Mark Green has called on Jim Doyle to join him in a pledge to reduce spending in this year's Wisconsin gubernatorial race and to disavow negative advertising by outside groups, with each candidate reducing his own spending by whatever amount such outside groups spend attacking his opponents.
Doyle has rejected this out of hand and a few liberal blockers like Jay Bullock and Xoff have denounced greens proposal as "phony" and as a "stunt."
What is heartening is the way in which these guys are now extolling the virtues of private property in an almost Reaganesque ("Mr. Green, I paid for this microphone!) manner. The Governor has sold perfectly good state contracts for all his money and, by gum, he's going to keep it. We have more money, they say, and we're not giving up a penny.
Refreshing. I hope these guys can stick to their new found commitment.
3 comments:
Let's check Mark Green's track record for running evenly financed campaigns:
2004 House Race
Mark Green: $1,040,373 spent
Dottie LeClair: $13,191 spent
2002 House Race
Mark Green: $428,296 spent
Andrew Becker: $0 spent
2000 House Race
Mark Green: $771,907 spent
Dean Reich: $13,904 spent
Funny we've never heard these calls for equal campaign spending from Green before. Any idea why?
And why didn't Green call for a spending limit when Walker was still in the race? If there was a limit, perhaps Walker could've remained in contention. After all, we're supposed to believe the reason he dropped out is because of money.
I certainly the idea of money in politics, but this is not the way to go about fixing the system. As soon as Green pledges to pursue true campaign finance reform if elected governor, I'll be more likely to take his concern for the equity of this campaign seriously.
Until then, this move remains about nothing more than self-interest on Green's part.
Nice, Seth. This deserves a post of its own.
I was just going to ask Rick what he thought about Feingold's pledge vs. Neuman in 1998. I didn't have a blog then, you know, but even I thought it was a little gimmicky.
I'm not saying anything about Green's proposal. I'm just heartened by your sudden expression of support for free speech and property rights.
I don't remember much about Feingold's proposal (no PAC money?). What I do recall is that Neumann got swamped by last minute attack ads run by "independent" outside groups.
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