"I have a list of 23 names on this sheet of paper!"

Can't we have an election cycle in Wisconsin without someone having a secret list?

The Van Hollen campaign for state attorney general claims to have 23 Wisconsin county DAs lined up to support Van Hollen in the Republican Primary against Waukesha District Attorney Paul Bucher.

(MADISON) – Attorney General candidate and former U.S. Attorney JB Van Hollen today announced the endorsement of the Jefferson and Chippewa County District Attorneys, raising the campaign’s total district attorney endorsements to 23 – the highest total district attorney endorsements of any candidate for attorney general.

Okay, they list two. Sami Schmitt, Van Hollen Director of Campaign Operations (love the title), tells me that the Van Hollen campaign will be releasing the names slowly out to the media on a region by region basis. We eagerly await what names get unveiled Christmas morning. Hopefully it won't be a Democrat.

As for their claim they have more County DA endorsements than anyone else in the race, it's a race of two candidates.

The Paul Bucher campaign lists 20 endorsements by county DAs, a whopping difference of three.

The district attorneys supporting Bucher include the current DAs of Eau Claire, Brown, Calumet, Chippewa, Door, Florence, Fond du Lac, Forest, Green Lake, Iowa, Langlade, Marinette, Oconto, Menominee and Shawano, Ozaukee, Racine, Marquette, Richland, St. Croix, and Vilas counties.

In the meantime, someone should tell the Van Hollen campaign not to be waving bakery around. The last candidate to do that was Susan Engeleiter against Herb Kohl. We know how well that worked.

Update! As you may have heard on the Mark Belling show on WISN Radio, Belling ran into the same roadblock I did. However, he was able to learn the location of 14 of the counties. He also learned that of the "23" endorsements, six were Democrats. Nine endorsements are unaccounted for, two are supposedly the same endorsements as those received by Paul Bucher.

I made the Joe McCarthy list joke at the top, but I didn't realize how apt it was. So here's the question, Van Hollen, have you now or have you ever had 23 endorsements by Wisconsin county district attorneys?