“I find people who bring that up to be stunningly disparaging to the citizens who have just accepted positions to these boards,” he said. “What you’re assuming is that they will fail to do their duty because they’ll be so blinded by partisan allegiance and I just don’t expect that to happen.”

Kennedy says he has continued to learn from his time as the state’s chief elections regulator, but said there is little in the way of the GAB’s major initiatives that he would have done differently.

“There is very little to criticize that is not coming from some personal bias … in the sense that it went against their self interest.”

He said despite changes to the laws and the model of campaign finance and election regulation, Wisconsin’s culture of clean government remains entrenched among those who run for public office.

“There is less problems in Wisconsin than there are in other states because there is a culture of asking for advice from the former ethics board, from the former elections board,” he said. “We shouldn’t overlook that. That doesn’t mean that its better moving forward, but we do start with a heads up than other states because we do have a culture and the people who run for office come from that. That’s why we don’t have three governors in jail like you do in Illinois.”

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