So much for the belief Doyle's campaign had nothing to do with the decision made by the state elections board to declare retroactively donations made to the Green campaign were illegal. In a story broken today by the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
Doyle's campaign hired an attorney to specifically rig the state elections board's decision.
"I'm an elections lawyer retained in connection with a matter before the Elections Board," said Maistelman, who campaign finance records show has been paid more than $21,000 by the Doyle campaign since January 2004.
"Of course I had conversations with the board members about the legal issues involved in this case, and the merits of Congressman Green's arguments, as I'm sure counsel for Green did," Maistelman said.
Asked why the Doyle campaign hired Maistelman, spokesman Anson Kaye said that Green's campaign "broke the law" by taking the $467,844.
"There was an important matter before the Elections Board," Kaye said. "We retained an attorney to advocate on our behalf, just as the Green campaign did."
Mark Graul, Green's campaign manager, said "nobody from the Green campaign" contacted any Elections Board member before the board's vote Aug. 30. The Journal Sentinel's open records request turned up no e-mail correspondence between Green aides and Elections Board members.
There is no way the governor can distance himself from this.
Maistelman added that he had run that idea "by the powers that be," and they had approved it.
Asked whom his comment referred to, Maistelman said he "was dealing with Dan Schooff on a regular basis on this matter, and we discussed possible legal remedies from time to time."
Schooff is Doyle's re-election campaign manager. Before joining the campaign, he was a state Public Service Commission official and member of the Assembly.
The final paragraph of the story reveals the governor's campaign knew what they were doing was wrong.
Maistelman was present on Aug. 30 when the Elections Board took its action against Green's campaign and talked to some board members before the vote. The same day, he denied that he was there working for the Doyle campaign.
