A lot can happen in four weeks, but as of today this doesn’t look to be a good election for Wisconsin Democrats.

The top of the ticket, gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke, has had a floundering campaign since the revelations that her campaign is based on a grab bag of other people’s ideas. Their attorney general candidate, Susan Happ, has a major ethics problem. The Sixth Congressional District appears to be the only place where they might have a chance of flipping the seat, but even if that happens Mark Harris will be in the wrong party in the dictatorship of the majority that is the U.S. House of Representatives.

Democrats have high hopes of flipping the state Senate to Democratic control. But state Democratic leadership has managed to alienate a lot of Democrats in one of those most flippable districts, the 17th, by recruiting a candidate to run instead of the original Democrat who ran.

Perhaps Senate Democratic leadership wasn’t counting on the frowned-upon candidate’s wife, Rita Wittwer, to start writing letters to newspapers in the Senate district:

This guy certainly had all the experience that a Senate candidate for a very rural district should possess. He had a P.O. box and rented a room in the district for a little over three years. He was mentored by and worked a bit over a year for a U.S. senator who barely remembers him. He was a law clerk of questionable merit for a Republican judge. He has a law degree but has never practiced law. Aside from his university years, he lived his life in urban Waukesha, graduating from a private high school. …

This was the beginning of the disenfranchisement of the voters in the 17th Senate District. In and of itself, a primary is not necessarily a bad thing. However, the Senate Democratic leader didn’t like leaving anything to chance — or, should I say, to the voters. He decided that he should endorse his chosen one and at the Democratic convention purposely failed to mention Ernie as the other candidate. That didn’t exactly go over well with our supporters and they made their feelings known to “his leadership.” Not that their views mattered. They were completely ignored. …

Losing an election is unbelievably painful. Losing an election because of political manipulation is even worse. To add insult to injury, we found out a few days ago that the list of supporters that we fought so hard to get was given to the chosen one without our permission. How special is that? Because our website was created under the Senate Demmocratic umbrella and because we loaded the names of anyone with an email address into our website for ease in communicating, the Senate Democratic hierarchy believes that they own our names and have the right to use them as they see fit.

Meanwhile, Burke probably needs to replace her campaign’s press people after this embarrassment, reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Telling reporters they can’t interview people at a political rally is like trying to take away Ted Nugent’s guns. You might get your wango tangoed.

At least three journalists ran into this restriction while covering Michelle Obama’s appearance in Milwaukee on [Sept. 29] on behalf of Mary Burke, Democratic candidate for governor.

But the White House, if I may refer to the first lady’s communications director that way, says it was a mistake that won’t be repeated.

“It is not our policy. This was an open press event. If anyone either from the Burke campaign or from our team obstructed a reporter from speaking with folks who were there, that was an error,” I was told Thursday by Maria Cristina “MC” Gonzalez Noguera.

There was no security reason for it, and really no reason at all.

“This is a case of an overzealous staff person,” she said.

That excessive zeal infected other Burke and White House staffers at the rally, held at the Wisconsin Center. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Meg Kissinger, who was in the corral of media workers at the back of the hall, was stopped twice as she talked to people over the dividing ropes while waiting for the speeches to begin.

“I thought it was a joke. I started laughing,” she said. Then she spread the word on Twitter and said this on Facebook: “To say that I was creeped out is an understatement. This is what reporters do in America: we speak to people. At least that’s how I’ve been doing things — at all kinds of political events — since 1979.”

I immediately clicked the like button. Her post went crazy on the Internet and was trending all over the place. The Madison chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists jumped in to condemn the curbed press access and cited other times at both Democratic and Republican events when the media were limited on where and whom they could interview.

Fans of press freedom, and, yes, there are some left, praised Kissinger for exposing such a ridiculous rule and then interviewing anyone she darn well pleased. Opponents of Burke seized the opportunity to say, see, she would make a lousy governor who will keep all the people’s quotes for herself.

The partisan attacks worry Burke campaign spokesman Joe Zepecki. He called the Journal Sentinel newsroom and tried to have the mention of press restrictions deleted from the online news article. Editors refused. Zepecki then complained bitterly in emails to Kissinger and said it wasn’t news, nor was her inclusion in the article that people at the rally who needed to sit down were having trouble finding chairs.

Zepecki later told me no other reporters mentioned any of this in their news accounts. That just proves Kissinger is the only one who got it right. We can’t have politicians or their staffs dictating how news is covered, because you know they’d love to.

Afternoon First Amendment violation update: Speaking of “We can’t have politicians or their staffs dictating how news is covered,” Wisconsin Reporter reports on itself:

Wisconsin Reporter was barred from covering a campaign rally Tuesday in Madison for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke and featuring first lady Michelle Obama.

Melissa Baldauff, communications director for the state Democratic Party, informed Wisconsin Reporter on Monday it wasn’t allowed to attend the event at the Overture Center because the online publication isn’t a legitimate news source.

This marks the second time in about a week the Burke camp has dictated press coverage of a campaign fundraiser in Wisconsin headlined by the first lady. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Meg Kissinger reported White House and Burke staff tried to block reporters from talking to crowd members Sept. 29 in Milwaukee.

Free press advocates denounced the decision.

Carol O’Leary, president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association board of directors, called the handling of Wisconsin Reporter’s request an assault on free press and criticized Obama and the Burke campaign for trying to control information released to the public.

“They are picking who they want to cover their stories … It’s not transparency,” O’Leary said.

The Madison chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, which expressed disappointment with Burke and Obama for trying to prevent reporters from speaking to the audience in Milwaukee, supports wide media access to campaign functions.

“It seems to me that Wisconsin Reporter ought to be able to attend the event and report on it,” said Mark Pitsch, president of the local Society of Professional Journalists, a national journalism group.

Baldauff, who agreed to speak to Wisconsin Reporter on Monday outside the offices of the Democratic Party and Burke for Wisconsin, initially attributed the denial to a lack of space — even though a request for media credentials was submitted Saturday, shortly after the Burke campaign sent a news release outlining the logistics.

But that answer changed when Baldauff, who repeatedly declined to explain the process for selecting which media outlets can participate, was told Wisconsin Reporter would be doing a story on press being turned away from the political fundraiser.

“Well, you’re not the press though, so, thanks,” Baldauff said as she left the hallway and closed an office door.

Someone should tell Burke that should she get elected, she’s not going to be able to pick and choose which media talks to her.