Billboard to remind State Fair travelers of Baldwin’s record.
Senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, may be trying to erase her past before next year’s election, but the Republican Party of Wisconsin is reminding voters which senator let down Wisconsin’s veterans. As visitors drive through downtown Milwaukee on their way to the Wisconsin State Fair this weekend, they’ll be greeted with this billboard:
Photo provided by the Republican Party of Wisconsin
The billboard is located in the area of 14th and St. Paul Avenue. The sign can be seen when driving west on I-94 and is meant to kickoff the fall campaign against Baldwin.
In 2014, Baldwin’s office sat on a report for months that there were problems at the VA Hospital in Tomah, WI. A “whistleblower,” former Tomah VA employee Ryan Honl, learned Baldwin had the report and tried to make her go public with it. He wanted the senator to investigate the problems at the hospital but was ignored by Baldwin’s office. When the Green Bay Press Gazette broke the story, Baldwin attempted to deflect blame by firing an aide and trying to make the aide sign a non-disclosure agreement.
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The aide, Marquette Baylor, rejected a generous severance package and filed an ethics complaint with the U.S. Senate Ethics Select Committee alleging “false statements and representations” by Baldwin to cover up the scandal, first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice. The complaint was eventually dismissed.
Marc Elias, an attorney and a Democratic “fixer,” was hired by Baldwin in the scandal’s aftermath to help with the public relations crisis. According to a report in the Washington Free Beacon, two “dark money” groups founded by Elias, Majority Forward and Vote Vets PAC, then ran ads attempting to defend Baldwin’s record. The money for those groups came from a “Super PAC” associated with former Senator Harry Reid, D-Nevada, called Senate Majority PAC. The law firm of Perkins Coie was paid $90,000 for the work by Elias.
State Supreme Court candidate Tim Burns is also a partner at Perkins Coie and was one of the eight candidates forwarded by Baldwin to President Barack Obama for a vacancy on the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2015. Burns was passed over by Obama, choosing Madison attorney Donald K. Schott instead.
Republicans are determined to remind Wisconsin voters of Baldwin’s Washington D.C. record.
“Senator Baldwin has spent nearly twenty years defending the status quo over hard-working Wisconsinites,” said Alec Zimmerman, spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin in a statement. “Whether it is her failure to help veterans who were in danger at the Tomah VA, or her repeated obstruction of reforms in Washington, Senator Baldwin is working for the liberal elites and not for the people of Wisconsin.”
