Pro-Plutocrat Referendum Group Broke Election Laws

It was pretty obvious from the beginning that Chris Abele, the Mitt Romney of Milwaukee County, wanted to make  his usurpation of power a sure thing.  (Just because the boy prince did not like being told no for the first time in his spoiled life.)

He and his plutocratic pals at the misnamed Greater Milwaukee Committee retained the silk stocking law firm of Foley and Lardner to write the bill that would eventually become Act 14.

He and his pals paid off people like Teapublicans Joe Sanfelippo and Dale Kooyenga to get the bill passed.

Part of the bill was a red herring referendum that they scheduled for the spring election, knowing that the voter turnout would be extremely low and extremely conservative.

Then in the weeks leading up to the voting day, he and his friends at GMC - people like Michael Grebe, Walker's campaign chair and head of the Bradley Foundation - started a PAC front group they called "Forward Milwaukee County."  Said group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on radio commercials.  They sent out propaganda email blasts almost daily.

They even got the Republicans to do robocalling for them.

But even that wasn't enough for Abele and company to feel assured of victory.  They also had to break the law.

In their zealousness to get their email blasts out to as many people as possible, they did an open records request of the email databases for the county supervisors. Apparently, they didn't bother to check the databases before using them and sent their blasts to people on their county emails:

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And it wasn't just them, but also elected officials, like the county board supervisors themselves:

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Needless to say, it's against the law to send these emails, which blatantly tell the recipient to vote yes on the referendum, via the government emails.  It is also illegal to solicit elected officials in their offices or using their official email.  Thirdly, given that Abele was involved to some extent in this whole debacle, there would be problems with soliciting employees at their workplace.

All in all, some people are in serious trouble.  Abele might be able to worm his way out of it, but Rice is definitely on the hook.

And this is far from the first time that Abele played fast and loose with the law.

Joe Rice, the treasurer for this group, is a former county supervisor and should know the rules.  But apparently he and Abele just don't care. It's more than a bit reminiscent of their mutual friend, Scott Walker, and his staff, who didn't care about the rules even though they knew better.

It's a good think that Abele and Walker are such tight friends.  At the pace they are going, they will be sharing the same prison cell.