Wisconsin

riversedge

(70,177 posts) Wed Dec 31, 2014, 06:09 AM Dec 2014

#JohnDoe emails: 'Dark side' was code for @ScottWalker campaign

Indeed--his campaign is the dark side of our beautiful Wisconsin!

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#JohnDoe emails: 'Dark side' was code for @ScottWalker campaign: http://bit.ly/1xxqUQa #wipolitics #p2 @TheDemocrats

John Doe emails: 'Dark side' was code for Scott Walker campaign

9 hours ago • By Dee J. Hall | Wisconsin State Journal, Mary Spicuzza | Wisconsin State Journal, Matthew DeFour | Wisconsin State Journal
(56) Comments

Scott Walker’s Milwaukee County staff had a code name for his gubernatorial campaign with which they secretly coordinated strategy and messaging nearly every day: “the dark side.”

The winking reference appears several times in emails that are among some 227,000 pages of records released Tuesday by Milwaukee County. The records, from 2009 and 2010, are among hundreds of thousands of documents seized by prosecutors in the John Doe investigation into Walker’s county executive office before he became governor and are now being released at the request of various media.......

Most of the correspondence involves routine county business, but many of the messages were sent using private email accounts.

County staff also used private emails to conduct campaign business and communicate with Walker and his campaign staff, sometimes during regular working hours. In one email from September 2009 with the subject line “county vs. dark side,” Walker’s county spokeswoman, Fran McLaughlin, warned Walker chief of staff Tom Nardelli and campaign manager Keith Gilkes about not crossing the two email systems.

“I think a REALLY STRONG reminder needs to go out to everyone on the list that NO emails from the dark side can be forwarded to our county email addresses or to other county employees,” McLaughlin wrote, describing how one employee had forwarded an email to a county employee that included email addresses for Gilkes and Walker campaign adviser R.J. Johnson. “My receiving isn’t illegal — and while she sent it on her own time — there should never be a connection.”....