TLS EXCLUSIVE: A hefty contribution made by Rich Roberts to the campaign of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, landed the Doctor with threatening emails at his company, TLS has exclusively learned.
When unions across the country were pouring many millions of dollars into Wisconsin to remove the Governor, Rich Roberts – after checking that Governor Walker’s values were very similar to many Torah values regarding family, marriage, Israel, etc, decided to donate $50,000 to the Governor’s reelection campaign. But Roberts didn’t expect the donation to be publicized.
“I never contemplated that my donation might be made public nor that there would be any negative consequences to it”, Rich Roberts tells TLS. “Apparently, the election was on a Tuesday and on the Wednesday before the election the contributions to the Governor’s reelection campaign were made public in accordance with the election regulations. I also never contemplated that my donation might be the second largest donation, in the country, to his campaign.”
As a result, Roberts was listed as one of the major contributors to Governor Walker’s reelection campaign.
“That is when things got ugly”, Roberts says.
“On the next day, the Thursday before the election, I received emails from management at my company there had been two threatening emails sent to me through my company’s website”, Roberts tells TLS. ”The emails said that I was “anti-worker”, called me bad names, and said that I must move my company out of Philadelphia. These members of my management, who advanced through the ranks from hourly workers to now being members of management, were very angry at what they perceived as blatantly false renditions of my attitude towards “workers”. These people have seen how generous and caring I have been towards my employees for decades.”
Moreover, the company had been sold several months ago and all of the employees were about to receive very large payments for their stock options.
“The writers of the emails were too incompetent to have searched information about me to realize that I could no longer move the company from Philadelphia, even if I had wanted to, since the company had recently been sold.”
Roberts adds, “when I am threatened, my strong inclination is to fight back harder than before. I received a request for an interview from the Associated Press but I declined to be interviewed since a political campaign needs to manage the information flow themselves. I also did not respond directly to the authors of the two threatening emails. However, I contacted the Walker campaign that day, told them what had happened, and I proceeded to wire transfer another $50,000 to them on the next day.”
Governor Walker won a very strong recall election victory four days later. The next morning, Wednesday morning, Governor Walker called Roberts and apologized for the threatening emails that he had received.
“He then said that “apparently you decided to double down”. He expressed his appreciation. I told him that he should remain a person of integrity, regardless of the personal price that he might pay, and that the people of his state are fortunate that they have him as their leader. He has put his state on a fiscally healthy path and employment is rising in Wisconsin.” TLS.
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