As governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker has been working to find a way to finance a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team. As is often the case in professional sports, the team’s owners don’t want to pay for it all themselves, so Walker has suggested using $220 million in state bonds to finance part of the deal. There are other competing ideas in circulation, and it is not clear which will emerge a winner in the final decision. But there is little doubt Walker will end up helping steer taxpayer money to the Bucks’ very wealthy owners, in the hope it will be repaid in future taxes.
All that could soon be the subject of Republican grumbling, especially among those conservatives who oppose public funding for big arenas and stadiums that make big money for team owners. And for Walker there is an additional problem — one of the Bucks’ billionaire owners, investor Marc Lasry, has jumped on the Hillary Clinton bandwagon in a big way. There was no doubt that Lasry, a former top Obama bundler, would support Clinton. But Lasry made news by going public with his fundraising ambitions for the Clinton campaign.
“Everybody has seemed pretty excited,” Lasry told Bloomberg Politics Wednesday, explaining that he hopes to bundle $270,000 for Clinton’s campaign in just its first week — and of course, there will be much, much more later. “It’s been a long time coming, and now there’s a huge amount of excitement behind her,” Lasry added. “You will start seeing it in the numbers as people start donating.”
Which will probably lead Republicans — especially those free-market conservatives — to ask: That’s all well and good, and Lasry is free to support any political candidate he chooses, but why does Walker have to help him so much?
A spokesperson for Walker’s political operation directed inquiries to the governor’s office, which did not respond.
I asked Charlie Sykes, a prominent Milwaukee conservative radio host, for his thoughts on the matter. He seemed surprised at Lasry’s public aggressiveness on Clinton’s behalf. “Right now he [Lasry] is expecting a Republican governor, and a Republican legislature, to approve a multi-million dollar subsidy for his basketball team’s new arena — a huge political lift,” Sykes said, via email. “He’s not making it any easier, trust me. He must really, really like Hillary. Or maybe he’s just politically tone deaf.”
I asked Sykes whether any of it might hurt Walker politically in terms of a presidential run. “It only hurt’s Walker’s ability to carry water for Lasry on the arena,” Sykes answered. “Which was a damn heavy bucket to begin with.”
