Saturday, August 26, 2006

Mark Green followed the rules

It seems the Kenosha News is just a smidge behind the times.

On Wednesday, the Kenosha News plastered the story about Mark Green and the donations he transferred from his congressional fund to his gubernatorial fund.

This is not the first time that we have heard this story. I posted on this over a month ago.

I have to say, I am surprised that somehow this story has resurfaced. It was a non-story over a month ago and again today, it was proven a non-story.

From the Kenosha News online AP story-

The memo was written in response to a complaint from the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which argued Green was $156,140 over the state limit of $485,000 in political action committee donations. The WDC also said Green should not be allowed to spend nearly $468,000 in money received from PACs not registered in Wisconsin.

But Dunst said in the memo that the money in question was raised by Green as a member of Congress and therefore not counted under the limit for candidates for governor. The clock on counting contributions for Green's race for governor started on Jan. 1, 2005, Dunst said.
Wisconsin has no law that counts money raised in one campaign as donations received for another when it is carried over, Dunst said.


I understand the Mike McCabe does not care to hear this from the State Elections Board. But Mark Green and his staff are required to follow the rules of the State Elections Board, not Mike McCabe’s election rules.

Clearly, Mark Green has followed the rules given to him by the State Elections Board.

Green's campaign, which had argued all along nothing was done wrong, treated the memo as vindication.

"The memo released today by Mr. Dunst confirms what we have been saying all along: Mark Green's campaign has complied with all aspects of Wisconsin law and has followed every piece of advice from the State Elections Board," said Green's campaign manager Mark Graul.

It appears that Mr. McCabe is up to his old “cheap trick politics” again.

I am not sure how he snookered the Kenosha News into bringing out this story a full month after originally released. I am disappointed that the Kenosha News fell for this cheap tactic. Normally the Kenosha News is good at checking this stuff out before printing it.

It would have been nice if the Kenosha News had checked with the State Elections Board, before they printed this story.

On Wednesday, the Kenosha News left readers with the impression that Mark Green broke the elections rules. Now we find out several days later that Mark Green did not break the rules.

I wonder what the Kenosha News will do to rectify this mistake.

I will be buying a Kenosha News paper today to see if they have printed this correction on its pages.

The questions we are left wondering now are-

Where is Mike McCabe heading to next?

Will he head to the Racine Journal Times and tried to push this non-story to them?

How many media outlets will continue to leave voters with the impression that Mark Green broke the rules, when clearly Mark Green did not?

1 comment:

Kate said...

I saw an ad on the idjit box last night claiming that Mark had broken the law. Since he's been vindicated, do you think they'll pull the ad? Probably not...freedom of speech and all that. Just pathetic!