PLEASE BE IT TO YOUR ATTENTION
URGENT MESSAGE OF BUSINESS

MY NAME IS MR HERBERT KOHL AND I AM A UNITED STATES SENATOR OF THE STATE OF WISCONSIN. I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE IN AN URGENT TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS TO REMOVE $1 MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS FROM MY CAMPAIGN FOR RE-ELECTION IN 2012.

All kidding aside, it’s unfair to compare the 2012 re-election campaign of Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) to a Nigerian scam artist, because no Nigerian scam artist would ever go an entire quarter without making a single dime. But that’s where Senator Kohl’s fundraising stands, according to The Hill:

After loaning his campaign account $1 million late last year, a signal that he’ll run for another term in 2012, Sen. Herb Kohl’s (D-Wis.) report showed no fundraising actvity in the first quarter of this year.

Kohl, who still hasn’t officially announced his 2012 intentions, didn’t raise any cash during the first three months of the year, nor did he loan his account any additional funds. Kohl, who owns the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, has the ability to self-fund.

That’s right: during a three-month stretch in which his home state of Wisconsin was Ground Zero of the national political conversation – with emotions running high over Scott Walker’s battle with the unions, with progressive and union activists pouring money into a previously sleepy judicial election, while on the GOP side Paul Ryan increasing elevated himself to a national figure setting a budget agenda the President is merely following – Senator Kohl didn’t report receiving a single political donation. Not a penny, not a dime, not a pfennig. Nobody in the entire state looked at this landscape and thought, “hey, I should show my support to an incumbent Democratic Senator up for re-election next year.”

One has to assume that Kohl isn’t running, and that he’ll clear the field for Russ Feingold to try to recover his old job. (Whether Ryan is interested in that job is another day’s story). If he is running, well, you can see for yourself what enthusiasm he generates.