There’s a request for the state election agency to look into a third-party group’s role in the recent recall race. Brendan Fischer with the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy says an out of state group with Tea Party ties ran TV ads supporting Governor Scott Walker, without ever registering, as state elections law requires. Fischer says the ads – from the California-based Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama – aired in Milwaukee and Green Bay and perhaps elsewhere. “Part of the reason that it’s hard to really track that is because they did not register with the Government Accountability Board and did not disclose their funding and spending,” says Fischer. “That was the basis for our complaint, that they were running ads in Wisconsin without being transparent about it, and without complying with Wisconsin law.”
The complaint, filed with the GAB on Thursday, identifies at least four ads run on Wisconsin television by the Tea Party group. “This appeared to be a pretty cut and dried violation of the Wisconsin election law that requires a group that’s going to be trying to be influence Wisconsin elections to register with the state, to be transparent about how much they’re spending and where that money’s coming from.” says Fischer, adding that this was just one group among many that operated in Wisconsin during the recall, without fully disclosing how much was spent, and where that money came from.
