You may have heard a little something lately about a big Scott Walker donor landing a $63M standardized testing contract. From the Journal-Sentinel:
The president and CEO of the Minnesota firm chosen to produce the new Wisconsin Forward Exam is a former Wisconsin Republican lawmaker who last year donated $10,000 to Gov. Scott Walker's re-election campaign. A spokeswoman for Susan Engeleiter of Data Recognition Corp. said the donation occurred months before the state issued its request for proposals and that DRC staff had no discussions with the governor or his aides about a potential contract. If your pay-to-play spidey-sense is going off right about now, it might be because this contract was awarded by the WI Dept of Administration, the same agency that moved heaven and earth for another $10,000 Walker donor called Building Committee Inc. But maybe, just maybe, this is all on the level and the well-timed maximum donation was just coincidental. It is just one donation and one contract after all, and the Journal-Sentinel seems to nudge us towards this conclusion: Engeleiter contributed $10,000 to the Republican governor's 2014 re-election campaign, her largest political contribution in nearly two decades, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Before the Walker donation, Engeleiter had contributed $100 to $200 to legislative candidates and $500 to Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers' 2013 campaign. But the MJS story leaves us severely wanting for context. For instance, back in 2009 Engeleiter's company won a $201M contract with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that also featured some very fortuitously-timed donations, including $6,000 from Engeleiter. And while the story mentions her past as a state legislator, it neglects to mention that she was a member of ALEC before it was cool (see pg. 9 of the 1987 ALEC Leadership Directory).And we're not even scratching the surface here. Go below the orange thing for a glimpse into an entire family of WIGOP kingmakers…