#Did Luntz break law in secret meeting with Dead Man Walker?
5922 Dead, 1065 since 1/20/09
— By Andy Kroll
| Thu Mar. 17, 2011
Flickr/WisPolitics.com
The day after he got punked by a prank caller pretending to be
right-wing billionaire David Koch, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott
Walker met with prominent GOP pollster Frank Luntz in his Capitol
office. The Feb. 23 meeting with Luntz was a secret to the public and
press until this week, after a Milwaukee newspaper obtained Walker's
calendars and revealed the meeting. Today, the Wisconsin Democratic
Party will announce that it believes Walker broke the law by meeting
with Luntz, a party rep tells Mother Jones.
The party plans to file a complaint today with the Wisconsin
Government Accountability Board alleging that the advice Walker got
from Luntz, the right's political messaging guru, amounted to
something of value as defined by Wisconsin state statute and thus
violated state ethics and political contributions laws. The Democrats
point to state law that prohibits requesting political contributions
in state-owned buildings, and bans any state officials from obtaining
"financial gain or anything of substantial value" for their private
benefit, their immediate family's benefit, or for an organization with
which they're associated. "Scott Walker is using public buildings as
cloisters to plot partisan gain," says Graeme Zielinski, a spokesman
for the Democratic Party. "Wisconsin cries for better."
Luntz, who reportedly paid his way to Madison, met with Walker and the
governor's chief of staff, and had not done any polling for the
governor, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Walker's
spokesman said the governor and Luntz had never met before.
On the right, Luntz is the man behind the message. He described last
year's much-needed financial reform bill as "a permanent bailout
fund." (Which it wasn't.) He urged GOPers to paint President Obama's
health care reform bill as a "Washington takeover." (Wrong again.) He
also coined the phrase "death tax" to replace estate tax. In their
fights against Democrats, Republicans have eagerly latched onto each
of these Luntz-isms and more. And he likely offered Scott Walker,
whose public support had begun to erode at the time of their meeting,
some tips on how he, too, could rework his message.
The Democratic Party's latest complaint comes as Walker and his allies
in the Wisconsin legislature face multiple challenges to the legality
of their "budget repair bill," the controversial legislation passed
last week that cut collective bargaining rights for most public-sector
unions. On March 11, a local county executive filed a complaint
alleging that the bill "contains substantive fiscal items within it,
and the Wisconsin Senate did not have the required three-fifths of its
members to vote." The state Senate's 14 Democrats fled Wisconsin on
Feb. 17 to block a vote on the bill, denying GOPers the necessary
quorum, but instead Republicans used a constitutional end-run to vote
on their own—a move now being challenged.
And on Wednesday, Dane County Attorney Ismael Ozanne filed a suit
alleging that the Senate's vote on the "repair" bill violated state
open records law by not giving sufficient notice before the vote.
Ozanne wants an injunction preventing the publishing of the law and,
ultimately, the law itself overturned.
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