Last Tuesday’s election saw high levels of voting in a spring election despite the new voter ID law. But it also had an eye-watering amount of spending from big-money donors—much of it from anonymous donors. Unsurprisingly, the best-financed candidates won, except in some of the smaller local races in which candidates went door to door meeting voters and organized grassroots groups had an impact.
Money Talks
In the bigger races—the presidential primaries, state Supreme Court, Milwaukee County executive, and Milwaukee mayor—the candidates and groups who spent the most money won. According to reporting from Politico, the Anyone-but-Donald Trump folks (basically pro-Texas Sen. Ted Cruz) spent more than 10-1 to Trump, or $4.6 million to $394,000. That doesn’t, we assume, include the hours of anti-Trump campaigning on the publicly owned radio airwaves.
On the Democratic side, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won a whopping 57% to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 43%. Sanders’ campaign also outspent Clinton’s 2-1, with $2.4 million to $1.1 million, according to Politico.
In the state Supreme Court race, according to figures from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (WDC) through March 21, outside allegedly independent groups spent $2.7 million on Justice Rebecca Bradley’s behalf, while groups supporting her rival, Appeals Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg, spent $710,000—a difference of about 4 to 1 in favor of Bradley.
Closer to home, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele won re-election after spending at least $3.7 million on his campaign, although the final tally is estimated to be more than $5 million. Abele’s wall-to-wall campaign messaging—mostly negative—trumped the $210,000 raised by his opponent, state Sen. Chris Larson. Finally, and not surprisingly, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett won an overwhelming victory against Alderman Bob Donovan. Barrett spent just over $533,000 this year on his race to Donovan’s $103,000.
The Stop-Trump Movement Starts
Initially political pundits confidently and authoritatively said, “Trump can never win—his campaign will slowly fade away.” But they didn’t understand this election year of discontent or the marketing skills and unconventional campaign style of Donald J. Trump. When the Republican adults in the room finally realized that Trump could get the nomination or, more realistically, that he would enter the convention with the most support and delegates but short of the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination, they realized that they were in a lose-lose situation. Trump, if he gets the nomination, could not only lose the presidential election but also take down local and state Republican candidates across the country, or he could be denied the nomination, leading to a raucous convention, dividing the party and perhaps literally leaving blood on the streets of Cleveland.
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The Republicans’ problem wasn’t created by Trump’s entrance in the race. Many observers marveled at how the Republicans held the party together for the past few decades when there are both multi-millionaire Wall Street, pro-choice, well-educated Republicans looking for lower taxes for the wealthy in the same party with poorly educated, very low-income fundamentalist Christians in Oklahoma or West Virginia. How much did they have in common? Some kind of day of reckoning was imminent.
The Democrats had their day of reckoning in the late ’60s and early ’70s after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. The split that was waiting to happen happened. How much commonality did the Northern, well-educated, pro-civil rights, liberal voters have in common with the less educated, white, Southern racists? Richard Nixon saw a road to the presidency by carefully using the race issue, exacerbating this fragilely held-together Democratic Party with his “Southern Strategy,” which changed the solid Democratic South into solid red Republican states.
Wisconsin was a good place to really fire up the Stop-Trump Movement. It is the home of Gov. Scott Walker, who felt humiliated by Trump and felt Trump stole his chance to be president, Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House who will be chair of the Republican convention in Cleveland this summer, and Reince Priebus, the chair of the Republican National Committee, who does not want the Republican Party to go up in flames on his watch. A Trump victory in Wisconsin would be a personal embarrassment and defeat to all three of them.
So it was no surprise that this establishment machine went after Republican frontrunner Donald Trump with a vengeance. Trump doesn’t owe his political existence to the Republican establishment; his success is, in part, actually due to his willingness to attack the Republican political establishment. As much as the Republican establishment dislikes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, he became their person to slow Trump’s momentum and create a brokered convention. Large sums of dark money quickly came into the Wisconsin Republican primary, with Cruz supporters outspending Trump 10 to 1.
In the end, Cruz came away with 36 delegates, Trump with six and Ohio Gov. John Kasich with none. Whether that prevents Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination on the first ballot in Cleveland this summer, or allows Cruz or even Ryan to win the nomination, is anyone’s guess, but that was certainly its intent.
On the Democratic side, Sanders outspent Clinton over 2 to 1 and won 48 of Wisconsin’s 86 pledged delegates, while Clinton picked up 38. Wisconsin also has 10 unpledged delegates—super delegates—that will be offered up at this summer’s Democratic convention.
Rebecca Bradley’s Dark Money Win
Big, outside money also fueled conservative state Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley’s successful bid for a 10-year term on the court. At this point in the reporting, Bradley’s outside independent groups outspent Kloppenburg’s groups about 4 to 1 but the total spending won’t be known until the candidates and groups submit their final campaign finance reports to the Government Accountability Board.
The vast majority of spending on behalf of Bradley—$2.6 million—came from the Wisconsin Alliance for Reform (WAR), which is run by Republican operatives, can accept corporate and unlimited donations, and doesn’t have to disclose its donors.
“The big problem is that these outside dark-money groups can run the sleaziest ads and they don’t have to disclose who their donors are so we don’t know who is trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” said Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Executive Director Matt Rothschild.
Rothschild noted that both the Wisconsin Club for Growth and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), two regular big donors to Supreme Court races, sat this one out—officially, at least. Wisconsin Club for Growth didn’t respond to the Shepherd’s requests to comment for this article. WMC’s Jim Pugh told the Shepherd the group “does not discuss our issue advocacy.”
Dark-money groups’ involvement in Supreme Court races is an old, sad story here in Wisconsin. But what is new is the just-passed Republican-backed state law which allows candidates, including justices and judges, to coordinate fundraising and messaging on phony issue ads with allegedly “independent” special interest groups such as WAR, as long as the ads don’t include explicit requests to vote for or against a specific candidate.
Up until this year, this sort of coordination was prohibited in Wisconsin. The new state law legalizes what Scott Walker apparently did during the 2011 and 2012 recalls, when his campaign allegedly worked with the Wisconsin Club for Growth and other dark-money groups to coordinate fundraising, messaging and spending. In this way, Walker was able to secure unlimited and corporate donations through Wisconsin Club for Growth that he couldn’t accept through his official campaign account. Now, however, candidates can work with dark-money groups to fundraise for campaigns and get around campaign finance limits and disclosure.
Bradley had said that she wasn’t coordinating with WAR, but under the new law, unfortunately, it would have been perfectly legal for her to do so.
Thanks to the new, very loose ethics rules, Wisconsin Supreme Court justices and judges around the state aren’t required to recuse themselves from cases involving big campaign donors. In fact, their campaigns even can accept donations from parties who are arguing a case before them. So Rebecca Bradley can hear a case involving the donors to WAR. Then again, we don’t truly know who those WAR donors are.
Abele’s Big Money Prevails
Closer to home, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele won re-election after spending at least $3.7 million on his campaign, although the final tally is estimated to be more than $5 million. Abele’s wall-to-wall campaign messaging—mostly negative—trumped the $210,000 raised by his opponent, state Sen. Chris Larson.
Also active in local races was the newly launched Wisconsin Working Families Party, part of the national Working Families Party (WFP), a coalition of progressive labor and community groups. WFP backed Larson and other progressive candidates in its grassroots, overwhelmingly volunteer operation that reached almost 107,000 households and made close to 68,000 door knocks and phone calls, according to data provided by the party. The party reported it spent $177,394 on behalf of all of its endorsed candidates, not just Larson.
Although WFP didn’t score its big prize of securing Larson’s election as county executive, it did win a string of victories for progressive candidates in Milwaukee County Board and Milwaukee Common Council races, where the dark money tried to play a major role. In the Common Council races, WFP endorsed newcomers Chevy Johnson in the 2nd District, Khalif Rainey in the 7th District and Chantia Lewis, who beat incumbent Alderman Robert Puente in the 9th aldermanic district. In the Milwaukee County Board races, WFP backed Sequanna Taylor, who ran unopposed in the 2nd District, and Marcelia Nicholson in the 5th district. WFP also backed incumbents who won their re-election bids, including county supervisors Theo Lipscomb, Jason Haas and John Weishan and Alderman Tony Zielinski.
Wisconsin Working Families Party State Co-Chair Peter Rickman told the Shepherd that while the Larson loss was disappointing, the party helped to secure a veto-proof progressive majority on the Milwaukee County Board to serve as a check on Abele’s excesses.
“These candidates won because of their progressive vision for government,” Rickman said. “Our grassroots operations helped to put them over the top. They will shift and reorient government and put racial and economic justice on the front burner, which is a significant victory.”
As expected, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett won an overwhelming victory (70% to 30%) against Alderman Bob Donovan. Barrett outspent Donovan $533,000 to Donovan’s $103,000 in 2016, according to the latest campaign finance data.
Republican operative Craig Peterson’s well-funded attempt to use outside dark money to place right-wing candidates on the council failed, but the same pot of money will no doubt be spread around once again in this August’s partisan primary elections in an effort to unseat Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, who is up for re-election. Chisholm is among the prosecutors seeking a U.S. Supreme Court review of the state Supreme Court’s decision stopping the John Doe investigation into Walker’s coordination with dark money groups. No wonder why dark money groups are trying to remove him from office.
