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Chad Fradette reimbursed 34 drivers at a downtown Green Bay gas station 34 cents per gallon on Wednesday after they filled up their tanks. Fradette said that’s the amount Wisconsin’s minimum markup law for gasoline costs drivers.
Fradette, a Republican, is running against Democratic Sen. Dave Hansen of Green Bay in what Republicans hope will be a competitive race. He said the first bill he would introduce would repeal the law, which requires gas stations to sell fuel at 9.18 percent above the local wholesale price or 6 percent over what they paid.
Fradette said the point of the demonstration was to show the impact of the law, not to win votes. He told drivers he was running for Senate but never urged them to vote for him, he said.
“You should have seen the line of cars,” he said. “They figured out they could get gas a little cheaper. They packed it into the station. It was unbelievable ... They were really excited to get the savings.”
Fradette said a landscape contractor who put in $200 in gas in his vehicle saved about $17. Another family that Fradette described as “really poor” was thrilled to get a few dollars back.
Fradette’s campaign checked with the Government Accountability Board before the demonstration to determine whether the event was legal.
Jonathan Becker, administrator of the board’s Division of Ethics and Accountability, responded in an e-mail in which he said campaign money could be used for the event since it was for a political purpose. But he also told the campaign to check with the district attorney to make sure the plan did not violate an election bribery statute.
Fradette aide Sean Stephenson said the campaign never bothered to check with Brown County District Attorney John Zakowski. But he said he interpreted Becker’s e-mail as giving a green light for the event since the Government Accountability Board is in charge of enforcing ethics and election laws.
“We clearly made the effort not to subvert the rules or the law in anyway,” Stephenson said.
Zakowski did not immediately return a message left by The Associated Press.
Lawmakers last year formed the Government Accountability Board by merging the Ethics Board and the Elections Board and promised it would be a tougher enforcer of ethics laws.
Board attorney George Dunst said he believed the protest was legal. Dunst said state law only makes it illegal to give voters something of value as an inducement to either vote for them or against their opponents and Fradette didn’t do that.
“He is a public candidate for a particular office but he was buying their gas to make a point about the markup law and his political stand on that law,” Dunst said. “He was demonstrating to people that we have a 34-cent a gallon markup on gasoline and that if elected he’s going to work to affect that in some way.”
Dunst said district attorneys, not the board, have the authority to enforce the election bribery statute and may have a different interpretation.
Under Dunst’s interpretation, a candidate could give a free case of bottled water to anyone who showed up to their rallies to promote healthy behavior, for instance. Candidates can also hand out matchbooks, flashlights or maps with their names on them, he noted.
Asked whether a wealthy candidate could give $10 to every voter as part of a pledge to stimulate the economy, Dunst said that was unclear.
Hansen, who is running for a third term, called Fradette’s demonstration “a gimmick” but declined to call it unethical.
“It’s not my job to judge other people’s ethics,” he said. “It’s certainly a new stunt. I don’t think anybody’s done that anywhere.”
He said he opposed repealing the minimum markup law because big retailers like Wal-Mart would drive smaller gas stations out of business and then raise prices once competition was eliminated.
