County Treasurer Lied About Political Mailer?

David Cullen. Photo from Milwaukee County.

Milwaukee County Treasurer David Cullen has become the poster boy for how cronyism still works in county government.

Readers may recall that Cullen worked on a plan with Clerk George L. Christenson and Register of Deeds Israel Ramón to get each of them a $33,000 or 36% pay hike over four years. As stunning as the proposed raise was, it was all the more notable as all three positions have long been seen as sinecures that are more like part-time jobs.

Yet the county board approved the pay hike, only to back down in the face of growing controversy and a veto of the legislation by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. The board voted instead for an 11.5% pay raise, increasing the pay from $91,483 to $102,004.

Then there’s the matter of the county treasurer’s son Eddie Cullen, who was handed the job of communications manager for the county board and county clerk’s office. As Urban Milwaukee reported, the job notice was only posted for county employees and there was only one candidate for the job: Eddie Cullen.

Cullen was hired by County Clerk Christenson, who admitted the county typically interviews three to five candidates for an open job and then ranks the candidates. Not this time. Both Christenson and Dave Cullen denied that the son was hired as a favor for the father. But Christenson worked with Cullen on the pay raise scheme, and the two are so friendly they are shown together with Ramon in a photo included in an informational brochure Cullen sent to county constituents.

Oh, and that mailer, it’s now clear, was more like political literature paid for by the taxpayers.

In April, not long after the pay hike squabble erupted, Cullen sent out a four-page, five-photo, full-color brochure that cost $24,116 to produce and was mailed to homes in the county, all paid for by the taxpayers, as Dan Bice and Vanessa Swales reported. Cullen described this as a “newsletter to constituents,” but it was mailed out as close to the election as possible under state law (three days before the legal cutoff for such mailers) and it felt more like a campaign brochure, entitled “Trusted Financial Stewardship” and including warm family photos of Cullen and grandchildren.

But the giveaway was that it was mailed to just 43,887 homes in Milwaukee County which has 389,247 households. So how is that more than 345,360 households, nearly 89% of those in the county, didn’t need the information in this newsletter?

Enter Attorney Dan M. Adams, who takes the role of a public citizen very seriously. Adams is the director of Milwaukee Works, which has done polling on politicians and political issues, and has gotten involved in such issues as the public subsidy for the Milwaukee Brewers and the referendum to increase funding for Milwaukee Public Schools, both of which he opposed.

Adams sent a public records request to Cullen asking how he selected the households to receive that brochure. According to Adams, he got the run-around from Cullen until Adams threatened to file a lawsuit and depose him in court

“That’s absolutely false,” Cullen said in an interview with Urban Milwaukee. “I’ve been more than cooperative with his requests.” He noted that he told Adams that he used Badger Votes to create the list of 43,887 homes.

But how did Badger Votes decide which 43,887 homes to include, Adams wanted to know. “In that case, in my experience with Badger Votes, there is certainly an (1) email quote for the list sought that would have been received by whoever made the request for a particular list. There would also be an (2) email containing the electronic file of the list, and an (3) invoice for that purchase,” he responded via email to Cullen. “What is your rationale for not producing these records?”

That was on June 20. Adams has yet to hear back from Cullen. So Adams made a public request to the Wisconsin Elections Commission for any list of voters requested, and sure enough there was a request from Cullen’s wife Julie Cullen, requesting a list of any county voters who voted in three most recent low-turnout elections, in the 2023 spring primary, the 2022 partisan primary, and the 2020 partisan primary. In short, this was a list of the tiny minority of residents in the county most likely to turn out in this August’s primary election.

“He flat out lied when he told the press that he didn’t consider elections in sending out this mailer,” Adams charges.

The story by Bice and Swales reports that Cullen “said he did not have his campaign in mind when he sent the mailer. He said he would have sent the same document whether or not he was running for re-election.”

Then there is the role of Eddie Cullen on what was clearly a campaign brochure. As communications manager for the county clerk’s office, he put in hours working to produce the mailer. And the finished mailer features a photo of Dave Cullen with “his son” Eddie “and his grandson.” Yes, the whole family was involved in this lovely brochure paid for by taxpayers to help get the County Treasurer reelected.

And Dave Cullen clearly felt it was needed. While he has sometimes run unopposed for his office, this time around he faces a strong challenger in Ted Chisholm, who is running as a reform candidate.  The position is a partisan one and there is no Republican candidate running, so whoever takes first in the low-turnout August 13 primary will effectively win the job of county treasurer.