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| This is still Hochmuth's LinkedIn profile. |
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Brad Schimel: Worse than J.B. Van Hollen
If you, like me, thought Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen was terrible as Wisconsin’s top prosecutor, Brad Schimel, the Republican nominee in this year’s race for Attorney General, is even worse than Van Hollen.
For starters, Schimel, as well as his Democratic challenger, Susan Happ, supports allowing drunk drivers to endanger the lives of law-abiding Wisconsinites and get away with only a traffic citation. However, unlike Happ, who has never driven drunk that I’m aware of, Schimel was busted for drunk driving back in 1990.
Additionally, Schimel has publicly stated that he thinks that the Wisconsin Attorney General’s office should nullify federal laws, even if they benefit Wisconsinites, claiming that he’ll “focus a lot more on protecting our state’s sovereignty” if elected. If the term “state sovereignty” is familiar to you, that’s because it was used by Southern segregationists like George Wallace in failed efforts to defend the Jim Crow system of racial discrimination that existed for over a century in many states following the Civil War and that Republicans want to re-implement nationwide.
Furthermore, Schimel has publicly defended corruption within the Republican Party of Wisconsin. When asked by the progressive organization One Wisconsin Now whether or not he’d investigate far-right Republican State Assemblyman Joel Kleefisch over writing legislation to allow a campaign donor to pay less in child support, Schimel responded by refusing to investigate Kleefisch and claiming that corruption was the “essence of democracy”. When Christopher Wiesmueller, the lawyer for disgraced former Scott Walker aide Darlene Wink, who was convicted of using a Milwaukee County government computer to campaign for Walker in the John Doe I probe, destroyed evidence related to Wink’s political activity, Schimel refused to prosecute Wiesmueller. When disgraced former Republican State Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen committed flagrant violations of campaign laws in the bipartisan Caucusgate scandal that also resulted in disgraced former Democratic State Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala serving time in prison for corruption, Jensen got his GOP allies in the Wisconsin Legislature to change the laws so that Schimel could let Jensen get away with corruption, which Schimel did.
Last, but certainly not least, Schimel has protected perverts from facing prison time as Waukesha County District Attorney. Schimel let Joel Hochmuth, a former Wisconsin Lutheran Evangelical Synod (WLES) official who was caught downloading hundreds of pornographic images of children, get away with only one year in prison when he could have faced far more time in prison (Hochmuth was later sentenced to four years imprisonment for violating the terms of his post-imprisonment probation). The reason why Hochmuth got favorable treatment from Schimel is because Hochmuth’s attorney was Paul Bucher, the former Waukesha County District Attorney who employed Schimel for 16 years.
Brad Schimel has a long track record of hypocrisy, far-right extremism, and defending crooks and perverts. Wisconsin can’t afford four years of Schimel as the state’s top prosecutor. Susan Happ, on the other hand, is, by far, the lesser of two evils in this race. While she’s great on some issues (such as cracking down on abusive practices by for-profit colleges) and terrible on other issues (such as corruption), at least she wouldn’t embarrass Wisconsin like Schimel would.
