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Gov. Jim Doyle called for the changes in Tuesday’s State of the State address even though he benefited from issue ads last fall during his successful re-election campaign against Republican Mark Green.
Wisconsin Republican Party Executive Director Rick Wiley described Doyle as a hypocrite, saying ads by the unregulated Greater Wisconsin Committee helped him win the race.
“There’s no way he wins without them coming out early and defining Mark Green as they did,” Wiley said Wednesday. “He knew he couldn’t win without those folks in his corner.”
Doyle’s spokesman Matt Cantor said the governor has long championed reform and was not a hypocrite.
Third-party groups spent $6.2 million on the governor’s race last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, a Virginia group that monitors political advertising in the state’s three largest TV markets — Milwaukee, Green Bay and Madison.
The biggest spender in that group was the Greater Wisconsin Committee, which backed Doyle with more than $2 million. Another Doyle supporter, the Wisconsin Education Association ranked No. 2, spending $1.1 million.
Based on the TNS analysis, groups backing Doyle spent $3.2 million while those backing Green spent $2.9 million.
Final spending reports for candidates in the 2006 election were due to the state Elections Board on Wednesday. Once those figures are added to third-party spending, last year’s governor’s race will go down as the most expensive in history, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign executive director Mike McCabe said.
He predicted the final tab will be several million dollars more than the record $23 million set in 2002.
In his State of the State speech, Doyle urged leaders from both parties to work together on a campaign finance reform proposal that can pass both the Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-led Assembly. He also called for reform in last year’s speech, but it went nowhere.
“Today, we have new leadership and a new opportunity to achieve consensus,” Doyle said Tuesday.
Doyle wants third-party groups that spend money on Wisconsin races to follow the same fundraising and disclosure requirements as candidates. That means they would have to disclose their donors, abide by contribution limits and refuse corporate contributions.
One campaign finance reform bill has already been introduced in the Senate, and another is being drafted. The bill introduced by Sens. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, and Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, would require groups running issue ads within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election to register with the state and disclose the source of their funding.
Their plan also would provide matching grants to candidates who abide by spending limits if their opponents exceed those limits or third-party groups target them with ads costing more than 10 percent of the spending limits for the race.
Sens. Fred Risser, D-Madison, and Mark Pocan, D-Madison, are working on a bill that would fund entire campaigns with public money. Maine and Arizona already do this.
Common Cause Wisconsin, a government watchdog group, called the lack of regulation of issue ads the “single largest loophole in Wisconsin’s loophole-ridden campaign finance laws.”
Groups have assailed past proposals for reform as a violation of their right to free speech.
Wiley said Doyle also will run into trouble attempting to regulate groups already bound by federal campaign finance laws.
But McCabe said he senses momentum in the Statehouse after an ethics reform bill passed Tuesday.
“I think there’s still potential for more to be achieved,” McCabe said. “At least we’re having conversations that we weren’t having last session.”
