Jill Underly, the union-backed candidate for state Superintendent of Public Instruction, has just made it easier for her supporters to help her campaign.
No, not an easier weblink for donations or convenient drop boxes for envelopes of union cash. Underly’s campaign just released the “B” footage any outside group would need to run an ad supporting their candidate.
It’s like being at the movies and watching coming attractions, only there’s no dialogue, no “in a world without school choice,” no “imagine a world with schools completely unaccountable to parents.” Just rough footage that you can’t share online and some really bad music.
The reason for putting this footage out on the internet is so third party groups can grab it for their own commercials without any “coordination” with Underly’s campaign. Like putting out bird seed in feeders that are oh-so convenient for the nice, picturesque deer in your backyard.
“What? I am not feeding the deer. I didn’t know hummingbirds don’t eat corn.”
And the unions will spend, spend, spend. To them, the Department of Public Instruction is as much theirs as the furniture at their Taj Mahal union headquarters on Nob Hill Road.
Here’s how this will work, using a formula perfected by former Sen. Russ “Campaign Finance Reform” Feingold.
The ads will run, and Underly will say, gee, I can’t tell other groups not to buy ads in this race because that would be against the law.
When you see more ads supporting Underly and attacking her opponent than you see commercials for male enhancement products, Underly will blame Republicans and school choice supporters.
“If they didn’t insist on making this race partisan…”
“If right-wing voucher groups weren’t spending so much money…”
This will prompt an editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal complaining about partisan spending in a non-partisan race, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editorial page will wish that nobody (meaning conservatives) can spend money on politics that are subject to campaign spending limits.
Everyone on the left will be “shocked, shocked,” like Captain Louis Renault, at the outside spending on the race, and they’ll be swift to blame “Citizens United” even though none of them understand what that Supreme Court case was actually about.
But the ads are coming.
