Old Pol Faces Fresh Scrutiny

Posted: Aug. 9, 2008

Daniel Bice No Quarter E-MAIL

There is something very familiar about this whole thing.

Mark Block, the conservative operative who was once banned from Wisconsin politics for three years, is under the microscope again.

And just like 11 years ago, the investigation is focusing on a last-minute mailing in a highly competitive Supreme Court race.

Does this feel like déjà vu all over again?

“A little bit,” Block said last week. “But now I don’t do anything without legal counsel.”

Sources say staffers with the new Government Accountability Board have subpoenaed records from Americans for Prosperity — a fiscally conservative, pro-business outfit run by Block — as part of their probe into a March 25 mass mailing.

The two-page letter from Block encouraged people to vote for conservative challenger Michael Gableman instead of Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler. Gableman eked out a victory in the April 1 contest.

“If (Butler) is defeated, a traditionalist majority is likely to re-emerge on the Supreme Court,” states the letter, which Block provided. “Polling has found this race to be very close. Your vote is critical.”

In determining the legality of the March mailing, the state appears to be focusing on whether the group sent the letters to its members only — or to a wider audience. The distinction could make a huge difference in who could pay for the mass mailing, what could be said in the letter and what must be disclosed publicly about it.

The lawyer for Americans for Prosperity said he expects the group to be cleared by the probe.

“We’re cooperating with the board,” said Michael Dean. “We’ve provided them with information they didn’t have when the review began.”

Dean added, “The mailing complied fully with the law.”

Officials with the Government Accountability Board were tight-lipped. State law bars its employees from talking about complaints or investigations.

Back in 1997, Block was the campaign manager for then-Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox.

The state Elections Board sued the pair and others, saying they broke the law by working with an outside interest group to run an off-the-books voter turnout effort in Wilcox’s campaign against Walt Kelly. The $200,000 turnout effort, funded by school-choice supporters, included sending out thousands of postcards tying Kelly to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Block settled his portion of the suit by agreeing to pay $15,000 and to stay out of politics from 2001 to 2004.

That was then.

The Government Accountability Board launched its recent probe after a top election lawyer turned over a letter he received March 29 from Block’s group.

Mike Wittenwyler, a partner at Godfrey & Kahn, said the note was addressed to a previous resident who died in 1998. Wittenwyler, who gave the letter to the state agency shortly after he received it, is not a member of Americans for Prosperity, a group that took its current name in 2003.

Godfrey & Kahn, incidentally, often represents the Journal Sentinel.

“To be clear, there was no complaint filed,” Wittenwyler wrote Friday in an e-mail. “Instead, the mailing was merely provided by me to the staff at the Government Accountability Board.”

Block said last week that he is certain that the mailer went just to the 14,000 members of his organization. He said the previous owner of Wittenwyler’s house, prominent University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Matthias Stelly, was a member of a previous incarnation of Americans for Prosperity, a group called the Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation.

Block said he understands why the state is putting so much effort into pursuing him and his group.

“We’re a target,” he said, citing Americans for Prosperity’s anti-tax positions. He then repeated this refrain: “So we don’t do anything without legal counsel.”

Probably not a bad idea for the guy.