Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle officially named Greg Paradise to the State Elections Board Tuesday, replacing a position Patrick Hodan resigned from last week.
Assembly Speaker John Gard, R-Peshtigo, nominated Paradise Friday. Paradise previously served on the board from May 1995 to June 2001.
However, some controversy has developed around Paradise's appointment, due to possible ties with gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis.
During his previous term, Paradise, a Madison attorney, served on the board with Don Millis, an attorney for the Green's campaign.
But Green's campaign insists Gard acted independently in his selection.
"Mark Green didn't nominate Paradise and had no part of the process," Luke Punzenberger, spokesperson for Green's campaign said.
Yet the association has prompted Doyle's campaign to question the partisan ties of the newly appointed member.
"The nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign maintains a database that shows Paradise contributed $500 to Green's campaign and that it was the first time he donated to a gubernatorial campaign," Anne Lupardus, press secretary for Doyle's campaign, said.
Lupardus added Green is trying to "re-engineer the Elections Board, having lost on the merits of his case in which the board voted his nearly $468,000 in out-of-state political action committee money was illegal."
The SEB voted on Aug. 30 ordering Green to rid his campaign of $467,844 of a $1.3 million transfer he made from his Congressional campaign account to his gubernatorial campaign account. Green made the transfer one day before the Elections Board ruled contributions transferred from federal accounts to state accounts can only come from Political Action Committees registered in Wisconsin.
Hodan, a Republican member of the board at the time of the order, recused himself from the vote because his law firm represented Green's campaign. The vote ultimately came to 5-2 decision, with four Democrats and a Libertarian member voting against Green and two Republican members siding with him. Another member was not present for the vote.
Mike McCabe, executive director of the WDC, said the Elections Board has had a long history of being partisan and inconsistent in enforcing campaign finance laws.
"Paradise served on the board before, and the board was no better then than it is now," he said. "He was part of the board when it was routinely failing to enforce our campaign finance laws, and the board is just as softened to enforcing the laws now."
In addition, according to McCabe, the Federal Election Commission said Tuesday it agreed to review a complaint the WDC filed Sept. 27 alleging Green had violated the federal Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and should have to return all but $43,128 of his $1.3 million transfer.
Paradise's appointment is effective immediately and will expire in May 2007. He will join the SEB today in Brookfield, where it will likely review if Green violated the terms regarding state laws in the BCRA.
