Zac Schultz:
How much has changed in the building within the parties themselves, and not left to right, but the power of leadership? Because we've seen changes over the last decade that allow more of the funding to come through the party and flow down to the members, and I'm sure when you ran for office for the first time, you did a lot of that on your own. You weren't asking for party leaders to support you on your way up.

Rep. Dean Kaufert:
Yeah, that's the biggest difference. My entire years in the Legislature, we were responsible for our own fundraising. It was all local. It was all friends, family. It was all constituents. It was pretty much local. And then you'd have the groups, organizations, like-minded individuals who would send you some conduit dollars and you some PAC dollars. It has just been totally thrown out the window. The biggest thing that I've seen — the most we spent was $39,000, I think, was the highest that I ever spent in my campaign. And now it's millions of dollars. The Democrats and their friends spent $3.8 million against me. Our side, I think, spent $1.3 million. Job pay is $57,000 a year. It is crazy. And so what's happened is more of the power goes to leadership — on both sides. This is both sides of the aisle, because they're the ones who have to raise you the money. The party has to raise you the money. The caucus has to raise you the money, because I'm not going to raise those kind of funds. Then there's that reliance on leadership. I think then what happens is when it comes time for legislation, the lobbyists and the governmental relations people all go to the leadership and convince them of voting aye or nay against a bill. And, you know, there's no discussion about it, but I think there's a little bit of a nod that, hey, this group helped you, this group didn't help you, because of the immense dollars that are spent. In my particular race, every state in the union financed my opponent. What the heck do they care about this seat? It's a 53rd Assembly District seat in Neenah-Menasha. So money, money in itself, is one of the biggest factors that I've seen that has changed this place. I don't know if it's Citizens United, I don't know what the reasoning is, but the cost of these elections — and you've got to have it because if you don't, what's going to happen is the other side is just going to pour dollars in or their friends are going to pour dollars in and you're not going to stand a chance. So you got to compete in the money wars, and that's part of the job that I hate here.