Schimel, the Republican candidate for the job of Wisconsin’s top cop, has yet to call out the governor or demand answers about the extent of his pay-to-play schemes. Instead, Schimel spent the evening fundraising with Scott Walker, charging guests $100 just to get through the door. The two Republican allies are cut from the same cloth of extreme ideas and harsh political divisiveness.
It isn’t the first time Schimel has willfully ignored the overwhelming stench of corruption. Schimel played a role in helping disgraced former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen avoid multiple felony convictions. After being convicted on multiple felony counts for political corruption, Jensen tied the case up in court for years and was granted a new trial. He then organized his former GOP colleagues to change state law so that his case could go back to his handpicked prosecutor – Brad Schimel – who refused to prosecute him.
More recently, Schimel declined to investigate a suspected pay-to-play scheme involving Rep. Joel Kleefisch and Michael Eisgna, a wealthy Republican donor who played a key role in drafting child support legislation that would personally benefit himself.
Schimel can’t run from his history of turning a blind eye to apparent corruption, his extreme positions — or his deep ties to the scandal-plagued Scott Walker and the extreme partisanship of J.B. Van Hollen.
“I can’t fathom why someone running for Attorney General would voluntarily associate himself with a scandal-plagued career politician at the center of a pay-to-play corruption scandal,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Friday. “With this kind of bald-faced allegiance to partisan politics on display, its easy for voters to understand that electing Brad Schimel as Wisconsin’s top cop will simply extend the same extreme, partisan approach to the office we’ve seen in the past few years.”
