Here & Now

On campaign finance, PolitiFact rated as true that you broke your 1992 promise to always get the majority of funding from Wisconsin residents. How do you respond to that? Well it shows no recognition of the fact that the rules completely changed with the Citizens United decision. In 1992 it was reasonable for me to assume that the law would continue to be that corporations and millionaires and other kinds of people that have supported Senator Johnson wouldn't be able to have secret contributions supporting them.

So I certainly took the view that my promise, whenever I made it, was for 6 years. And at that time I would look at what the situation was. And for many years it was possible to do that. But now I don't see the reason to allow unlimited corporate contribution and super PACs.

You know, Senator Johnson, most of his ads have been from out of state super PACs and special interests. My campaign is a far more Wisconsin-based campaign. I have over 40,000 contributions from Wisconsinites. Many, many more times than he does.

Ninety-five percent of the contributions for my campaign are $100 or less. The average contribution overall is $50. Now I know it's not Bernie but it's pretty good. You know and so I have a far more Wisconsin-based campaign than he does.

So for him to complain about this shows that he doesn't really know how to defend the fact that his campaign is really a product of the billionaire corporate benefits of Citizens United and he's not very Wisconsin about it.