Thank You, Gov. Veto

Showing the level of prudence we've come to expect from our governor, Jim Doyle has summarily rejected a proposed campaign spending limit for the 2006 gubernatorial election.

Apparently, his challenger, US Rep Mark Green naively suggested that not only they limit the amount of money the two spend on the campaign to $1/WI resident (about $5.5 million), but he also ask that the two campaigns publicly denounce 527s from running attack ads this fall.

Mark Green is being, well, to put it frankly: Naive. I mean, did he really think Governor Doyle could accept such an offer. Doyle already has over $5.5M in his campaign fund so if he were to accept, that would functionally end his ability to raise money.

Does Green not realize that the primary way things get done in Madison these days is by contractors donating money to the Doyle campaign (see here or here)? If they stopped accepting these donations the governor's office would actually have to start a legitimate bidding process...which would be noble...but he'd have to train his staff on a whole new way of determining which corporation gets a state contract.

Right now Doyle's guidelines are pretty easy to follow: whoever gives the most money to Doyle's campaign wins the bid. In Green's simplistically ideal world the state contract would have to go to...get this...the lowest bidder! It would take months to train Doyle's staff with this new outlook.

Furthermore, I was really looking forward to a big money, mud-slinging campaign. Thanks, Gov. Doyle, for doing the right thing for a change.

Edit-
Then again, Doyle may have missed an opportunity here. He could have gotten his list of Wisconsinites from the Wisconsin's voter roles. Had he done that he would have found thousands, if not millions of more people living in Wisconsin than Green!