High Court Spending Continues Record Soar
The flood of money continues, as outside groups have spent $18.1 million on reported independent expenditures and secret phony issue ads in the Supreme Court race, more than three-and-a-half times the previous record.
MADISON - Two weeks away from the April 4 elections, candidate and group spending in the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court stands at more than $20.2 million – smashing state and national records for spending in a judicial contest.
Outside group spending for Daniel Kelly now exceeds that for Janet Protasiewicz by $4.2 million.
About 30 outside electioneering groups have spent $18.1 million on reported independent expenditures and secret phony issue ads in the race, more than three-and-a-half times the previous record. Groups backing Kelly or opposing Protasiewicz have doled out $9.9 million. Groups backing Protasiewicz or opposing Kelly have spent $5.7 million. (About $2.5 million in group spending was directed at the two candidates who lost in the primary.)
The top-spending groups behind Protasiewicz were:
A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund, $5 million on television and online ads and mailings;
Wisconsin Conservation Voters, $785,836 on campaign literature and brochures and payroll expenses;
Organizing Empowerment PAC, $532,500 on phone and other voter mobilization activities;
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, $476,755 on radio and digital ads, canvassing, and mailings;
One for All Committee, $450,000 on videos and online advertising.
The top-spending groups behind Kelly were:
Fair Courts America, $4.6 million on television and radio ads and mailings;
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), $3.1 million on broadcast advertising;
American Principles Project PAC, $795,894 on digital ads;
Wisconsin Alliance for Reform, $600,000 on television ads;
Americans for Prosperity, $374,531 on online advertising, mailings, and canvassing.
Both WMC and the Alliance for Reform spent most of their money on television ads. In two instances – here and here – the groups used the same television ads, which accused Protasiewicz of handing down a light sentence for a man convicted of kidnapping and raping a 15-year-old girl.
The most recent reports filed by the candidates showed they spent a total of $2.12 since they entered the race last year, through Feb. 6. Spending was led by Protasiewicz who has doled out $1.37 million, which is nearly six times the $237,719 spent by Kelly.
Whoever wins will determine the ideological balance of the court, which is currently controlled 4-3 by conservatives. Protasiewicz, who is viewed as a liberal, and Kelly, a former conservative Supreme Court justice, are vying to replace a retiring conservative justice.
Protasiewicz and Kelly moved on to the April ballot because they were the top finishers in the Feb. 21 primary, knocking off two other candidates who had spent a combined $507,699 through Feb. 6.
The next batch of fundraising and spending reports by the candidates are due March 27 and will likely show that several million dollars more in candidate spending. (Other news outlets, such as WisPolitics, have reported higher figures than the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Our numbers are based only on figures already reported to the state by candidates and independent expenditure groups or that we could estimate from so-called “issue advocacy” groups.)
But spending to date has already surpassed the record $10 million spent in 2020 on a Wisconsin Supreme Court race as well as the national record of $15 million spent on an Illinois judicial race in 2004.
For more information about all of the groups involved in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, please visit the Democracy Campaign’s Hijacking Campaign 2023 feature. For more information about candidate fundraising and spending and their top contributors, please go here.
MADISON - I hope your week is going well. Here are a couple of great articles that my colleague Iuscely Flores has written for us in the past few days.
While women make up a growing majority in the workforce, their pay lags behind that of men doing the same jobs. Senator Smith discusses what we can do to move towards pay equity.
Paying women less than men for the same work is wage theft, plain and simple. The gap is even more significant for women of color, women with disabilities and women who did not graduate with a high school degree.
During the pandemic, the American Rescue Plan Act provided supplemental funding so child care centers across the nation could afford to keep their doors open. With the end of the emergency declaration, that funding will end, and child care centers are wrestling with how to avoid passing that cost onto the families.
Life happens. Sometimes, a person can’t go to school full-time because they are caring for a child, a family member or a loved one. If your care responsibilities prevent you from taking classes at least half-time, you won’t qualify for some types of student aid. Governor Evers’ budget increases eligibility to those who are going to school at least a quarter time. It also allows for aid to be used over the span of more semesters, reducing barriers to entry for those caring for family members and loved ones.
Senator Smith writes about how Wisconsin can use our projected $7 billion budget surplus to fix past shortfalls in state funding and improve services and infrastructure for all Wisconsinites.
Governor Evers’ plan to invest $750 million for broadband expansion makes a huge stride in connecting all of Wisconsin access to high-speed internet. Connecting those households that are hardest to reach in unserved areas of the state will be a terrific boost to our economy, making it easier for folks to access healthcare, education or create home-based business startups. We only need to make this one-time investment for the improvements to be evident decades from now.
Increasing road aids to local towns, villages and counties is another example of one-time investments that will reap long-term benefits. Many of our roads and bridges are in disrepair or need replacement. Making investments in our physical infrastructure will increase the safety of our roads and bridges and reduce damage to vehicles from aging infrastructure, sparing families and businesses costly repairs.
Another example of a failed funding formula is the one that supports our Pre K-12 public education system. This problem dates all the way back to 1993, when a “temporary” revenue freeze was made permanent. Districts that happened to spend a lot in 1993 were able to continue collecting that higher level of revenue, leaving districts that were relatively more frugal behind.
Throughout the entire state, the lack of affordable childcare has caused problems for working families. We aren’t alone – this is a national problem, and has been exacerbated by closures stemming from the pandemic. Most brain development happens in the first six years of life, and support for young children yields dividends years down the road as they attend school and venture into the working world. It’s only right that we do what we can to ensure safe and reliable child care so Wisconsin can become a national leader in early-childhood learning.
And I was also heartened by a piece of legislation to honor César Chavez. My colleague Iuscely Flores wrote about it, and about the struggle for the rights of undocumented workers here in Wisconsin:
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