One of the problems that the Sanders surge poses for Clinton is that Democrats say there’s a risk in taking him head on. Doing so could rally his supporters, alienate liberals the Democratic nominee will need in the fall of 2016 and elevate Sanders as a challenger.

“They’re not going to go after him publicly, and it’d be wrong to do so,” said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, who worked on then-President Clinton’s 1996 reelection bid. “She needs to keep slogging along and make the kinds of policy arguments that will eventually make some of the uniqueness around Sanders dissipate.”

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The Vermont senator has been able to raise money. His campaign brought in $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of its launch, a total surpassing the amounts raised by GOP Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas), who are all running for president. He's said he received 200,000 small dollar donations since announcing, with the amounts averaging $40.

Still, he won't have the cash that the Clinton juggernaut will have. And Sanders does not have Clinton's name recognition. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, she leads Sanders by 47 percentage points.

How Scott Walker Dismantled Wisconsin's Environmental Legacy
As governor of Wisconsin, the likely Republican presidential nomination-seeker consistently dismissed science and sided with polluters


When Wisconsin’s new state treasurer Matt Adamczyk took office in January, his first act was to order a highly symbolic change in stationery. Adamczyk, a Republican and one of three members of the board that oversees a small public lands agency, “felt passionately” that Tia Nelson, the agency’s executive secretary, should be struck from the letterhead. As soon became clear, his principal objection to Nelson, daughter of former Wisconsin governor and environmentalist-hero Gaylord Nelson, was that in 2007–08 she had co-chaired a state task force on climate change at the then-governor’s request. Adamczyk insisted that climate change is not germane to the agency’s task of managing timber assets, and that Nelson’s activities thus constituted “time theft.” When he couldn’t convince the two other members of the agency’s board to remove Nelson from the letterhead, he tried to get her fired. When that motion failed, he moved to silence her. In April the board voted 2–1 to ban agency staff from working on or discussing climate change while on the clock. The climate censorship at the public lands agency made national headlines.

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Since taking office in 2011 Walker has moved to reduce the role of science in environmental policymaking and to silence discussion of controversial subjects, including climate change, by state employees. And he has presided over a series of controversial rollbacks in environmental protection, including relaxing laws governing iron mining and building on wetlands, in both cases to help specific companies avoid regulatory roadblocks. Among other policy changes, he has also loosened restrictions on phosphorus pollution in state waterways, tried to restrict wind energy development and proposed ending funding for a major renewable energy research program housed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Most recently Walker has targeted the science and educational corps at the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which has responsibility for protecting and managing forests and wildlife, along with air and water quality. In his 2015–17 budget, released in February, he proposed eliminating a third of the DNR’s 58 scientist positions and 60 percent of its 18 environmental educator positions. (The cuts were approved by the state legislature’s budget committee in May, and the budget is currently making its way through the legislature.) Walker also attempted to convert the citizen board that sets policy for the DNR to a purely advisory body and proposed a 13-year freeze on the state’s popular land conservation fund—both changes that lawmakers rejected in the face of intense public objections.

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Kimberlee Wright, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, an environmental law center, works closely with DNR engineers and scientists to review and comment on pollution permits for activities such as wastewater disposal and groundwater pumping under the Clean Water Act. In the past, Wright says, the process was typically straightforward, and she and colleagues were routinely able to hammer out permits that followed the technical requirements of the law. But since Gov. Walker took office, she says, “We have not been able to settle one permit—we’ve had to litigate every single challenge. We’re often told by [DNR] staff, ‘We know you’re right, but you’re going to have to sue us because the people above me won’t let me issue a technically sufficient permit.’ That’s a really big difference—the interference in science-based decision-making is pretty complete.”

Former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold — long a champion of campaign finance reform — founded a political action committee that has given a mere 5% of its income to federal candidates and political parties.

Instead, nearly half of the $7.1 million that Progressives United PAC has spent since 2011 has gone to raising more money for itself, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets.org. The data also show the group has paid another sizable chunk of money on salaries or consulting fees for Feingold, his top aide and eight former staffers.

A top GOP official said it was incredible that Feingold's fund spent so little helping candidates and so much aiding his personal associates. Feingold is taking on Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican, in 2016 to try to win back his old U.S. Senate seat.

"Time and again, Feingold arrogantly says one thing and does another," said Joe Fadness, executive director of the state Republican Party, suggesting the Wisconsin Democrat's reform rhetoric doesn't match his political actions.

WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D) Proposes Anti-Super PAC Pledge In Race Against Ron Johnson (R)

Wisconsin Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Russ Feingold has asked incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to join him in pledging to keep outside money from super PACs and nonprofits out of their campaign.

If Johnson agrees, the so-called Badger Pledge would require the candidates to pay out half of the cost of any independent expense by a supportive group intervening in the race to a charity. Covered expenses would include express support or opposition of a candidate and the less-defined issue advocacy that includes an attack or boost of a particular candidate, but stops short of calling for their election or defeat.

The pledge would target television, radio and online advertising by independent groups. This would still allow independent expenditures by groups on flyers, direct mail, phone banks and door-to-door canvassing. "Senator Ron Johnson and I agree that in this election Wisconsinites deserve a substantive debate on the issues, a desire that could be derailed by limitless anonymous spending and the influence of third party groups," Feingold said in a statement.

Johnson's campaign didn't immediately answer a request for comment.

The picture in The Washington Post — a worried Green Bay Packers fan, game-ready with cheesehead and green- and gold-striped face — summed up the disappointing news. So did the headline: "Wisconsin ranked dead last in start-up activity."

In a year when new company formation rose nationally, Wisconsin dropped from 45th place to the bottom, according to the Kauffman Foundation's annual Index on Start-up Activity released in early June. Kauffman's comparison of the top 40 metro areas provided no solace. Milwaukee/Waukesha/West Allis, the state's biggest metro area, was second-last for start-up activity, above only Pittsburgh. And Milwaukee was last for its rate of new entrepreneurs, with just 130 for every 100,000 adults compared with 550 for every 100,000 adults in Austin, Texas, the top finisher.

Some quibbled with the data Kauffman chooses to measure; some pointed out that Wisconsin looks better in other rankings. But the bottom line remained: The state lags in entrepreneurship and innovation. The low level of start-up activity has profound consequences.

"The economic battleground of the 21st century is going to be for technical talent, and, outside of Madison, the state has had a shrinking pool of technical talent," said Greg Meier, a well-connected member of the state's start-up community. If we don't turn that around, the ability of our existing companies to innovate and our ability to create new, innovative companies will be severely limited."

The state's top jobs agency has written off $7.6 million in taxpayer-funded loans since it was created by Gov. Scott Walker about four years ago.

The write-offs include 28 different loans removed from the balance sheets of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., with some companies receiving multiple loans. The majority of those loans, which officials typically write off after determining the likelihood of collecting the debt is small, were awarded by the former state Department of Commerce, the predecessor to the WEDC.

One of those loans, which was awarded by the WEDC to Building Committee Inc., set off a firestorm of criticism in recent weeks after it was revealed that some of Walker's top aides and a powerful lobbyist pushed for a $500,000 unsecured loan to the now-defunct company, which was owned by Walker campaign contributor William Minahan. That loan was written off by the WEDC last year.

The $500,000 given to BCI amounts to about 7% of the loans — totaling $7,607,013 as of early June — that the agency has written off since it was created in 2011.