Donald Fish Public Statements
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 22, 2002
Barrett makes an interesting observation at debate
Rep. Tom Barrett made an interesting observation during yesterday evening’s Democrat Gubernatorial Debate. In answering a question about the caucus scandal, the 5th District Congressman responded that nobody on his staff was under investigation. But what Rep. Barrett failed to mention was that Congress has made it very difficult for the public to get information on how their congressional staff uses their time and how their office and travel expenses are allocated.
While I was employed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, April 1998 to July 2000, most of my election-oriented contact with the Barrett Campaign was through a non-government volunteer living in the Madison area, and I remember this volunteer usually was Rep. Barrett’s representative on the Party’s Coordinated Campaign. However, this was not the case with most Democrat Congressional campaigns.
Under oath I told the State of Wisconsin Elections Board there was a significant problem with using Congressional staff for campaign purposes, and that I believed this to be a particular problem with Sen. Herb Kohl, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Ron Kind, Rep. Jerry Kleczka and Rep. Dave Obey. These campaigns were regularly represented on the Party’s Coordinated Campaign by government staffers. (This was also true for Doyle for Governor and the Assembly and State Senate campaign committees.)
One document I provided the Elections Board is a telephone call list I inherited from a Party official when he left in the spring of 1999. Almost all the contact telephone numbers on this list are to government offices. As I state under oath in a filing I to the State Elections Board, December 6, 2001, “Numbers on the list included the government offices of Atty. Gen. Doyle, Sen. Kohl, Rep. Baldwin, Rep. Barrett, Rep. Kind, Rep. Kleczka, Rep. Obey, the ADC, and SDC.” Sen. Feingold’s name was associated with a government telephone number in State Rep. Jon Richards’s office.
I urge government investigators, the media and the people to look further into Rep. Barrett’s observation, and call on Wisconsin’s entire Democrat Congressional delegation to release all information from the past five years on how their congressional staff used their official time, where they traveled on the people’s dime and how congressional office resources were allocated. The people have a right to know.