May 31, 2001
note: Chris Micklos was State Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala's press spokesman for more than two years in the late 1990s. He is now an associate of Visuality Media Productions in Madison. Chris has appeared twice on Commentary, and several times on Wisconsin Public Television's "Weekend" program. His responses to the questions represent his own opinions. He is not speaking for the legislative caucuses or for Senator Chvala. He also declined to answer question #4 as he said he did not think he had anything useful to say in response to it in this forum. Chris can be reached at Chris@visuality.com
The Wisconsin State Journal recently exposed possibly illegal activies undertaken by Wisconsin's legislative caucuses. The Wisconsin Democracy campaign has requested a legal probe. Meanwhile, Senator Chuck Chvala has been accused of extorting campaign cash for Democrats from lobbyists in return for favorable treatment on legislation. Commentary decided to ask Chris Micklos to shed some light on the caucus/Chvala scandals. Click here for Wisconsin State Journal and Associated Press Coverage of the Caucus scandal.
Question #1. As you know, the Wisconsin State Journal recently reported that members of the legislative caucuses have been engaging in illegal campaign activities. What are the caucuses? What are the job responsibilities of a typical caucus employee?
Micklos Response: There are four partisan caucuses in the state legislature: an Assembly Democratic Caucus, an Assembly Republican Caucus, a Senate Democratic Caucus, and a Senate Republican Caucus. Each caucus serves as a pool of specialized staff for the legislators of their particular party and house; and their duties range from things like research and policy analysis to communications and other duties that a legislator's individual staff may not have the time or expertise to perform. For example, caucus staff often monitors and reports on all the various committee meetings and public hearings; tracks and monitors amendments; assists in graphic design and layout for newsletters and web sites; etc.
Other than the few leaders of each house, most legislators-especially junior legislators-have very small staff allotments, and by and large they depend on the work and expertise of caucus staff to help them. Right now, for example, the budget process is in full-swing, which essentially means that caucus staff are on-call day and night as the budget winds its way through the Joint Committee on Finance, each house, a likely conference committee, and even when it gets to the Governor's desk for signature. This is an intense period of activity for all four caucuses, but it is merely one example of the kind of work that they do all year round.
Caucus staff-like individual legislators' staff and members of the Governor's office-are often very involved in campaign activity, as well. Staffers of both parties and both houses sacrifice an inordinate amount of time during evenings, weekends, and even vacation days in the weeks and months leading up to election day to work on campaigns at every level. Most do it because they are political animals by nature, and because they recognize that keeping their boss or their party in office means that they will continue to have jobs and the ability to address the issues most important to them. However, campaign work is expected to be done on the individual's own time.
Question #2: Several legislators have called for the elimination of the caucuses, a move they say would save the taxpayers more than $3 million. What is your view on this?
Micklos Response: After the investigative series that ran in the Wisconsin State Journal last week, reporters, some legislators, and various campaign finance reformers indicated that they were (to paraphrase Claude Raines in "Casablanca") "shocked-shocked!-" to find out that the partisan caucuses might actually be political!
However, it's important to consider the atmosphere of the Capitol these days. This is a place where individual legislators propose and draft bills that will never even get a committee hearing, just so that they can claim in constituent newsletters that they are working on some particular problem or issues. This is a place where legislative leaders (Speaker Scott Jensen is a master at this!) hold floor votes on bills that will never pass the other house and never become law, simply so that they can force members of the other party to take bad votes that can later be used against them in political campaigns. And this is a place where the press corps frames every single vote, proposal, utterance, and maneuver in political terms as to how it might affect an individual's political fortunes or the outcome of the next campaign. So it should come as no surprise that the caucuses are no less political than any other individual or body that operates under the Capitol dome.
That said, some of the activities uncovered by the State Journal series constitute a serious problem and merit immediate action. However, of the four partisan caucuses, only one-the Assembly Republican Caucus-seems to have been engaged in activity that severely crosses the line of propriety. Of most concern should be the allegations-made by a recent staffer who apparently provided not only eyewitness testimony but also extensive documentation!-that not only was the ARC engaged in full-fledged campaigning, but that it was coordinating its efforts with a so-called "independent group" that was orchestrating vicious, often-misleading attack ads and mailings against Lee Meyerhoffer and other Democratic candidates around the state. In addition, the most recent installment of the State Journal series suggests that ARC staff engaged in a massive "document dump" to purge the Capitol offices of campaign literature, email, and other records that might implicate Assembly Republican Caucus staff members or leaders in illegal or unethical activities, some of that dumping apparently having happened after the paper filed an open records request with the ARC. This kind of alleged illegal coordination and subsequent cover-up renders most campaign finance law essentially useless and merits serious further investigation into the activities of the Assembly Republican Caucus.
However, nothing in the State Journal series suggests anything even approaching that kind of activity in the other three Capitol caucuses. There may have been some inappropriate phone calls here and there or some other activities that may have demonstrated a lack of judgement on the part of individuals, but the grossest examples of possible misconduct all were focussed in one place: the Assembly Republican Caucus.
As a result, I think that it would be hard to justify eliminating a professional, valuable research, analysis, and communication service like the caucuses based on the activities of the Assembly Republican Caucus.
Question #3. A recently released memo written by lobbyist Tony Driessen suggests that Senate majority leader Chuck Chvala makes explicit demands on lobbyists for campaign cash for Democrats if they want to get action on favored legislation. Former Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Gail Shea has called the practice "extortion". (see http://www.wisinfo.com/journal/local/052601-1.html). Do you believe that Chvala has done anything inappropriate, or does the story merely reflect "the way the system works?"
Micklos Response: First, it should be clear that while I have read the memo in question, I have not spoken with Senator Chvala or any member of his staff; so I am not aware of their reaction or take on this memo, which was drafted by a contract lobbyist and distributed to his clients.
In reading the memo, though, a couple of things strike me.
First of all, I think observers like Gail Shea are reading far more into this memo than is actually there. If you accept the fact that this memo is about fundraising and that fundraising by legislative leaders is a serious business, then there is nothing particularly outrageous here.
For example, it suggests that the Senate Democratic majority wants to make sure that contributions to its members keep pace with contributions to the Assembly Republican majority. While this certainly constitutes a hard-line stance, it doesn't strike me as particularly inappropriate or unseemly.
In addition, the memo indicates priorities as to where contributions should go. Clearly, based on past elections and posturing by the Republicans, the Democrats know which of their members will be targeted by the other side, and so they want to steer contributions toward those individual members, rather than to members with safe seats or those who might be running for other offices. Again, this seems to be good politics to me!
Finally, it indicates that during the last election cycle, incumbent Republican Senators were apparently funneling contributions that they received to other Republican candidates, so that contributions ended up being used against incumbent Democratic Senators. I would suspect that those contributors are just as dismayed as the Democrats that political contributions meant specifically to be used for or against a particular candidate were actually used in another race entirely, perhaps even against an incumbent whom the original contributor supports!
Now, none of that is to say that fundraising by both legislative leaders and individual legislators themselves has not become extremely aggressive and-in some cases-down right hardball; but I can't find anything in that memo that would constitute a suggestion of impropriety or illegality.
However, in the defense of legislative Democrats, I have to say that they have been working very hard to make sure that just this kind of fundraising does not need to continue. In fact, the Democratic-led Senate passed a comprehensive package of campaign finance reform measures that would increase the level of public financing for candidates, lesson the impact of special interest groups in the political process, and level the playing field for all candidates. However, the Republican-controlled Assembly gleefully defeated the bill and indicated that meaningful campaign finance reform would absolutely not happen on their watch. So unless enough pressure can be put on Assembly Republican leadership, aggressive, hardball fundraising will continue to be a part of the political process.
Question #4. You were Chuck Chvala's press spokesman for more than 2 years. When "scandal" type stories broke in the media, how did you handle them? What was your role in communicating the Senator's position to the press?
No Response. (see introductory note above).