If this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about Mark Neumann not accepting a lot of special-interest money had been written 8 days from now, here’s how the headline would have appeared:
Neumann campaign fails to report PAC money; significant percentage of donations came from special interests
At least half of that would be true, as the Neumann campaign failed to report a $1,000 donation from the Wisconsin Dental Association PAC. Side note; that failed reporting merited only a parenthetical mention a week before the primary against the main target of the Journal Sentinel this election cycle, Scott Walker. Who here believes that Walker would have received the same benefit of the doubt had it been his campaign that failed to report the donation, and who believes that the ex-Spice Boy would have been sicced on the campaign to produce a banner-headline story?
On the other end of the headline, Neumann’s campaign has not received a significant portion of its donations from special interests. As of the end of June, Neumann raised $565,623 from donors. The story notes that he received $12,925 in “conduit” donations, which together with the $1,000 PAC donation, inexplicably omitted from the totals despite being dug up, meant that just under 2.5% of the donations came from special interests. That is still below the 11.5% the Walker campaign received and the 22% the Tom Barrett campaign received from special interests.
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