Johnson, RJ

pol op wisc

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/scott-walker-trump-wisconsin-teacher-union/

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/17/book-review-fall-wisconsin-uplifting-read

A must-read on the summer book list is The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics, by Dan Kaufman. This remarkable book takes readers on a winding journey through the Native American, Scandinavian, and Socialist roots of the Badger State to its latest incarnation as a Trump satellite state.

“Donald Trump’s victory may have shocked the Clinton campaign and media pundits, but the result merely heralded the final stage of Wisconsin’s dramatic transformation from a pioneering beacon of progressive, democratic politics to the embodiment of that legacy’s national unraveling,” writes Kaufman.

Wisconsinites have had a front row seat to this unraveling. But this is not a gloomy book, nor the dry, didactic reporting of the mainstream newspapers stripped of historical context and evocative language. It is a beautifully drawn portrait of resistance told via the voices of the state’s beleaguered citizenry.

PORTRAIT OF RESISTANCE

The book highlights Mike Wiggins, the chairman of the Bad River Band, and other tribal leaders who successfully battled theGogebic Taconite iron-ore strip minein the Penokee Hills after the company crafted its own bill and paid millions to buy off the state legislature. “The tribes, Wisconsin’s first conservationists, have now become the last hope, the only group with any power to stop the dismantling of the state’s environmental heritage,” writes Kaufman in one of the book’s most affecting chapters.

It stresses the national importance of the fight over Act 10, Walker’s union-busting legislation, which blindsided the voters–even Republicans.“Walker’s agenda, which was always there but nobody knew it, really came from somewhere else, like the Koch brothers, the national party, and ALEC [the American Legislative Exchange Council]. I don’t think it was a local agenda, frankly,” said former GOP State Senator Barbara Lorman.

It details the chutzpah of average citizens who step up to run for office when no one else will. From Lori Compass, who single-handedly launched a recall against Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald in 2011, to Randy Bryce, the ironworker who battled ALEC’s anti-union “right to work” bill and the gutting of prevailing wage. In 2018, Bryce decided to step up and take on one of America’s most prominent politicians, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

Dozens of other Wisconsinites, including Tia Nelson, Jesse Barnes, Tim Cullen, Curt Meine, Todd Albaugh, Dave Poklinkoski, Marvin DeFoe, Dale Schultz, Tim Cullen, and more, are interviewed and paint a portrait of a resistance that didn’t waver though the deck was stacked against them. Included in this list is Rep. Fred Kessler, who found a way to challenge the GOP’s unprecedented partisan gerrymandering in federal court and get it ruled unconstitutional. Woven into the these tales are the stories of Chief Buffalo, “Fighting Bob” La Follette, socialist Emil Seidel, environmentalist Aldo Leopold, educator John Bascom, Congressman Victor Berger, Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, and other historical figures.

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Kaufman writes that “ALEC played an essential role in the conservative network that has transformed Wisconsin,” highlighting three ALEC measures: school vouchers, right to work, and voter ID.[CRONON?]

This became crystal clear to a young mom living and working in Madison named Chris Taylor. Walker’s attack on unions and on the public schools where her kids went to school inspired Taylor to run for office in 2012 and, once elected, she continued to dig deeper into the group’s radical agenda, which has prompted over 100 American companies to stop funding it. Just last week, long-time supporter ExxonMobil stopped funding ALEC.

“ALEC defines the parameters of what’s possible,” Taylor explains in the book. Since being elected to the State Assembly, Taylor has taken it upon herself to attend ALEC meetings as often as possible in order to report on the organization for multiple outlets. Taylor describes in the book how isolated she feels in a sea of conservatives, including being chased through the halls of one meeting by a drunken legislator.

Taylor explains well the critical “infrastructure” that the GOP built in the state with the support of the $900 million Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which the Center for Media and Democracy exposed in an 11-part series in 2017, and how that infrastructure was critical to the election of Trump and the defeat of Clinton. This infrastructure included candidate training, ALEC politicians, state-based “think tanks,” legal teams, and phony media outlets.

Even in Democratic circles, the expanse and effectiveness of this infrastructure is not widely understood. “‘Republicans have a network, they have an infrastructure.’ We don’t. We might pick up a seat or two here and there, but until we have an infrastructure as strong as theirs, we’re going to lose,” says Taylor.

A NATIONAL MODEL

The book tells a tale of how Wisconsin “went from a state widely admired as a ‘laboratory of democracy’ to a testing ground for national conservatives” bent on making key states Republican strongholds. “Those efforts have been wildly successful, culminating in Wisconsin’s startling deliverance of the White House to Donald Trump,” writes Kaufman.

Grover Norquist explains the centrality of Walker’s Act 10legislation to the Trump election in the book: “Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016 did not lay the groundwork for Republican political dominance. But the March 2011 signing of Act 10, a dramatic reform of public-sector labor laws, by Wisconsin’s Scott Walker certainly did. To understate it: If Act 10 is enacted in a dozen more states, the modern day Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics. It’s that big a deal.”

Norquist’s anti-union coalitional efforts, hyper-funded by the Kochs and the Bradley Foundation, helped take the Wisconsin “model” national. The nation is now facing an Act 10 of its own, as Trump’s pick to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, served up the deciding vote for the June Janus vs. AFSCME Council 31 decision, which will introduce “right to work” conditions nationwide, as the Center for Media and Democracy detailed in an award-winning investigation in February.

HOPING FOR AN ENCORE

Kaufman followed his book with a New York Times essay “Progressive Populism Can Save Us From Trump.” Many in Wisconsin, who gave Bernie Sanders 71 of 72 counties in 2016, hope he is right.

There is only one flaw in Kaufman’s important book.Walker’s brain, R.J. Johnson, is only mentioned once. Johnson, a native of Florida, is not only Scott Walker’s chief political advisor, but he also oversaw and funneled some $20 million in dark money into the 2011-2012 recall races, and millions more into Senate, Assembly, and judicial races, prompting a criminal investigation by a Republican state prosecutor. Johnson has been responsible for the most disgusting political ads ever aired in the state, the utter destruction of the Wisconsin Supreme Court (turning one of the state’s most respected institutions into what The New Yorker called a “disgraceful mess”), and the wholesale dismantling of Wisconsin’s clean election laws. Few political operatives have had such as impact on the state as this slavish servant of secret money in campaigns and elections.

Let’s hope Kaufman is saving material for his next book.

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Wisconsin voter Ronald R. Johnson.

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9:50 a.m.

Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump have filed a federal lawsuit trying to stop Wisconsin's ongoing presidential election recount.

The lawsuit and request for a temporary restraining order was filed late Thursday in federal court in Madison. It was filed by the Great America PAC, the Stop Hillary PAC and Wisconsin voter Ronald R. Johnson.

The lawsuit contends that the recount that started Thursday threatens the due process rights of Johnson and others who voted for Trump. Trump won Wisconsin and the recount was requested by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein.

The lawsuit also argues that errors are likely in the recount, as election officials are rushing to meet a Dec. 13 deadline.

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cmd: http://www.prwatch.org/node/10247

Club for Growth and Club for Growth Wisconsin

Founded in 1999, the Club for Growth (CFG) is a 501(c)(4) "civic league" that seeks to promote public policies it describes as "fiscally conservative." It does not reveal its donors. In its 2009 tax filing, the group reported income of $3.9 million and expenses of $4.1 million. It reported that it was preparing to spend at least one million dollars on a TV ad campaign against the health care bill and that it gave almost a half million dollars to state and local groups fighting for its agenda. CFG Wisconsin (CFGW) was formed in 2004, and reported that in 2009 in received about a half million in funding (down from nearly 3.5 million during the presidential election year). Notably, one of Walker's main consultants in his race for governor, R.J. Johnson, also previously served as a paid consultant to CFG Wisconsin.

On September 14, the Guardian newspaper which published the Snowden revelation, published a massive set of documents from the Scott Walker dark money probe know as the "John Doe" investigation. We highly recommend the lengthy expose on secret money and backroom deals, which you can access here. If you don't have time to read all 1,500 emails and documents in the cache, our staff has picked out some of the most illuminating.

At the heart of the matter are three men. Scott Walker,RJ Johnson (who simultaneously worked for Walker and the dark money machine Wisconsin Club for Growth, say prosecutors) and Keith Gilkeswho was Walker's chief of staff in 2011and his campaign manager in 2012. Prosecutors were investigating whether campaign money was channeled through a purportedly "independent group" in order to circumvent state and federal rules that set limits on political contributions and require them to be publicly revealed, explains the Guardian.

1. National Club for Growth's David Keating questions RJ Johnsonof Wisconsin Club for Growth, who becomes Walker's top campaign advisory shortly after this email, about the legality of his activities way back in 2009 prior to Walker's run for Governor in 2010. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT1, p.25)

2. Nick Ayers of Republican Governors Association outlines a coordinated "battle plan" to Gov. Walker and Reince Priebus at an early date March 2011. RGA would go on to spend a whopping $9.5 million on the recall as an "independent" expenditure group. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT1, p.28)

3. RJ Johnson, gives talking points to Gov. Walker that boast about the success of the coordinated efforts in the 2011 recalls. No talk of "issues" here, just bare-knuckled politics. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT1, p.55)

4. Scott Walker talks to Karl Rove. "Bottom Line: RJ helps keeps in place a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin. We are running 9 recall elections and it would be like 9 congressional markets in every market in the state and twin cities." (Key-Misc-Set-One, p.16)

5. RJ Johnson talks to Keith Gilkes, Walker campaign manager, and Gov. Walker about why they need to keep activities of the 3rd party groups under their command. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT1, p.2)

6. Fundraiser Kate Donor explains the strategy of locking down commitments from a host of supposedly "independent" groups like the Koch Brothers Americans for Prosperity to Keith Gilkes, RJ Johnson and Gov. Walker. (Fundraising-Coordination, p.14)

7. Keith Gilkes forwards "oppo" opposition research on controversial potential donors, including Harold Simmons, Dallas-based CEO of a lead pigment company, to Gov. Walker. After this exchange, some checks from these givers are sent to Wisconsin Club for Growth where they will remain secret and not be publicly disclosed as a campaign contribution to Walker. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT1, p.61)

8. Harold Simmons, NL Industries/CONTRAN, scheduled contact with Walker plus his personal and corporate checks. (2012-08-14-Exhibits-01-100-PT2, p.127; Corporate-Checks-Sanitized, p.5-6)

9. Affidavit of Wisconsin Club for Growth director Eric O'Keefe who explains its all about "liberty and fiscal responsibility" not winning elections. (WICFG-Quash-Aff)

10. Jay Rosser, a representative of T. Boone Pickens, email to RJ Johnson and Kate Doner. Interestingly, declines to give: "we recognize the opportunity to give anonymously, but frankly that is just not our style." (Fundraising-Coordination, p.4) It is likely that not all the people mentioned in these documents gave secretly to Walker.

Campaign Finance

Corporations

Democracy

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richard arthur friends of sw

doc cloud

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3105199-2014-2-21-Schmitz-Affidavit.html#document/p15/a317721

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The John Doe files reveal that Walker's own advisers reached the conclusion that the large sums flowing into WCfG's coffers from corporate donors was critical to the survival of the Republican senators in their recall elections. In a memo sent to Walker shortly after the elections in August 2011, his former top campaign consultant RJ Johnson looked back on the contest and ruminated that “Our efforts were run by Wisconsin Club for Growth ... who coordinated spending through 12 different groups. Most spending by other groups was directly funded by grants from the Club.”

He went on to note that WCfG “raised 12 million dollars and ran a soup to nuts campaign ... Polling, focus groups and message development was a collaborative effort.” A mass of micro-targeted mail-outs and TV advertising that was bought with the donations had the impact that they “moved independent swing voters to the GOP candidate”.

The collaboration set up in 2011 was successful in helping four of the six Republican senators fend off the recall challenge and keep their jobs – allowing them to hang onto their senate majority by one vote. Act 10 was safeguarded for the moment, and in a gesture of gratitude Walker himself was moved to ask an aide shortly after the vote: “Did I send out thank you notes to all of our c(4) donors?”

Supporters of Governor Walker and the outside groups that worked with him, including some prominent media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, argue that the prosecutors were mistaken in their view that the coordinated activities amounted to a violation of campaign finance law. They point out that nobody in the governor's circle has been charged with any alleged violation relating to the recall elections, and argue that WCfG and the other outside groups engaged in advocacy over issues related to the elections, which is not subject to restrictions, as opposed to express advocacy on behalf of one political candidate or another.

They also insist, using a complex formula related to the electoral calendar, that Walker only became an official candidate on 9 April 2012. Any actions he and his associates took before then were not subject to restrictions, they argued. To which the prosecutors replied that Walker's campaign committee had been frantically fundraising and coordinating long before that date.

The John Doe files do contain some evidence that Walker's senior team attempted to maintain a firewall between candidate and outside interests after that date. On 19 April, the lead adviser to the governor's recall campaign, Keith Gilkes, replied to a group of businesses wanting to put up billboards supporting Walker's candidacy: “I cannot have any comment on this – it is anindependentexpenditure separate from the campaign.”

But the files also contain documents that show that RJ Johnson, a prominent political strategist in Wisconsin who worked closely with Walker for many years, and Johnson's business partner Deborah Jordahl, were simultaneously arranging political ad spending on TV and radio for both Walker's campaign and the outside lobbying groups. On 23 April 2012 Johnson emailed Gilkes about a Walker ad that he was putting out for the recall election; a week later Johnson and Jordahl wereemailingeach other about radio ad spending on behalf of Wisconsin Club for Growth.

That lead the special prosecutor, Francis Schmitz, to conclude that “a review of email reflects that RJ Johnson ... was involved in the media buys on behalf of Wisconsin Club for Growth and Friends of Scott Walker.”

Prosecutors alleged that RJ Johnson and Deborah Jordahl were "key operatives advising and directing both FOSW [Friends of Scott Walker]" – the governor's personal campaign committee – and Wisconsin Club for Growth. Kate Doner and Doner Fundraising created fundraising plans for both entities, they alleged.

Neither RJ Johnson nor Deborah Jordahl immediately responded to requests for comment.

Until the US supreme court indicates later this month whether or not it will intervene in the John Doe case, the question of the legality of the Walker network and the coordination that it involved will hang in the balance. The Wisconsin supreme court was firm on the issue: in its July 2015 ruling, the court castigated Schmitz for instigating a “perfect storm of wrongs that was visited upon the innocent Unnamed Movants and those who dared to associate with them.”

In colorful language, the state's highest court praised Walker, WCfG and other movants in the investigation (it didn't name them, but their identities are self-evident from the John Doe files as “brave individuals”. It said they had “played a crucial role in presenting this court with an opportunity to re-endorse its commitment to upholding the fundamental right of each and every citizen to engage in lawful political activity and to do so free from the fear of the tyrannical retribution of arbitrary or capricious governmental prosecution.”

For good measure, the court added: “Let one point be clear: our conclusion today ends this unconstitutional John Doe investigation.”

That point is certainly clear, unless the US supreme court, which has the final say in any matter of constitutional law, decides otherwise. The nation's highest court has been asked to take the prosecutors' petition by an alliance of campaign-finance monitoring groups, the Center for Media and Democracy, the Brennan Center and Common Cause.

In their petition, the prosecutors ask the US supreme court justices to consider whether Wisconsin's top judicial panel was truly objective in reaching its decision to shut them down. “Is the state as a litigant in an adversary proceeding entitled to a hearing before a panel of impartial justices, free of bias?”, the prosecutors ask.

Protecting Walker's agenda

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Johnson name-checks other sources of big money donations that he intends to tap. Leo Leonard of the conservative legal group the Federalist Society was looking for an extra $200,000, he says, and there were hopes for a further $1m from the US Chamber of Commerce.

He wasn't bragging. As election day approached, money from rightwing lobby groups and corporations began to pour into Wisconsin, unseen by the public, as the message got out that Prosser's salvation was a necessary step to safeguarding Walker's radical rightwing reforms and Act 10.

An email from March 2011, just two months after Walker took office as governor and a month before Prosser was tested at the polls, makes the point. It's from Matt Seaholm, state director of Americans For Prosperity (AFP), the Tea Party-affiliated group founded and funded by the billionaire rightwing Koch brothers.

By now the anxiety surrounding the fate of the Wisconsin supreme court judge, David Prosser, is growing more intense. “This could stop everything that Walker is trying to accomplish and [the unions] know it. Goes without saying, that would be a bad thing,” Seaholm says, writing to Tim Phillips, AFP's national president.

By 20 March, two weeks before the election, worry is distilling into panic. Brian Fraley of the Wisconsin-based conservative think-tank the MacIver Institute, shoots an impassioned plea for help to what he calls his “group” of like-minded lobbying groups and individuals, forwarded to Walker's chief of staff and other top advisers in Madison.

“David Prosser is in trouble,” Fraley begins. “And if we lose him, the Walker agenda is toast, as could be the Senate GOP majority and any successes creating a new redistricted map. That's not hyperbole.”

By the end of the bitter campaign, some $3.5m was spent by outside lobby groups channeling undisclosed corporate money to support Prosser's re-election – more than eight times the $400,000 the judge was allowed to spend himself. That included $1.5m from WCfG and its offshoot Citizens for a Strong America, and $2m from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), all of it in unaccountable “dark money”.

It worked. Prosser was re-elected, with a squeaky-tight margin of just 7,000 votes and after a fraught recount. The following month, Walker boasted to the Republican kingmaker, Karl Rove, “Club for Growth–Wisconsin was the key to retaining Justice Prosser.

Act 10 was safe.

Both of the two outside groups that channeled the recall election money (WCfG and WMC) are named as “movants” of the John Doe criminal investigation into alleged campaign finance violations that was shut down under the court ruling that Prosser, having won re-election in no small part with their help, joined. Yet when it was suggested to Prosser and a second conservative judge on the court, Justice Michael Gableman, that they should recuse themselves from deliberations in the case, they both refused.

In their petition to the US supreme court, the prosecutors challenge that refusal, arguing that “the special prosecutor did not receive a fair and impartial hearing”. The petitioners go on to discuss Prosser in detail, but the passage is so heavily redacted that their argument is obscured. They do say at one point, quoting constitutional law, that “No jurist 'can be a judge in his own case or be permitted to try cases where he has an interest in the outcome'.”

Prosser declined to step aside citing a rule change that had been suggested and partially written by WMC itself. The change removed the obligation of supreme court judges in Wisconsin to recuse themselves in cases involving groups that had helped them secure their own elections.

Kurt Bauer, WMC's president and CEO, declined to comment on the John Doe proceedings. But he stressed that the organization's “grassroots lobbying activities are conducted carefully within both the letter and the spirit of the state law. WMC strongly disputes any allegations of wrongdoing and will vigorously defend itself against such allegations.”

Bauer added that WMC was an independent group that was not controlled by any candidate or candidate’s campaign. “WMC will not allow itself to be silenced from commenting about public officials and public policy. WMC has long been a proponent of the First Amendment and has a history of fighting to protect its ability to publicly express its views. WMC maintains that commitment to protecting its right to express a point of view on public policy, public officials and candidates for office as well as protecting the confidentiality of its donors.”

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Prosser, who retired from the state supreme court in July, said that in his view sufficient time had passed between his re-election in 2011 and the judgment in the John Doe case in 2015 for any potential conflict of interest to fade. “If this had been a year after the contributions I think I would have had to withdraw, but it was four years. There was no expectation on the part of recipient or givers that the contributions were designed to effect litigation, and so the contributions raised no questions whatsoever.”

Prosser said that at the time of his re-election he was facing hostile TV ads that falsely tried to link him to Walker's contentious anti-union legislation Act 10, while he himself was unable directly to solicit large amounts of campaign contributions under new strict fundraising limits imposed by an earlier Democratic-controlled legislature. “I certainly expected Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce sooner or later to put some money into my campaign. Of course I was going to hope that somebody would come in and defend me because I was unable to defend myself.”

But the judge stressed that the only spending involved came from "third parties in which no one on my campaign knew they were coming, didn't ask for them, and frankly if they hadn't come I would have been blown out of the water by false advertising”.

Last year Prosser issued a 12-page justification of his refusal to recuse himself from the John Doe case. In it, he made reference to an email from an “Unnamed Petitioner” that discussed raising money for a campaign “to maintain the Court”. The judge said the comment was “little more than evidence of the fact that some targets of the investigation ... engaged in expenditures that, under all the circumstances, were very valuable to my campaign.”

Just two weeks before writing that sentence, Judge Prosser had approved the court ruling that ordered the destruction of the John Doe files, among which was to be found the very same email to which he referred. The Guardian now publishes that full email for the first time, and as a result the identity of the anonymous “Unnamed Petitioner” who vowed to “maintain the Court” can be revealed: RJ Johnson, “general consultant” to the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.

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https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3105199-2014-2-21-Schmitz-Affidavit.html#document/p15/a317721