On Thursday I wrote about Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker’s fancy $250 a head fundraiser at the Pfister Hotel, a fundraiser headlined by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, but it’s also worth noting Walker spent some time this week fundraising for his Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign in Florida. Walker ventured to Florida on Wednesday to speak at the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association annual convention, held at the Grande Lakes Resort in Orlando. Following his appearance at the fundraiser, Walker spurned a commercial flight home, instead choosing to return home in luxury on a private plane owned and flown by Dodgeville real estate developer Ron Fedler.
Not surprisingly, Walker’s Facebook page blew up with criticism from his supporters:
- Dawn You just opened the door for Neuman by flying in a private jet to get BOUGHT OFF by the Wisconsin Road Builders. I thought you were going to represent the tax payer and not special interest looking to fill their pockets. It’s a shame. Even if their money wouldn’t have bought them favor in your administration, it still looks bad. It’s what the American people are tired of.
- Robert Turn your plane around from Florida. You do not need to go there to schmooze the road people for money. Mark Belling is ripping you a good one on WISN.
- Jay Biz I am disapointed in Scott for flying out to Florida this afternoon for an out of state elbow bumping session with the whores that are the Wisconsin road builders… Why exactly did he have to go to Florida for this get together? Seems rather sleazy and liberalesque… True or not, it appears Scott is being bought and paid for by lobbyists, and thats NEVER been his style… Bad chess move today my friend…
Someone refresh my memory….wasn’t Martha Coakley, the Democrat who lost to Senator Scott Brown in the Massachusetts senate race, roundly criticized for holding a fundraiser for her senate campaign in Washington, D.C.? Yeah, this kinda reminds me of that, and no doubt Walker’s trip to Florida certainly won’t win him many fans among Wisconsin’s voters.
It is sooooo refreshing to see some supporters of Walker actually speak their minds when they don’t agree with him. Neumann is a better choice and hopefully some of these people are starting to reconsider…
Mark Neumann’s main problem is that he bears a striking resemblance to a reanimated corpse.
And yet he’s still a better choice than Walker. I think he’s going to get some momentum yet and I’m sure he’ll perk up a little. And…at least I don’t feel like he’s lying about everything. I wish him luck.
Anon, do you really believe Neumann is a better choice? I haven’t decided on a candidate yet, but found it interesting why you might say this. I don’t really remember him from his U.S. Senate race, but here I think he might have an advantage by not being from Milwaukee, for starters.
It sounds like these people’s comments have some rosy idea of what it takes to run a campaign. If Walker holds to their idealized strategy, I imagine when the Barrett machine is running circles around him come next October these same people will be leaving comments like “Fight back! Why won’t you take him on?” when it is too late.
At least when Walker went out of state, he was still meeting with the WISCONSIN Transportation Builders. These people shouldn’t forget that Barrett has gotten off to a great start in out-of-state fundraising from out of state interests, accounting for nearly 15% of his total donations on the last report ($117,000 including $19,000 for a nice group of out of state trial attorneys).
So exactly why was a Wisconsin trade/business association holding their cnvention in Florida anyway? Sounds like they don’t totally have a clear grasp of the current economic situation or public perception of business right now either.
That right Ed. People with money should stop traveling, staying in hotels, ordering meals, paying for drivers, etc. That should help the economy recover!
I think Ed’s point is that the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association could hold their convention in Wisconsin Dells. They could use the roads they built to get there and pump their money into their home state’s economy. Hell, they could even go surfing at the Kalahari or get a tan through the high-tech dome at the Wilderness, so it’s not like they couldn’t enjoy some fun and sun after the conference sessions are over.
Jill is 100% correct. They take my tax dollars to build my roads here in Wisconsin. We could sure use some of those dollars spent somewhere here in the state. There is no reason the eat local and shop local movements shouldn’t include the big construction contractors too. And if they need a far away warm weather locale to boost attendance, maybe the conference wasn’t worth the $$ in the first place.
I guess the “eat local movement” was behind this little idea? If they needed free fish and child care to boost attendance, maybe it wasn’t worth attending in the first place.
MADISON, Wis. — The state Department of Transportation officials laid out plans on the Verona Road expansion project at a public meeting Thursday night, and they said offering a free meal at the meeting to boost attendance was a mistake.
In an effort to boost participation, the DOT offered a free fish fry and child care to residents using taxpayer money that comes from the gas tax.
The DOT said Thursday that partly because of a WISC-TV report on the free meal and negative feedback, taxpayers will not foot the bill for the free food. The DOT said an anonymous donor will pay for it instead.