Was There an Earlier Hulsey Incident?

By now you’ve prob­a­bly heard the story of Madi­son state Rep. Brett Hulsey (D), who in August plead no con­test to dis­or­derly con­duct related to an inci­dent at a Lake Men­dota beach on July 4.  The state rep. was accused of “horse-playing and splash­ing water at” a small child as well as tak­ing pictures

Hulsey is mar­ried and has two children.

Since the inci­dent became pub­lic, even in lib­eral Madi­son, Hulsey’s been in dam­age con­trol mode for his behav­ior.  Most of what he’s been try­ing to do is blame the entire affair — the arrest, his charges, the fact the case became pub­lic — on Madi­son Mayor Paul Soglin, who Hulsey has never had a great rela­tion­ship with.  The pair con­stantly clashed when Hulsey was on the city coun­cil dur­ing a pre­vi­ous Soglin may­oral admin­is­tra­tion.  Dur­ing the 2011 Madi­son Mayor’s race, Hulsey openly backed the incum­bent Mayor Dave Cieslewicz.

Also dur­ing his dam­age con­trol attempt, Hulsey blamed the entire July inci­dent on Soglin because the mother of the lit­tle boy is a long­time Soglin aide.

Well, Soglin answered yes­ter­day, and after read­ing his side of events, I’m even more creeped out by Hulsey a lit­tle.  Appar­ently, this is not Hulsey’s first run in at a beach where he was found to be tak­ing pic­tures of kids and God knows what else.

Chan­nel 27 in Madi­son explains:

Madi­son Mayor Paul Soglin says a city life­guard com­plained about state law­maker Brett Hulsey’s behav­ior at a beach in 2008.

Soglin’s rev­e­la­tion comes after Hulsey (D-Madison) was tick­eted for dis­or­derly con­duct in July for rough-housing with a boy he did not know, and appar­ently pho­tograph­ing the boy at Spring Har­bor Beach.

In a state­ment, Soglin described the past episode involv­ing Hulsey: “In 2008, a Madi­son life­guard reported to a high rank­ing staff mem­ber that the life­guard was uncom­fort­able with Hulsey’s pres­ence at a city beach.”

Parks Depart­ment spokesper­son Laura Whit­more tells 27 News the male life­guard was work­ing at Spring Har­bor beach. Whit­more says the life­guard main­tained Hulsey was “act­ing creepy,” an iden­ti­cal descrip­tion to one relayed to a police offi­cer in July to describe a man’s under­stand­ing of past com­plaints about Hulsey at city beaches. Police reports also show infor­ma­tion on Hulsey’s past actions at beaches was relayed by Soglin’s assis­tant, Sally Miley. But Parks Direc­tor Kevin Briski told 27 News ear­lier this month there were no past com­plaints against Hulsey.

Whit­more says the lifeguard’s con­cerns about Hulsey in 2008 were gen­eral “and not action­able,” and did not result in any writ­ten doc­u­men­ta­tion. Police reports on the July inci­dent ref­er­ence pos­si­bly other com­plaints over Hulsey’s picture-taking, but Whit­more says the lifeguard’s con­cerns in 2008 were the only offi­cial objec­tions raised over Hulsey’s beach behavior.

Hulsey declined com­ment on the 2008 inci­dent. Hulsey pre­vi­ously told 27 News the July encounter with the child was mis­char­ac­ter­ized; the photo-taking was cen­tered on a sun­set; he was unaware of any past issues at a cty beach; and Soglin’s long-standing sup­port for Hulsey’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents may have moti­vated Soglin’s aide’s accusations.

Soglin says Hulsey owes city offi­cials an apol­ogy for sug­gest­ing they would com­pro­mise pro­fes­sional stan­dards in deal­ing with Hulsey’s case. Soglin also ques­tioned the sun’s posi­tion in July at Spring Har­bor beach at the time Hulsey claimed to be try­ing to cap­ture a sun­set with his photograph.

Hulsey made his name dur­ing the Capi­tol Siege last year.  It’s hard to see how the man can be taken seri­ously on any­thing after details like this come out.  For pete’s sake, these reports make it sound like we have an elected pedophile walk­ing the halls of the state capitol.

Stay away from the beach state Assem­bly­man.  Please!

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