Uppity Wisconsin

The Scott Walker Harley ride to promote himself and his bid for governor, under the guise of promoting Milwaukee tourism, has raised a lot of questions since he first started it in 2004. He's just raised some more questions, and a few eyebrows, with this report in the Journal Sentinel's Let's Ride blog by Rick Berrett:

Walker will lead a group of 80 motorcycle riders on the six-day, five-state tour that will wind through Wisconsin, as well as Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota, stopping in more than 35 communities.

 AirTran Airways and ChooseMilwaukee.com are sponsoring this year’s ride, offsetting any taxpayer expenses, according to Walker.

He will promote area attractions including the Harley-Davidson Museum.

A map of the route and tour schedule can be found on the Executives’ Ride web site. (Maintained by the taxpayers)

A few questions:

Will they get naming rights? Will this be billed as the AirTran Walker for Governor Tour?

Dorothy Moore, Walker's executive secretary in the county exec's office, is again the contact for the ride. The website lists her personal email and cell phone, rather than the county's, which seems to beg the question of why, if it's OK to use the county website and county staff to organize the event, it is not OK to contact her at her county email address and phone. Perhaps because it's really not OK to be spending county taxpayer money on this?

Are AirTran and ChooseMilwaukee (a regional eoconomic development promotion group run, as One Wisconsin Now points out, by the Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce). also picking up Walker's salary for the week? As far as we know, he's never said this is vacation time; he claims he's doing the county's business. If that's true, what's with the corporate sponsorship?

What's he giving away this year? A few years ago, he handed out $19,000 worth of freebies to the news media and others along the route, raising more than a few ethical concerns.

What Walker has done is to further muddy the waters, which already were very murky.

The first year of the ride, his campaign consultant planned and advanced the route, while Walker insisted the ride had nothing to do with politics.

In 2005, he did it again, as his campaign for governor was gearing up. I wrote at the time:

Walker led a cycle ride across the state, organized by his government staff, in his office, on taxpayer time. He advertised it on his county-paid website, and took along a number of county staff people who were paid their county salaries during the ride.

As far as I know, that's the case again this year, unless those salaries are part of the cost being picked up by corporate sponsors. Are they all on AirTran's payroll now?

AirTran, incidentally, has just a small business relationship with Milwaukee County, which owns Mitchell Field, where AirTran operates. See any possible ethical conflict there?

Why not just fess up that this is a campaign gimmick, instead of taking one from Column A and two from Column B to mix and match the funding?

Does Walker think that having corporate sponsors will free him up to talk about his campaign when meets with the media? He's already said he won't be doing that, but will be talking about tourist attractions in the Milwaukee area.

Does he think an out-and-out campaign tour wouldn't get covered? Or is he just so tight with his campaign treasury that he would rather let anyone else -- taxpayers, corporations, whoever -- pick up the tab than pay it himself?

Maybe some enterprising reporter will ask some of those questions when he rolls into town. But don't hold your breath.

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