Wisconsin Republican Fradette Takes Public Down The Campaign Rabbit hole. Mad Hatter ln Charge of Elections

The doe eyed Republicans continue their innocent assault on election campaigning in a way that would make Lewis Carroll look like a non-fiction writer. It’s hard to make this stuff up. After frustrating themselves with fruitless efforts to pass voter ID in the state, the state GOP has decided to pay people for their voting.

The AP reported that “state Senate candidate Chad Fradette shelled out $128
in cash to potential voters to protest high gas prices - with the partial blessing of the state's new ethics watchdog. He reimbursed 34 drivers at a downtown Green Bay gas station 34 cents per gallon after they filled up their tanks … the amount Wisconsin's minimum markup law for gasoline costs drivers … to show the impact of the law, not to win votes. He told drivers he was running for Senate but never urged them to vote for him."

What? Under the guise of a protest, you can slap money into a voters’s hands, inform them that you’re running for public office, and then claim it’s all perfectly legal? Have we just passed through the looking glass?

Fradette's campaign checked with the Government Accountability Board …
(which) said campaign money could be used for the event since it was for a political purpose.

Of course it’s for a political purpose; the guy wants to get elected. It gets worse.

The Board attorney also told the campaign to check with the district attorney to make sure the plan did not violate an election bribery statute. The campaign never bothered to check with the Brown County DA.

Fradette knew it wouldn't pass legal muster. Let's look at the boards convoluted legal opinion:

Under the board attorney’s interpretation, “He is a public candidate for a particular office but he was buying their gas to make a point about the markup law and his political stand on that law.” That would also mean “A candidate could also give a free case of bottled water to anyone who showed up to their rallies to promote healthy behavior, for instance. Asked whether a wealthy candidate could give $10 to every voter as part of a pledge to stimulate the economy, the board was unclear.”

Unclear? Are they kidding? And what does the incumbent Democrat Sen. Dave Hanson , who is running on the spineless “don’t hurt me to bad” platform, think: “A gimmick” but declined to call it unethical. “It's certainly a new stunt. I don't think anybody's done that anywhere.”

Most people would just call it “wrong, unethical and illegal.” So who are the watchdogs watching over the "watchdogs."