Though gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., will officially have to finish his campaign without nearly $500,000 after a state Supreme Court ruling Tuesday, his campaigning efforts will not likely suffer as his plans for the final days prior to the election do not depend on the money.
The court postponed its decision until after the election on an appeal by Green, who had lost $467,844 in Political Action Committee money, after the state Elections Board declared the money illegal.
Debate over the legality of the money has been heated in past weeks, but the Green campaign said the ruling would not affect its final push for the Nov. 7 elections.
""We've set the money at issue in this case aside in a separate account where it's not going to be touched,"" Green campaign spokesperson Mike Prentiss said, ""So everything we've got planned for the last six days here was put together with the assumption that we would not have access to that money in the first place.""
However, Gov. Jim Doyle's camp has questioned the integrity of the separate account, saying it is transparent only to the Green campaign, therefore there is no guarantee that the money is not being spent.
""Congressman Green won't let anyone outside of his campaign monitor the funds—and there are troubling signs that he may in fact be spending the money,"" the Doyle campaign said in a press statement.
The statement pointed to increased recent spending by Green on television ads, which totaled over $600,000 this week.
Prentiss dismissed such allegations.
""That is a flat out lie,"" he said. ""It is 100 percent untrue and they know it, and they are lying because this race is slipping away from them. The reason why we've increased our television ad buys in the last several days is because our fundraising continues to exceed our expectations.""
According to Prentiss, Green raised more than any gubernatorial challenger in Wisconsin history and is therefore optimistic despite the court's ruling.
UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin agreed with Prentiss, saying the ruling came too late to have a significant impact.
""Even if [the court] had ruled today and said they could have the money, there's not a whole lot of time to buy more ads,"" Franklin said.
""It may have something to do with the Green campaign's debt at the end of all this, but I don't think it really affects their strategy. It's harder to spend $500,000 than you think it is sometimes.""
