NY Times whiffs on Walker/fund-raising alleged wrong-doing

Major media have got to stop writing around allegations of fund-raising wrong-doing involving Scott Walker.

The New York Times has posted a long story about the growing power of Super PACs and major candidates' relationships to this kind of accelerated fund-raising.

So far, so good. It is an important story.

But there is this regrettably incomplete sentence in the Times piece:

And Gov. Scott Walker’s former campaign manager and chief of staff, Keith Gilkes, announced late last week that he would not be joining Walker’s formal campaign but rather Walker’s super PAC, Unintimidated PAC — this in spite of legal investigations into Walker’s aides’ interactions with outside conservative groups.

Yes, those investigations involve "aides' interactions with outside conservative groups," but Walker's personal actions also made himself a subject of the investigations, too, according to official records and media reporting.

The distinction is spelled out as clearly as possible in this lede from a 2014 story in the Wisconsin State Journal, a relatively-conservative daily paper with no axe to grind against Walker, having endorsed Walker for election in the 2010 gubernatorial election:

Gov. Scott Walker personally solicited millions of dollars in contributions for a conservative group during the 2011 and 2012 recalls, which prosecutors cited as evidence the governor and his campaign violated state campaign finance laws, records made public on Friday show.

While several potential 2016 presidential candidates are linked through former staffers to Super PACs and outside group fund-raising and spending, only Walker is linked to these issues through allegations of personal, previous and perhaps improper activities.

And while the investigations remain stalled, it was reported in August by another mainstream newspaper which had endorsed Walker in both the 2010 gubernatorial election and in his successful 2012 recall election that Walker admitted making such questionable solicitations:

...at a Racine stop, Walker said he helped solicit contributions to Wisconsin Club for Growth in 2011 primarily to help GOP senators who faced recalls. The court filings suggested, however, that he was involved in raising more than $1 million for Club for Growth in the months before his own recall election.

While the legal investigations are complex matters, it is not complicated to fully ascribe to Walker the fund-raising and coordinating role alleged through court records, and which has been reported by mainstream media.

Here is a more complete accounting.