Mary Bottari's News Articles

Roll Call reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will join Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft and Intuit in withdrawing its financial support from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Roll Call rarely writes about ALEC, but did have an exhibition booth at the ALEC 2011 meeting in New Orleans.

Gates spokesman Chris Williams, while careful to note that Gates has never been a formal ALEC member, told the paper that it does not plan to renew its financial support for ALEC's education initiatives. "We have made a single grant, narrowly and specifically focused on providing information to ALEC-affiliated state legislators on teacher effectiveness and school finance," said Williams.

A federal court ruled yesterday that new election maps drawn by Wisconsin Republican lawmakers last year violated the Voting Rights Act and must be redrawn.

A panel of three judges ruled that Latino communities on the Southside of Milwaukee were disenfranchised by the overly partisan maps. The maps for Assembly districts 8 and 9 must be redrawn by the state legislature, which is now split 16-16 in the Wisconsin Senate, or the court will redraw them. However, the judges upheld all the other legislative and Congressional districts that Republicans drew last year stating that even though the maps caused problems for some one million voters and disrupted long-standing political relationships, the resulting population deviations were not large enough to permit judicial intervention under the law.

Recall elections for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican senators are likely to be held on June 5 under an agreement presented in court by lawyers for the recall committees, the state Government Accountability Board (GAB) and lawyers for the state officials.

Wisconsin "Governer" Scott Walker may have trouble spelling his job title in his latest email, but he has no trouble raising and spending money on ads to improve his image as the state braces for a high-stakes, high-dollar recall campaign.

Today, Walker will unleash a $1 million ad buy according to new sources. As of his last report, Walker has raised over $12 million, much of it from out-of-state donors writing checks as large as $250,000. Because of a quirk in Wisconsin's campaign law, Walker can raise unlimited sums during the pendency of the recall. When the election date is actually set, however, he must abide by state spending limits, including a $10,000 cap for individual contributions.