Donald Fish Public Statements
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 19, 2002
Donald Fish calls for investigation of possible DPW perjury and corruption
Last year I filed a campaign finance complaint with the Wisconsin State Elections Board on allegations concerning voter lists built by the Democratic Assembly and Senate legislative caucuses, using state resources and facilities, which ultimately made important contributions to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s campaign efforts. Under oath the Party and Executive Director Steve Kean stated that such transfers were legal because they involved “public information available to anyone.”
However, in the Brian Blanchard hearing before Judge Sarah O’Brien, September 17, 2002, large holes were blown in this argument. With respect to voter lists requested, in 2000, by Blanchard’s campaign for Dane County District Attorney, the judges ruling issued yesterday states that Andy Gussert and Branda Weix, who were caucus employees during the time covered by my complaint, “refused the Blanchard campaign request for lists.”
Until this time the Elections Board has sat on my complaint, and in my view has been wishing I would just go away. After more than a year they have not even asked me for copies of all the documents I have concerning my complaint, even though I have offered to provide them on more than one occasion. In the light of this new information, I am calling on the Elections Board to stop sitting on my complaint and to seriously investigate what I have put before them.
Additionally, with respect to this new information and the considerable information I have already made available, I am calling on Dane County District Attorney Blanchard to fully investigate possible perjury and corruption by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Executive Director Kean.
I believe our leaders have taken advantage of the citizens. In the years I have been in the inner circles of politicians and politics, I have become all too aware of a culture that believes anything is okay in the pursuit of winning, and those involved seem to have an infinite capacity for rationalization. If they should get caught, they just ‘spin’ their way out of it.
I am reminded that Abraham Lincoln once asked, “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”