Multimillionaire Johnson Thumbs Nose at Voters as He Spends Over $350,000 of Personal Finances on TV Ads Starting Today
MADISON — Multimillionaire U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson is spending over $350,000 on a television ad blitz today at the same time has he refused to get his own fiscal house in order and failed to meet a deadline to let the people of Wisconsin know about his personal finances. Johnson has said he will spend $10-$15 million of his personal fortune and told George Will he will spend “All of it” in hopes of buying the U.S. Senate election.
According to the Secretary of the U.S. Senate and the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, candidates for federal Senate elections are required to file Personal Financial Disclosure Reports so that the public can view the candidate’s income, assets, liabilities and various positions held outside of government – and make a judgment on their record.
Johnson failed to meet the deadline and has delayed disclosure of the resources he is using to fund his campaign until July – after the filing deadline for Wisconsin U.S Senate candidates. This means voters won’t know what Johnson may be hiding until after the filing deadline for other candidates has passed.
“If Johnson can’t get his own fiscal house in order, how can he make any claim to get the country’s in order?” asked Mike Tate, Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “When asked how much of his own money he will be putting into his campaign, the multimillionaire Johnson said ‘All of it.’ If Terrence Wall and other candidates, past and present, can meet deadlines for reports and comply with the law, surely Johnson can do the same. Johnson has taken an arrogant approach to Wisconsin’s proud tradition of open and clean government by hiding from the public the financial resources he is using to fund his campaign.”
Johnson’s $350,000 ad blitz offers no solutions to the challenges people face and he has avoided providing voters his positions on the issues or any ideas on how he would reduce the deficit or create jobs. In fact, the first and only time Johnson was pressed to seriously talk about issues and solutions, he endorsed Russ Feingold’s opposition to the Wall Street bailouts.
Read the letter to Ron Johnson here
