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IBMadison.com exclusive:
Up to one week before the Republican Party state convention at the Hyatt in Milwaukee, statewide polling showed that I held a 90% support rating from core conservatives, and we believed we would have a similar support level from the delegates at the convention for the endorsement. Little did I know that following Ron Johnson’s announcement that he was getting into the race that the “fix was in” to prevent me from receiving the endorsement; the Republican “kingmakers” had kicked into high gear to override the people’s choice and install their own choice.
What Americans need to know is that there is a political side-car industry that lives off politicians and at the same time, tries to control them; they’re paid professional political consultants. And right now, the Republican consultants are hurting, because they’re out of power and low on clients, because the Democrats control both Washington and Madison, including all houses of government. When these consultants couldn’t convince long-time politicians to enter the race, they went shopping. Some ended up with Leinenkugel, mistakenly believing he was wealthy enough to fund his own campaign, while others latched onto Ron Johnson.
Here’s the deal: Those consultants find a candidate who can self-finance the campaign, and then the candidate hires those same consultants for ridiculous pay, and in exchange, they agree to get him elected without the candidate having to put in all the hard work a grassroots candidate would have to do. This is the story of how these professionals went to work to buy a state party endorsement.
Let’s return to the convention to see how Johnson’s operatives put their plan to work. In addition to the examples I gave in the magazine, here are two more examples of what went on that day. One delegate called and reported how her husband took ballots that had been cast for me and stuffed a few in his pocket so that they weren’t counted, while another delegate called to report anonymously that his hotel room had been paid for by Johnson operatives in exchange for staying over to Sunday and voting for Johnson.
Johnson’s plan continued during that day by floating rumors and lies about his opponents at the convention – undermined the credibility of honest candidates. How do I know? I had my own allies on the convention floor who kept me abreast of the misinformation campaign that the Johnson team was orchestrating, and every couple of hours they would come to me with a new misinformation from the Johnson clan. Personally, I find it incredibly disheartening to see a couple of hired henchmen, brought in from Washington, work over the honest and hard working people of Wisconsin, but that’s what they did. And because people in Wisconsin are trusting soles, they believed what they heard until we were able to convey the truth to them. Unfortunately, in many cases we couldn’t get to everyone, and it’s a lot easier to spread lies than it is to convince people of the truth. (My mistake #4; believing truth would win out over misinformation.)
After their campaign of deceit, then came the vote. Understanding the voting process is critical to understand how to steal the endorsement. On Saturday there may have been dozens of people voting up to 600 votes for a county, but on Sunday, for example, there may only be a handful of delegates left voting those same votes, with each delegate casting far more votes. That also means that the Chair of the county has much more clout in the process, because he/she can more easily influence a smaller number of delegates.
I suspected that something was amiss the week before the convention when I begged the party to keep the Senate endorsement process on Saturday rather than moving it to Sunday. Instead, the convention used up all of Saturday morning with resolutions and housekeeping tasks while many delegates milled about in the hall outside the convention. By the time that part of the agenda was completed, there was not enough time left on Saturday afternoon to accommodate all three of the races that needed to go through the endorsement process; the Governor’s race, the Lieutenant Governor’s race, and the U.S. Senate race.
(The Governor’s race resulted in the endorsement of Scott Walker, while the Lieutenant Governor’s race resulted in a hung jury, given there were four candidates running.)
Why was it so important to have the Senate endorsement process on Saturday rather than Sunday? Because we knew, as did everyone, that the convention would lose many of the northern delegates since they would leave Sunday morning to return home given the long drive times. In fact, of over 1400 delegates present on Saturday, only 547 stayed on Sunday, and we lost 21 counties that didn’t vote at all.
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