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Unless you hang out in posh watering holes with America’s far-right billionaires, chances are that you don’t know Diane Hendricks. But Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s anti-middle-class, union-whacking governor, knows her and loves her… a lot.
In fact, Scott loves Diane at least half-a-million dollars worth. That’s how much the heiress to ABC Supply (the nation’s largest roofing and siding wholesaler) has put down so far on Walker’s desperate effort to avoid being only the third governor in U.S. history to lose a recall election. His day of reckoning is tomorrow, and his last bastion of support is a phalanx of union-hating, out-of-state billionaires like Hendricks and the infamous Koch brothers, who’ve erected a multimillion-dollar wall of money around him. “We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin,” deadpanned David Koch of New York City. “We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years,” he boasted of his extremist political attack machine, adding that, “We’re going to spend more.”
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As of last week, Scott had amassed $30 million from friends like David – a sum comparable to what Mitt Romney’s campaign raised to win the GOP presidential nomination! Such Koch cronies as the DeVos family, founders of the Amway marketing empire, chipped in a quarter-million for the right-wing’s nationwide “Save Scott” campaign, and Foster Friess, the evangelical millionaire who dumped a ton of cash on Rick Santorum’s theocratic run for the presidency this year, is in for $100,000.
There’s an old rule in big business: If you don’t have any sense behind you, pour in dollars. From the Edsel to “new Coke” – and now to Scott Walker – the strategy has been to overcome all product defaults with PR cash. Tomorrow, we’ll see what Koch cash can buy. And if it buys the governorship of Wisconsin – look out where you live.
“Political Money Talks,” The New York Times, May 29, 2012.
“Money Rolls In To Fight Recall,” The New York Times, May 30, 2012.
“Scott Walker Gets $1.3Million From Koch Summit Attendees to Fight Recall,” www.alternet.org, May 4, 2012.