The Pointer UW-Stevens Point Student Newspaper
Just as the 2016 presidential election is causing controversy, our governor has recently been outed as causing controversy for his own elections.
Last month, The Guardian leaked around 1,500 emails surrounding governor Scott Walker’s 2012 recall election funding. The emails contained information about how the governor used a network of wealthy individuals to donate generous amounts of funding to his recall election.
Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
On Oct. 3, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected to hear the case of the leaked emails, closing the crime without punishment.
Jennifer Collins, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, said, “I think it’s a big ugly mess of corruption and people who are tied into this thing in different ways. I think arguably, in a certain sense, the fact that the republican party controls all three governments in the state means that there were people in place that were able to sort of put a stop to the whole investigation.”
These emails were discovered because of what is being called a “John Doe investigation” to search for suspected campaign finance violations. What they found was millions of dollars given to the governor’s campaign under the table.
“Dark money” is described as secret funds given to finance certain campaigns without the public knowing that it took place.
“Dark money” is, in part, how governor Walker funded his campaign for the recall election.
Collins said, “When these documents were leaked and when you can actually see the evidence, in my view, it looks to be pretty damming. There is a lot of stuff in there that, to my eyes, can be pretty indicting, that they did violate Wisconsin campaign laws.”
Individuals such as Sheldon Adelson, who is estimated to have around $26 million, donated $200,000 to Walker’s election without public awareness. Other wealthy donors, such as Stephen Cohen and John Menard, donated up to $1 million each, according to The Guardian.
One of the more well-known donors is Donald Trump.
Photo courtesy of ifyouonlynews.com.
The only reason for these donations were strictly because of the governor’s request. One of the checks written to the campaign for $10,000 had a written message in the subject line stating “because Scott Walker asked.”
“It’s damaging to our democracy,” Collins said. “I think it also erodes citizen trust in the electoral system. It’s fomenting a vicious cycle we see in this country of people being disillusioned with politics and therefore many people kind of dropping out of politics.”
Though the violation of campaign funding is a highly suspicious offense, Wisconsin’s supreme court ordered all copies of the information to be permanently destroyed. Some students on campus do not appreciate the lack of authority when it came to judging this offense.
Ethan Hau, junior natural resource planning policy major, said, “Low-level offenses put criminals in jail for extended amounts of time, but Scott Walker is free from any charge, which is not fair.”
Alexa Dickson
News Editor
Alexa.S.Dickson@uwsp.edu
