Green faces questions on individual donors

More on the legal saga of Mark Green. As noted earlier, there are now questions about Green's individual donors. According to a story yesterday in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Associated Press asked a group called Wisconsin Democracy Campaign to compile figures on individual donors. Alledgedly, Green has received some $48,000 in excess individual contributions, according to the group. But one has to question the motives of a group with some left leaning members.

Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, said he thought the individual contributions would fall under the order that had already been issued to the Green campaign. McCabe's group had filed the complaint about the PAC money that prompted the Elections Board ruling against Green.

Elections Board legal counsel George Dunst said, however, that the board's order applied only to PAC money, so anyone challenging individual donations would have to file a separate complaint.

snip

The Green campaign has argued that Democrats on the Elections Board took their cue from Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle in making what Republicans have said is a partisan decision that he must divest himself of the money.

Actually, as seen in these documents, it appears as more than just a cue from the Doyle campaign but it was everything short of a directive.

On a side note, why does the AP need the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign to compile the figures? The WIDC claims that is has the only searchable database of campaign donors in teh state. The problem is that it is not very searchable. For candidates like Green, with over 10,000 individual contributions, it is difficult to search for anything other than a big list.