$115,000 QUESTION FOR WALKER

THE $115,000 QUESTION:

CAN WALKER CONVERT

GOVERNOR RACE FUNDS?

By Michael Horne

How much of Scott Walker’s remaining gubernatorial campaign funds could be converted to the county executive’s 2008 campaign?

“There is internal disagreement on this issue,” says George Dunst, the legal counsel for the State of Wisconsin Elections Board.

He says that some of the staff feel Walker could close his campaign books at the end of the 2006 general election and roll over all of Walker’s remaining funds “to any future race,” whether local or statewide.

However there are those, including Dunst, who believe Walker may not use all of the sums he received in the governor’s campaign in a future county executive race, since some of the contributions he received were in amounts larger than the $3,000 threshold for that position. [Individuals may donate up to $10,000 total to any candidate for governor, per election cycle.]

By this analysis, there may be more than $100,000 in Walker’s campaign treasury that he would be forbidden to spend on his future campaigns for non-statewide office.

Final figures for Walker’s gubernatorial bid will not be released until the end of July, but we took a look at the two most recent Walker finance reports, from July 2005 and January 2006, and identified at least 37 individuals who had contributed more than $3,000 to Walker’s bid.

We calculated the overage by adding together the sums above $3,000 that the contributors had given Walker, and came up with a figure of at least $115,535 that could be embargoed from Walker’s county executive campaign. This is approximately 20 per cent of the $563,306 Walker had on hand as of January 31, 2006.

The record shows that Walker received six contributions of the $10,000 maximum, including those from M&I Bank head Dennis Kuester, publisher Roy Reiman, Roberta Reiman, finiancier Richard Nasgovitz, fund manager Edward Mooney and architect / heir David Vogel Uihlein, Jr.

Other large contributors include Fiserv founder George Dalton ($9,500) and his wife Pauline Dalton ($9,000); Artisan Partners owners Andrew Ziegler and Carlene Ziegler ($8,000 apiece).

Other donors included Terrence Wall of Madison, Ralph Stayer of Johnsonville Brats, Michael Cudahy and his kin Anne and Fred Luber.

Any potential future seeker of Walker’s county executive seat would be advised to challenge the excess Walker contributions; it would take 39 contributions of the maximum permitted amount of $3,000 to equal the $115,535 advantage Walker enjoys from collecting contributions of over $3,000 and up to $10,000 during his abandoned run for governor.

It will be interesting to watch this issue play itself out.