Paul Soglin, the former mayor of Madison, says he can remember the time, not that long ago, when a popular and effective Democratic state senator was defeated in the primary because he had been forced to acknowledge making $16 worth of phone calls to his daughter on a state phone line in the Capitol.
Although the senator made restitution and apologized, his constituents found his cavalier attitude toward the perks of office unacceptable.
Soglin, a liberal Democrat, says he had that proud Wisconsin tradition of squeaky-clean government in mind earlier this month when he wrote an opinion article urging state Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala (D) to retire. Chvala, Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen (R) and other legislators have asked the state to pay more than half a million dollars in legal fees to defend them in an ongoing corruption investigation of the legislature's party caucuses.
It is part of a nearly unprecedented wave of scandals that has cut off the careers of the mayor of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee County executive, ended a candidacy for attorney general, triggered a rash of recall elections and infuriated voters. With the state wrestling with a billion-dollar budget gap and facing the most wide-open election in decades, voters cannot believe what has happened.
"We've prided ourselves on being a clean state," said Gov. Scott McCallum, the Republican who succeeded longtime Gov. Tommy G. Thompson when Thompson joined the Bush Cabinet. "This has deflated our sense of who we are."
A furor erupted last month when it was revealed that Jensen, Chvala, other legislators and their aides had billed the state $664,000 for private lawyers defending them in a year-long investigation by county prosecutors here and in Milwaukee.
The investigation began with a focus on charges that employees of the party caucuses in the Senate and Assembly had been performing campaign duties on state time -- a practice not unknown in other states or in Washington, but unacceptable to many here. The caucuses now have been abolished, but the investigation reportedly has been broadened to examine evidence that lobbyists have been asked to make campaign contributions to get favorable consideration of their issues -- "pay-to-play," in the jargon of the Capitol.
The casualties have begun to fall. State Sen. Brian B. Burke, a well-regarded Democrat, withdrew from the race for attorney general and said he would leave the legislature, after billing the state for almost $10,000 in lawyers' fees and revealing that prosecutors had searched his office and confiscated his computer hard drive.
The expectation is that indictments may be issued before the July 9 filing deadline for the September primary. University of Wisconsin at Madison political scientist Donald F. Kettl says such scandals have not afflicted the legislature since lobbyist influence fueled the Progressive Party reforms of the elder Robert M. LaFollette a century ago. "If there are indictments," Kettl said, "all bets are off" for the November election.
The scandals that have rocked Wisconsin began 18 months ago, when Milwaukee's four-term mayor, John O. Norquist, called a news conference to acknowledge he had had a five-year affair with a former mayoral assistant named Marilyn Figueroa. Norquist, accompanied by his wife, Susan Mudd, insisted it had been a consensual affair and accused Figueroa of pressuring him for a financial settlement.
But by April of this year -- after months of gamy depositions and an attempted suicide by Figueroa -- the city agreed to pay Figueroa $375,000 to settle her claims of sexual harassment and job discrimination against Norquist. Under pressure, Norquist then said he would reimburse Milwaukee from campaign and personal funds and announced he would not seek reelection when his term ends in 2004.
The mayor, who had attracted national attention as a "New Democrat" willing to challenge municipal unions and support private school vouchers, saw his political career cut off while still in his early fifties.
Two months before Norquist threw in the towel, Milwaukee County Executive F. Thomas Ament resigned after 10 years in office, rather than face almost certain recall by the voters.
Critics had collected 181,957 signatures on a recall petition -- twice the required number and almost 50 percent more than the number of votes Ament received in winning a third term in 2000. The recall effort was triggered by the disclosure on a Milwaukee Web site that unpublicized changes in the county government pension system would allow Ament and several other longtime county officials to retire with lump-sum payments of more than $1 million apiece.
For Ament, the new system promised a lump-sum payment of $2.3 million, along with an annual pension of $136,000. Ament claimed he had been unaware of the implication of the plan, but radio talk show hosts were scornful and citizens groups quickly collected the signatures to force an election on his tenure. He further infuriated the public by filing a lawsuit that challenged the validity of the recall petitions on the grounds that an improper form had been used.
The legislative scandal has spread the indignation statewide and has set the stage for what could be a wild election season. After Thompson ended his 14-year run as governor in January 2001, when he became secretary of health and human services, McCallum moved up from lieutenant governor just as the state was sliding into a recession.
The $1.1 billion gap in the budget has remained stubbornly unsolved, with negotiators led by Chvala and Jensen adamantly refusing to compromise. Some headway was made last week after Jensen relinquished his position as the GOP's lead negotiator.
But with more than a dozen legislative aides having been granted immunity by the investigators, the nervousness in the Capitol is palpable. And the race for governor clearly will be affected.
McCallum has responded by appointing a citizens commission on ethics. Attorney General Jim Doyle, the early front-runner for governor in a four-person Democratic field, accuses McCallum of grandstanding, because the governor blocked Doyle from going to court to block the legislators from using state funds for their legal expenses. McCallum in turn accuses Doyle of seeking to exploit the issue for partisan advantage.
Meanwhile, veteran observers of Wisconsin politics say they are appalled and puzzled by the outbreak of scandal. Bob Williams, a business executive who served as an adviser to several GOP governors, said he blames the excesses on the "absurd partisanship" that has poisoned state government.
Williams said that "when Mel Laird [later secretary of defense] and Gaylord Nelson [later U.S. senator] were state senators, they would go after each other all day on the floor, and then go across the street and drink Scotch together. Now, you can't be seen with someone from the other party, because you'll be reported to your leadership."
Kettl said the combination of an economic downturn, Thompson's departure, reapportionment and the split partisan control of the House and Senate have stripped state government of leadership and heightened the tendency to cut ethical corners. "No one has a strategy," he said, "so everything is about tactics."
Soglin, the ex-mayor of Madison, said he is concerned that the scandal will drive good people out of government and feed cynicism among voters. He cited the example of state Rep. Martin L. Reynolds (D), a 12-year veteran who announced this month that he would not run again because "I'm fed up with it."
"I think the whole state is fed up with it," Soglin said.