Republican State Sen. Mike Ellis in Deep Sh**!!! James O'Keefe "hit-job" going after "Squishy" Walker opponents?

ALERT: Friday-jsonline:

State Senate President Mike Ellis dropped out of his bid for re-election Friday, two days after a secret recording was released revealing him discussing setting up an illegal political action committee to attack his challenger.

Why did Ellis' decide to drop out? See below the line....
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There's even more of Republican State Sen. Mike Ellis. Yikes.

In case you didn't hear:

State Senate President Mike Ellis is defending himself after he was secretly caught on video talking about illegal campaign activity. "I am putting together my own super PAC. I have a $400,000 committee and Judi Rhodes will, I am raising the money, she will manufacture the crap," said Ellis. The video was posted by Project Veritas, an organization led by conservative activist James O'Keefe.

Here's part of the original video release from O'Keefe:

One of my favorite lines:

At one point, the person recording the conversation said Walker was focusing on a potential presidential run in 2016.

“Amen. I think Walker’s working for Walker.”

But as I mentioned, WKOW's Greg Neumann had even more of the story:



I thought these two comments from conservative UW Prof. Ann Althouse's blog made a few good points:

mrs.e said...O'Keefe is going after Ellis because Ellis is hard for Walker to handle. He's got a tremendous independent streak that's to unpredictable for Walker and his funders (Bradley Foundation/Koch) to handle. Regardless of who's paying, it sure smells like authoritarians hellbent on ideological purity.

Mark said...Hit job. Question is who. Bradley Foundation? Robin Vos setting his ladyfriend up with a plum seat? Walker getting rid of a squish who caused problems passing what he was told last session? He will get knocked out in the primary now - it's not like the James O'Keefe was tipped off to this tiny bit player as a favor to WI Dems.

WisconsinEye of the Beholder!

WisconsinEye got it wrong, and it’s president, Jon Henkes injected his partisan interpretation into the groups complaint about a Planned Parenthood ad that used a clip of an out of control Senate Pres. Mike Ellis. I'm a little surprised too, because Henkes was good enough to invite me to a meeting to discuss the ad, and perhaps my call to make WisconsinEye a publically financed window on our government, still managed by a nonpartisan entity. 

This misinterpretation was a foreseeable problem when WisconsinEye developed a convoluted set of rules and regulation over content, with the help of cowardly politicians worried about being caught in the act of embarrassing themselves. They made it impossible to use their content, content taxpayers were paying for.

Cap Times: WisconsinEye President Jon Henkes asserted that the ad was inaccurate. “The TV ad creates the false impression that Senate debate was inappropriately shut down by Senator Ellis,” he said.

Wrong. The problem is, Ellis did shut down debate over the objections of a few Democratic objections. It’s kind of funny it took Democrats this long to correct Henkes.

“The 15 Democrats were totally shut down,” wrote Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, on Facebook.

In response, Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, (met) with Henkes to discuss his concerns about the statement. “It was two ships missing each other completely,” said Larson aide Justin Sargent. “They talked right past us.” Larson released a statement asking the organization to withdraw its “biased, inaccurate press release.”

Henkes said his organization had no further comment on the matter, and that it stood by its original statement.

Walker called out as Phony: Sen. Mike Ellis says he’s no Free Enterprise Republican.

If you’re on the Republican Party’s business sh*t list, don’t even try starting or bringing your business to Wisconsin.

The Walker Authority has again decided to pick winners and losers with their lack of support for a Kenosha Casino. 

Sen. Mike Ellis finds that a bit contradictory for our “open for business” governor:

jsonline: Senate President Mike Ellis on Wednesday questioned Gov. Scott Walker's plans for deciding whether to approve a Kenosha casino, signaling he viewed one of Walker's standards as anti-free market.

You see, it’s all in Walker’s court right now, and he’s slowwwww walking this one. With a set of completely arbitrary rules to make it impossible to work, Walker’s trying to hide from this one:

Walker, who now has the lone say on approving the Menominee Indian casino at a former greyhound track, has said he would approve the facility only if there is consensus among the state's 11 tribes. That appears unlikely…

So what is Mike Ellis supposed to think?

"This seems to me to be counter to the concept of free enterprise," Ellis (R-Neenah) said of Walker's policy. He said Walker's criteria would be like requiring Home Depot to get approval from Menards and other competitors to build a new store. Casinos are no different from any other type of business, Ellis said. "Are we going to start saying we can only have so many gas stations?" Ellis said. "Are we going to start saying we can only have so many hardware stores?"

Walker has said he has three standards for considering any new casino. The new gambling venue must result in "no new net gaming" in the state, must have community support and must have the approval of all the state's other tribes. Walker plans to begin soon a 60-day period to gather comments from the tribes.

Like when he listened to them about the iron mine? Let’s just be honest; Walker said no. Here's WKOW's coverage: 

Some Republicans have problem with Walker's Forced Voucher Roll out.

Upfront with Mike Gousha (goo-shay) featured Republican State Sen. Mike Ellis, a guy who isn't blindly on board with vouchers, and doesn't like Scott Walker's planned roll out of vouchers statewide.

It's hard to believe a Republican could make so much sense, despite his continued support for the idea of vouchers. Ellis is a real character and I like his energy. We need legislators like Ellis who doesn't fall in line with the whole privatization movement. He really believes it serves a more constructive purpose.