He asked his main fundraiser, Kate Doner, to write him a
briefing noteon how they could raise enough money to win the election. At 6.39am on a Wednesday, she fired off an email to Walker and his top advisers flagged “red”.
“Gentlemen,” she began. “Here are my quick thoughts on raising money for Walker’s possible recall efforts.”
Her advice was bold and to the point. “Corporations,” she said. “Go heavy after them to give.” She continued: “Take Koch’s money. Get on a plane to Vegas and sit down with Sheldon Adelson. Ask for $1m now.”
Her advice must have hit a sweet spot, because money was soon pouring in from big corporations and mega-wealthy individuals from across the nation. A few months after the memo, Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate who
Forbes estimates has a personal fortune of $26bn, was to
wire a donation of $200,000 for the cause.
Adelson’s generosity, like that of most of the other major donors solicited by Walker and crew, was made out not to the governor’s own personal campaign committee but to a third-party group that did not have to disclose its donors. In the world of campaign finance, the group was known as a “dark money” organisation, as it was the recipient of a secret flow of funds that the public knew nothing about.
One of the checks made out to the group, for $10,000, came from a financier called G Frederick Kasten Jr. In the subject line of the check, Kasten had written in his own hand:
“Because Scott Walker asked”.
...
In July 2015 the state's highest court, the supreme court of Wisconsin, terminated the John Doe investigation before any charges were brought. The
conservative majority of the court ruled that the prosecutors had made a basic misreading of campaign finance law and targeted individuals who were “wholly innocent of any wrongdoing”.
In a contentious twist to the ruling, the justices ordered the prosecutors to “permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation”.
This latter-day equivalent of a book burning could have condemned the John Doe investigation into permanent oblivion, leaving voters none the wiser. But at least one copy of the evidence gathered by the prosecutors survived the bonfire, and have now been leaked to the Guardian.
...
Another example of the pattern is the casual comment Walker dropped into an email to his fundraiser dated 14 June 2011:
“Also, I got $1m from John Menard today”. Eight days later
a check for $1m is cut on a corporate check of Menard Inc, the billionaire John Menard's home improvement chain Menards, and
made out not to the governor's campaign committee but to Wisconsin Club for Growth. There the donation remained a secret until the publication of the Guardian's leaked files.
...
In the course of the John Doe investigation, the prosecutors obtained hundreds of emails and bank records under subpoena. An email sent by Kate Doner, Walker’s fundraiser, in April 2011, summed up the strategy. She said the aim was to raise $9m in six weeks, to pay for political advertising – she called it “issue advocacy efforts” – in the senatorial recall races.
Walker, she said, wants all the ads
“run thru one group to ensure correct messaging”, and that group, the governor declared, should be Wisconsin Club for Growth. “The Governor is encouraging all to invest in the Wisconsin Club for Growth [which] can accept Corporate and Personal donations without limitations and no donors disclosure.
