In college, I had a buddy whose entire worldview was circumscribed by whatever happened to be in front of his face at that very moment. We would drive down the street and he’d read off the signs as we passed by them in the car. Instead of engaging in deep philosophical conversations about Camus or the Green Bay Packers, he’d rattle off phrases such as “Oooh, Arby’s,” or “Same-day Martinizing!” (We often joked that he always thought whatever direction he was facing was north.)
A recent myopic editorial by the New York Times, however, makes my friend look like Ben Franklin for his scope of knowledge. In opining about a recent document dump stemming from a previously secret “John Doe” investigation into Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and his allies, the Times peddles a wildly misleading argument completely devoid of context.
Last week, the Guardian, a British left-wing paper, released nearly 1,500 pages from the investigation into whether Walker “illegally” coordinated with third-party groups such as the Club for Growth during his 2012 recall election campaign. The Times asserts that these groups “are not allowed to work with a campaign to urge voters to vote for a candidate, because that would essentially allow donors to funnel money toward these groups to get around contribution limits that apply to campaign committees.”
Yet this assertion is flatly false. A Wisconsin state judge, two Milwaukee-based federal judges, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago have all ruled that relevant portions of Wisconsin state law are unconstitutional, which is why not a single person investigated in this aspect of the probe has ever been charged with anything.
The argument basically comes down to whether state laws apply to “issue” advocacy (ads that don’t expressly urge voting for or against a specific candidate) in the same way they apply to “express” advocacy (ads that explicitly direct the viewer to “vote for” or “vote against” a candidate).
