and special interest influences that are contaminating it.
 
Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics and works for campaign finance reform and other democracy reforms. WDC's web site is www.wisdc.org.

The chapter on Wisconsin in the new book, "Democratic Renewal: A Call to Action from America's Heartland," begins with this: "Wisconsin was once known for clean, open and progressive government. Those days are gone. This is something state residents know in their hearts."

Wisconsin has been robbed of its unique political culture and any claim of being worthy of the state's proud tradition of honorable government.

As cultural change goes, it happened breathtakingly fast, over the course of a single generation. How it happened is chronicled in "Democratic Renewal" in painstaking detail. Political ills that we used to associate only with states like Illinois or Louisiana or New Jersey are now on prominent display here in Wisconsin.

The introduction of these pathologies has had the effect of homogenizing politics at the state level.

Had a book like "Democratic Renewal" been written 20 or 25 years ago, the chapters on Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin would have been vastly different. Read this book today and you find that Wisconsin's story is virtually indistinguishable from the others.

Wisconsin was once known for clean, open and progressive government. Those days are gone.

Whether or not they can be brought back is up to all of us. Renewing democracy will not be easy and it certainly can't be done quickly. Understanding that up front can sustain us when frustration sets in. So can what Thomas Paine famously said: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics and works for campaign finance reform and other democracy reforms. Additional information is available at www.wisdc.org.

If you go by the latest polling done by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI), state politicians are owned by the lobbyists and the special interest groups, don't give a whit about what average citizens want or need, and generally seem to rank somewhere between used car salesmen and child molesters in the public's estimation.

A measly 2 percent of Wisconsin residents believe they can trust state government to do what is right almost all the time. Eighty-two percent say lobbying groups determine what state government spends money on, while only 12 percent believe voters ultimately control the purse strings.

When asked whether the standard of ethics in the state Legislature has changed over the last decade, 44 percent think it has gotten worse while only 6 percent think it has changed for the better. And a mere 10 percent think their elected officials represent the voters' interests, compared to 43 percent who think they're working for the special interests and 42 percent who think state politicians are just looking out for their own self-interest.

WPRI concludes that "something extraordinary is happening in Wisconsin." The group says: "Years of political neglect by their elected officials are beginning to have a serious toll on the confidence of Wisconsin residents in elected officials and their state government. The lack of optimism is seen in all aspects of life in Wisconsin today, whether it is the state's economy, the ethics of state government and elected officials or the dominance of lobbying in the political process. Wisconsin residents are extremely unhappy and becoming more and more disconnected from their government and the state's politics … The issues of lobbying, state ethics and the state's economy has never been more on the mind of Wisconsin residents. It would not be surprising if, in 2008, Wisconsin voters send a message that will be even louder than the one sent in 2006."

Are state lawmakers listening? Do they even care what the public thinks of them?

They'll answer these questions when they decide what to make of the special session on campaign reform.
Speaking of which, the Legislature briefly convened the special session on Dec. 11 before adjourning until Jan. 15.

Legislators clearly were caught off guard by Gov. Jim Doyle's call for a special session and are unsure of how to proceed.

But already you can see that it is the instinct of the political class to fiercely defend the ownership of our state government by the lobbyists and their special interest clients. Oh, they don't come right out and say they have no problem with big donations from wealthy interests who expect lavish favors in return for their political gifts. They say they are bound and determined to prevent the general public from being forced to pay for elections.

This is hypocrisy, spoken in code. And the public increasingly sees right through it. Wisconsin taxpayers already are forced to pay for state election campaigns. We pay every time our elected state representatives reward one of their big donors. We pay for every new tax break, for every budget bill laced with pork, for every sweetheart deal on a state contract. We pay through the nose for elections.

The debate that will start again in the Legislature on Jan. 15 has absolutely nothing to do with whether the public pays for elections. We will always pay, one way or another. The real issue, whether or not the Legislature chooses to debate it, is ownership. Who will own our state government? The wealthy donors or the voters?

As the WPRI poll shows, the vast majority of citizens have figured out the crooked game the politicians are playing. And as the group rightly observes, "something extraordinary is happening in Wisconsin."

The only question is how long it will take for state politicians to get the picture.
 
Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics and works for campaign finance reform and other democracy reforms. Additional information is available at www.wisdc.org.

State Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler is fixing to judge a tax case involving Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), which spent an estimated $2.2 million to get her elected - considerably more than the record-setting amount Ziegler spent on her own campaign.

Oral arguments on the case are scheduled to begin today.

Because of her ethics problems, Ziegler has taken to notifying all sides in cases before the high court of economic ties she has or any campaign support she received from any of the parties involved in a case. Ziegler also has been asking lawyers in the cases for feedback about whether she should recuse herself from the proceedings. She dropped out of one recent case after an attorney raised objections to a campaign contribution she received.

Ziegler is handling this tax case a bit differently. She informed all of the involved parties of the fact that WMC spent heavily on her behalf, but did not invite feedback on whether she should remove herself from the case. Instead, she notified the attorneys she intends to participate in hearing and ruling on the dispute over whether companies should have to pay sales tax on computer software they buy.

Here's where it gets interesting. If someone were to ask Ziegler to step aside, it would be Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who represents the state Department of Revenue in this case. It so happens WMC spent $2.5 million to get Van Hollen elected in 2006. If Van Hollen were to ask Ziegler to recuse herself, as he clearly should, that would beg the question of whether Van Hollen should prosecute the case for the state. That question should be asked regardless of what Van Hollen says to Ziegler.

The outcome of this case has huge implications. If the state loses, it could be forced to refund an estimated $350 million in taxes collected from businesses. But the implications for the integrity of our justice system and public confidence in the fairness and impartiality of Wisconsin's highest court are even more serious.

This case is providing an initial glimpse into what happens when our courts are politicized by campaigns for Supreme Court that are allowed to degenerate into such tawdry and money-saturated affairs.

Wisconsin's court system has a big problem. This one case is showing just how big.

Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics, fights government corruption and works for campaign finance reform and other pro-democracy reforms. For additional information, visit www.wisdc.org.

The one and only thing state legislators absolutely, positively have to do every two years is pass a state budget. The job is supposed to be done by July 1. Wisconsin is now the only state in the country with a July 1 budget deadline that does not have a new budget in place.

Both houses of the Legislature passed differing versions of the budget in late July,and legislative leaders have been involved in a highly partisan staredown ever since.

It's been said there is little if any real damage caused if state lawmakers are late in finishing work on a new state budget.

Tell that to the college students who don't know if they will receive any student aid. Tell it to the schools, towns, villages and cities that have to set their property tax levies and still do not know how much state aid to expect and therefore are clueless about how much of their costs they will have to ask property taxpayers to foot.

If the budget stalemate continues for just a few more days, homeowners and businesses in Wisconsin face a $600 million increase in their property taxes. If that happens, try telling your average property owner that it doesn't matter when the Legislature passes a state budget.

If the budget impasse is not resolved soon, it will affect the state's bond rating, and Wisconsin will pay more to borrow money for government projects than would otherwise be necessary.

The cost of political paralysis at the Capitol doesn't stop there. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has calculated how much taxpayer money has been wasted because of the state budget stalemate that has left the Legislature paralyzed and incapable of doing any meaningful work on other pressing issues.

It's cost us $17.2 million for the Legislature to accomplish nothing since its deadline for completing work on the budget came and went.

That's over $188,000 a day that's been blown on salaries, fringe benefits and other costs to operate the Legislature while lawmakers have failed to do a job they were supposed to complete by July 1.

The Legislature's failure to agree on a budget also comes at the expense of dozens of other legislative proposals that have been idling. One legislative veteran says the Assembly has only been in session 14 days this year.

At the same time, plenty of fundraising has been getting done. Legislative leaders on the conference committee as well as rank and file lawmakers have been holding fundraisers in bulk during the months-long budget delay to milk special interests with a stake in the two-year policy and spending proposal.

They are making Wisconsin a laughing stock. They are embarrassing us. And even if they can't see it, they are embarrassing themselves.
 
Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics, fights government corruption and works for campaign finance reform and other pro-democracy reforms. For additional information, visit www.wisdc.org.

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle accepted $1.8 million of his $9.26 million in large individual campaign contributions his first four years in office from donors outside the state, including nearly half of it in 2006 alone from donors who had never given to anyone in Wisconsin before, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign analysis shows.

To put Doyle's haul in perspective, former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, who was elected to four terms and was the state's most prolific political fundraiser, raised $1.18 million from out-of-state contributors in eight years from 1993-2000.

Doyle's Republican challenger in 2006, Mark Green, raised $336,962 in out-of-state-contributions in the 2006 election cycle, including individual contributions he accepted from 2002 through 2004 as a congressman and later transferred from his congressional campaign account to his state account to run for governor. Former Republican Gov. Scott McCallum, who was governor in 2001 and 2002, raised $299,415 during his two years in office.

Doyle's out-of-state individual contributions represented 19 percent of his total large individual contributions, compared with 5 percent for Green and 11 percent for both McCallum and Thompson.

In 2006, Doyle's out-of-state individual contributions cracked the $1 million mark for the first time by any Wisconsin political candidate. He accepted $1.09 million in out-of-state individual contributions, including an astounding $823,174 in contributions from 355 people who had not made a large individual contribution to a Wisconsin candidate for statewide office or the legislature before 2006.

During his first four years in office, out-of-state lawyers contributed the most to Doyle, nearly $274,000, followed by the banking and finance industry which doled out about $253,000, retirees and homemakers who gave him about $169,000, business interests which gave him about $157,000 and the real estate industry which contributed about $145,000.

Unlike Green, McCallum and Thompson, who received the most out-of-state contributions from Illinois, Doyle received the most out-of-state contributions from California from 2002 through 2006 - $393,346 - followed closely by Illinois at $385,326 and then New York at nearly $247,000.

Seven couples - five from California and one each from New York and Texas - gave Doyle $20,000 each, or the maximum $10,000 person. Fourteen other couples or families from outside Wisconsin gave Doyle between $10,187 and $19,750 and 40 individuals each gave him $10,000. These top contributors and other notable donors include:

• John Chambers, president of computer-giant Cisco Systems, and his wife Constance, of Los Altos Hills, California gave Doyle $20,000, as did John Morgridge, retired Cisco chief executive officer, and his wife Tashia, of Portola Valley, California;
• Leonard Schaeffer, chairman of health insurer Wellpoint Health Networks, and his wife Pamela, of Westlake Village, California, $20,000;
• Patrick Soon-Shiong, chairman of pharmaceutical company Abraxis BioScience, and his wife Michele, of Los Angeles, $20,000;
• Harley Lippman, chief executive officer of Genesis10, a business and technology consulting firm, and his wife Maria, of New York City, $20,000;
• John Doerr, a partner in the venture capital firm Keiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and his wife Ann, of Woodside, California, $20,000;
• Fred Baron, retired founder of Baron & Budd, a Dallas law firm, and his wife Lisa Blue, $20,000;
• Democratic political figures from around the country, including 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator John Kerry and his wife Theresa Heinz, $5,000; New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, $10,000 each;
• Jon Stryker of Kalamazoo, Michigan and software developer Tim Gill of Denver, $10,000 each. These two billionaires poured millions of dollars into dozens of state-level races and efforts to defeat anti-gay marriage referendums around the country in 2006;
• Dawn Arnall, of Los Angeles, billionaire co-owner of Ameriquest Capital Corp. and wife of U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands Roland Arnall, $10,000. Dawn Arnall and the couple's company have contributed about $5 million since 2002 to President Bush, Republican congressional candidates and committees and unregulated electioneering groups - known as 527 organizations - that ran attack ads against Kerry. Ameriquest is one of the nation's largest sub-prime mortgage lenders to people with poor credit. In early 2006, the company settled a class action lawsuit for $325 million with regulators in 49 states alleging predatory lending practices;
• Peter B. Lewis, an Ohio billionaire and owner of one of the nation's largest auto insurers, $10,000. Lewis has given several million dollars to art museums and universities and more than $24 million since 2004 to 527 groups that oppose Bush;
• Donny Deutsch, of New York City, CNBC talk show host and owner of one of the nation's top advertising agencies, $10,000;
  Arthur Nielsen Jr, of Deerfield, Illinois, owner of the AC Nielsen marketing research firm, $10,000.

Doyle's largest source of individual out-of-state contributions grouped by employer was Cisco Systems, whose executives gave him $57,500, all in 2006. The only other contributions to Wisconsin candidates from Cisco executives were $150 to Democratic legislative candidate Cory Mason in July 2006 and $250 to McCallum in June 2000.

Next was Levin Leichtman Capital Partners, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm that invests in leading mid-sized companies whose executives gave Doyle $42,832 - all in 2005 and none before or since to any Wisconsin candidate.

Third in line were executives of Newmark Knight Frank, a New York-based commercial real estate and property management firm, who contributed $33,500 to Doyle – all in April 2006 and none before or since to any Wisconsin candidate.

Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics, fights government corruption and works for campaign finance reform and other pro-democracy reforms. The group's web site is www.wisdc.org.

Why are Republican legislators and Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle so reluctant to even discuss major changes to make health care more affordable and accessible when their constituents have cited it as one of their top priorities?

Just follow the money.

Wealthy special interests that oppose a universal health care system - like the one in the Senate Democrats' proposed 2007-09 state budget - have contributed nearly $2 of every $3 raised in the past four election cycles by Republicans who control the Assembly, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign analysis shows.

And Doyle, who does not support the Senate's health care plan, accepted 48 percent of his large individual and political action committee contributions from 1999 through 2006 from special interests that oppose the plan.

The Assembly GOP, which removed the Senate health care plan from its version of the budget, accepted $4.4 million from 1999 through 2006 from special interests that oppose universal health care or who are members of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state's largest business group, which opposes it. Those interests include manufacturers, business, hospitals, health maintenance organizations, insurance, agriculture, banking, transportation, telecommunications, restaurant and utility interests.

Assembly Republicans raised a total $6.9 million from all special interests during the period.

The $4.4 million those contributors gave the Assembly's 52 Republicans is 3.5 times more than the $1.3 million those special interests gave the Assembly's 47 Democrats during the past four two-year election cycles.

In addition, the Senate Democrats' health care plan also is opposed by two conservative ideological organizations - Americans for Prosperity, an anti-tax and government spending group, and Wisconsin Family Action, which supported the so-called marriage protection amendment to the state constitution on the November 2006 ballot. Wisconsin Family Action gave $81,411 to another group to pay for advertising and other activities to support the amendment. The group also engaged in secret issue ad spending in a hotly contested Assembly race where it sent a postcard to voters showing two men wearing tuxedoes and proclaiming the Democratic candidate opposed the amendment.

Doyle, who was asked in late June if he supported the Senate's comprehensive health care plan and responded "I live in the real world," has accepted $7.3 million of his total $15.2 million in large individual and PAC contributions from special interests that also oppose the plan. The budget proposal Doyle gave to the Legislature contained an expansion of the state's BadgerCare health program to cover more low-income residents.

Most special interests and public officials who oppose universal health care favor tax-deductible health savings accounts, measures to make health care costs more accessible so people can shop and compare and other so-called market-based changes to lower health care costs.

In many cases, these wealthy special interests, particularly the insurance industry, oppose major health care reform mainly because it will cost them money. In other cases, groups representing special interests, like WMC and the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, would lose out because they sell insurance.

The state's largest teachers union and WMC's chief rival, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, favors the Senate Democrats' health plan even though WEAC provides health insurance to most of the state's school districts. The plan does not force unions to participate, so teachers can still negotiate with school districts for the health care plan they want at taxpayer expense.

WDC did not include doctors and other health professionals as special interests that oppose the Senate health care plan because the groups that represent them have not said where they stand on it. Health professionals led by doctors contributed nearly $1.8 million to Doyle and the Legislature from 1999-2006. For instance, the Wisconsin Medical Society, which is the doctors' lobby group, appears more concerned about doctors' pocketbooks than accessible, affordable health care. The group's big goal in the proposed budget is to prevent Doyle from removing $175 million from a state fund that gives doctors multi-million dollar malpractice coverage.

Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics, fights government corruption and works for campaign finance reform and other pro-democracy reforms. The group's web site is www.wisdc.org. 

Democratic Party campaign operative Bill Christofferson took exception recently to a Milwaukee Biz Blog commentary of mine that referred to his Greater Wisconsin Committee (GWC) as a "shadowy outfit."

In his letter to the editor, Christofferson claims the Greater Wisconsin Committee "operates exactly the same way" as the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. GWC is an electioneering group. It is a receptacle for special interest donations that cannot be legally given directly to candidates, and it uses that extralegal money to pay for campaign ads that plainly aim to influence the outcome of elections. The Democracy Campaign is a watchdog group and does no election campaign advertising whatsoever. Equating these two nonprofit groups is like saying night and day operate exactly the same way.

Christofferson goes on to say I imply Greater Wisconsin Committee is spending corporate money but have no way of knowing. He says "given the progressive, pro-consumer positions Greater Wisconsin takes, corporate dollars are not likely to flow its way."

Internal Revenue Service records show that one of GWC's biggest sources of funds is the Democratic Governors Association, a nonprofit corporation. In 2005 and 2006, the DGA gave Christofferson's group nearly $1.1 million.

Where did DGA get the money it then funneled to outfits like Greater Wisconsin Committee? Wisconsin donors included Johnson Bank, Johnson Controls, Madison Gas & Electric, Miller Brewing, Northwestern Mutual Life, S.C Johnson and Son, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Wisconsin Public Service Corporation and three Indian tribes. And, oh yes, indicted casino developer Dennis Troha, who appears to have figured out a little too late that he could make use of groups like DGA and GWC to get around legal limits on campaign donations.

The list of out-of-state donors to Greater Wisconsin Committee's sugar daddy reads like a who's who of corporate America – AT&T, Coca Cola, Goodrich Tires, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Toyota, Union Pacific and Verizon Communications, just to name a few.

Documents filed with the IRS also show that another national nonprofit corporation, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, supplied Greater Wisconsin Committee with over $800,000 in 2006. Among the Wisconsin donors who filled the DAGA's coffers were Miller Brewing and Wisconsin Energy Corporation. National contributors included Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris), AT&T, Dow Chemical, GlaxoSmithKline and Hewlett Packard.

Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics, fights government corruption and works for campaign finance reform and other pro-democracy reforms. The group's web site is www.wisdc.org.