October
2006
Reynolds threatens lawsuit against Blogger
If your campaign is in trouble, you've got little substance to attack your opponent on and you haven't answered questions derived from what appears to be a misuse of campaign funds, what do you do?
Wisconsin State Senator Tom Reynolds answered that question — shoot the messenger.
This week, Reynolds had his attorney draft a threatening letter to former Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter turned blogger, Gretchen Schuldt. Schuldt's crime, according to Reynolds that is, was that she dared to question why Reynolds was using cash from his campaign account to pay for utility bills. We all have to pay our own utility bills but it appeared that Reynolds didn't believe he had to.
It's all a misunderstanding Reynolds claimed. He says the bills are for a building which houses his personal printing business. During campaign season, or so he says, he uses the press to print his own campaign materials. In off-season he only bills a portion (or so he says) of the cost of the building.
Schuldt, a constituent of Reynolds, said in an interview with Journal-Sentinel reporter Anyssa Johnson, "this is an attempt to intimidate a constituent".
But the story gets richer. Reynolds and his apologist Bob Dohnal (who doubles as a political hitman) claim that Reynolds was required to take the money because the printing building and Reynolds home are used for the campaign. Yes that's right — Dohnal actually said Reynolds took the money to stay in compliance with the law. I guess that makes nearly every other person who has ever run for political office who didn't take money for their utility bills a scofflaw or by Dohnal's logic, a crook. Yes, lining your own pockets with the cash from your contributors, all of whom likely have to pay their own utility bills, makes Reynolds a better person and somehow a cleaner politician.
A crazy side note in this whole drama is that Reynolds also uses that printing building to print materials for a fringe evangelical Pastor friend of his, Ralph Ovadahl. Ovadahl is the Pastor who outraged Catholics and many Christians by calling the late Pope John Paul II a "minister of Satan." So how does Reynolds calculate the amount of time he's using the building for printing campaign materials versus the amount of time he's using to print materials calling the Pope a "minister of Satan"?
Now mind you, this claim against Schuldt from Team Reynolds is from the same people who made bogus claims just last month that they knew were lies about Reynolds opponent, Wauwatosa Alderman Jim Sullivan. Dohnal knew his claims were a lie. Reynolds knew the accusations were bogus also. Even Republican talk show host Mark Belling said he didn't believe the accusations. Yet they still threw those accusations out there in their mudslinging campaign.
Reynolds claims about Sullivan were libelous and without merit just as his claims that Schuldt libeled him are without merit.
Perhaps Reynolds is looking for a way to recover some of the damages he's likely incur if Sullivan sues him for libel.
Jim McGuigan
Jim McGuigan, Reynolds Watch, Watchdogging Campaigns
RSS feed
Link
Afraid of cameras.
Afraid to debate.
Intimidates constituents.
Priceless.
The Senator behaves like a six-year-old playground bully.
In commenting on our recent blog about some pro-Reynolds campaign lit from All Children Matter, the unregistered Michigan group pushing private school vouchers, Donahl threatened to name WatchdogMilwaukee in the suit.
Still trying to figure out why these guys would even try to itemize and reimburse heating costs for the Reynolds printing business, if in fact that is what they were trying to do. In any case, they now claim it is.
Why would any campaign call attention to itself in this way, when it is not clear when the printing building in question was being used as part of the Reynolds campaign and when it was being used to print other jobs - like wacko religious propaganda for Rev. Ovadahl? According to the complaint filed against Reynolds, his campaign finance reports do not show a pattern of heating reimbursement that would be consistent with months of high campaign activity.
All Reynolds would have had to do was bill the campaign for the heat as part of the cost of printing, like any printer would bill any client (not itemized, just part of the bottom line). Team Reynolds now says they had to tack on the heating costs to comply with the law, a ridiculous claim because it presumes that the campaign is somehow different from any other client of the Reynolds printing business. To truly be in compliance, Reynolds has to treat his campaign THE SAME as any other client.
Instead, it looks like Reynolds billed his campaign for printing, then realized he needed more cash and decided to get back some of what he paid for energy — energy he should have just paid directly out of the gross the business received for the print jobs.
I wonder how Reynolds washes all this out when he does his business taxes? — Again, if this is what he meant to do, as he says.
It would have looked a lot better for Reynolds had he just admitted he trimmed the fund for his home heating bill — his house is his campaign headquarters, after all, and that is what he actually claimed, mistakenly or not, on his campaign finance report.
The Reynolds-Donahl excuse now looks far more crooked than what was initially questioned, first by Gretchen, then Watchdog, then state Senate Dems and finally by Milwaukee Dem Treasurer Dawn Martin, who filed the complaint.
Tom Reynolds. Crooked? … or just stupid?