Wisconsin Judgment Day, the Sequel

First, we should say that this group is no more shadowy than the outside groups, like Coalition for America's Families, that have supported Gableman. They don't disclose their donors, but they're not required to. For that matter, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce doesn't either. The only real difference we can see is that GWC doesn't maintain a Web site. But finding the group isn't difficult. Wispolitics.com, a popular political Web site in the land of the cheeseheads, has a page on it and carries its press releases.

GWC's latest ad alleges, first, that then-Gov. Scott McCallum appointed Gableman to his judgeship just weeks after Gableman hosted a fundraiser for him and gave his campaign a check. That's true, as we've written previously.

Next, the ad claims that Gableman "charged taxpayers for working" while he traveled to the June 12, 2002, fundraiser. It's true that it would have been impossible for Gableman to get from his office to the evening fundraiser, several hundred miles away, without using part of what are normally considered working hours. Gableman's campaign responded to our questions about this in an e-mail:

Gableman campaign: Judge Gableman asked for and received permission to attend the event. And was required to use comp time so he did NOT travel on state time. He was back at work the next day. Their spin is misleading and the allegations are false.

According to the campaign, Gableman received permission from Sandra Schultz, who it identifies as "his supervisor."

The ad's final charge is that during two months leading up to the fundraiser, more than 50 calls were placed from Gableman's office to persons who, it appears, were likely being contacted about the upcoming event. GWC received the telephone records using state open records laws, and we have posted the records as supporting documents to this article. We have also posted GWC's analysis of them.

The Gableman campaign has not clarified this matter, although it did release to Madison's Wisconsin State Journal two pages of documents showing that Gableman reimbursed Ashland County for some personal calls in the months before and after the fundraiser. But the campaign wouldn't say whether the calls were connected to fundraising, nor would it explain how the reimbursements matched up with the calls cited by GWC, which wasn't at all clear from the records themselves.