Inside Wisconsin Politics

Republican mega-donors, gas costs and fighting 'corruption'

Shawn Johnson:
Big money pours into Wisconsin for the midterms, with a big financial edge for conservatives. Who’s behind the push and what are the candidates saying about issues ranging from gas prices to corruption? This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. I’m Shawn Johnson here with my colleagues Anya van Wagtendonk, Zac Schultz and Rich Kremer in Eau Claire. Hey, everyone.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Hey.

Zac Schultz:

Hello.

Shawn Johnson:
So we have a lot of issues to discuss today, but I think we need to start right off the top with this big financial push from conservatives and specifically one conservative group, which is dumping a lot of money into Wisconsin all at once. Rich, you covered this group. They are pretty much brand new and already they are huge spender tell us about who they are and what they’re doing here.

Rich Kremer:
By my math, they’re the biggest spender so far in 2026. So who they are? They’re called First Amendment LLC. It is an express advocacy group, so it’s not affiliated with any specific candidate, et cetera,. or campaign. But it is obviously a conservative group because all the money that they’re putting into Wisconsin is going against Democrats and it’s a lot of money, too. We’re talking about, this group was created last week, and on the same day it reported spending around $13 million, and that’s divided up by $9 million going against David Crowley in the race for governor and the remaining $3.4 million or so going into key Assembly and Senate races as Republicans and Democrats vie for control of the state Legislature. And this money we don’t know much about what it’s going to be used for but in the filing, it said it will be for direct mail campaign literature, phone calls, digital ads, that sort of thing. But it’s hard to tell where the money is coming from, who this group is. It appears to be affiliated with a different Virginia-based PAC called Make Liberty Win, and Fox News did an article not long ago about a tech investor essentially putting $40 million into Make Liberty Win. I wasn’t able to see in the federal campaign finance reports whether that money was transferred over, but it appears that this new group is flush with cash.

Shawn Johnson:
OK, and so this comes into an environment where we already knew who some of the big donors were in Wisconsin, because they do report their contributions. Republicans had a pretty big advantage there, too, did they not?

Rich Kremer:
They did. Yeah, and just the top spenders this year. I mean, it is the First Amendment LLC group, and then it’s the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Those are the two top spenders. And if you look back to 2022 the last race for governor it was Tony Evers was the number one spender in state politics, and the second place runner up was the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. So we’re seeing a little bit of a flip of those two parties in terms of the money that they’re bringing in and spending.

Shawn Johnson:
And when it comes to who’s giving to the parties, you have big contributions from billionaires Diane Hendricks and the Uihleins. Richard Uihlein also has his own group that’s running ads to help Tom Tiffany. Anya, this is a bit of a flip, as Rich mentioned there, in terms of what we’ve gotten used to in Wisconsin, where Democrats seem to know how to use this state law that lets unlimited money flow around from parties to candidates.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Right so you mentioned those mega-donors who have essentially put tons of money into the Republican Party of Wisconsin, and that’s using a kind of loophole in campaign finance law that says that there’s a cap on how much individuals can donate to campaigns. There is not a cap on what you can give to parties and then what parties can spend. And so, this was a law that was passed by Republicans, but then Democrats ended up using to kind of great effect over many years. But, so I think there’s a couple of different reasons for that, potentially. So one reason is just a very kind of local reason, which is that the former chair of the Democratic Party Ben Wikler is just known for his kind of fundraising prowess, and he has a sort of national profile among national Democrats. He’s very well respected among sort of D.C. Democratic circles. So he was really the person. It wasn’t like the Democratic Party immediately took advantage of this law. It was when he came into leadership in the Democratic Party that Democrats really kind of took this and ran with it. So it’s possible, now that he’s no longer in leadership, that that has had some effect on the state party’s ability to fundraise. I think another thing also that’s going on here, though, is that even though the governor’s race is going to be very tight and is very important and even, you know, sort of national politicos recognize that the Wisconsin governor’s race is important Democrats are also trying to flip Congress. And so, you know, I went and looked at a number of the kind of big Democratic mega-donors who often try to put money in Wisconsin state elections, and they’re still spending money this year, but they’re spending it on congressional races in other states. So, we’re seeing much less of their money come through the Democratic Party. And that’s why I think, you know, the combination of huge spending from Republicans and then some amount of kind of taking their foot off the gas from Democrats shows that big split.

Shawn Johnson:
Zac, you know, I kind of got a theory in politics that when you see these big donors put a lot of money into a race like ours, like the race for governor, they feel like they have a chance at getting something that they want, right? That they feel like they have a chance of winning. I mean, is it fair to say that Republicans are looking at Wisconsin as maybe friendly ground in an unfriendly environment?

Zac Schultz:
It’s interesting because you have to look at both the national environment and the state environment to realize there is a difference in what we’re seeing out of the Midwest and northern American races. In Minnesota tightening up. Wisconsin is always tight. Michigan Senate. The polling out of Maine Senate being a lot tighter, which is the opposite of what we’re hearing out of the South, which is, you know, Texas Democrats doing well, and Kansas Senate race being competitive, and these things that we really hadn’t heard of. And kind of expanding of what Anya was talking about, the map is so large that these Democratic national donors are being pulled in a lot of different directions. Whereas in the past, Ben Wikler could say: Hey, support Tony Evers to protect Wisconsin’s electoral votes in the presidential election, protect the Assembly so that Tony Evers’ veto still matters when it comes to drawing these maps, invest in our Supreme Court races so we can redraw these maps and declare what gerrymandering is. That argument has already been won, and so every investor needs a new argument of why they need to invest. It may be that some of them are just looking in different directions and getting maybe greedy from a Democratic point of view of: Hey, where else can we win, forgetting that Wisconsin is still competitive. This race will be closer than some of those other races where they are investing millions and neglecting the Democrats here. And I think you also have to look at what does it matter for the Assembly? Because if we’re talking about the state Senate being more likely to flip to Democrats because they only need to win a couple seats and one of them looks pretty solid, and they’ve got a couple good battleground options and if they think they’re going to lose the Democratic race for governor because they have this national wave overtaking Tom Tiffany’s ability to compete, their backstop is the Assembly where they’re very localized races. They only have to win a handful of these seats to stop the Democrats from doing anything they want in the next session if they hold the Assembly. So that’s worth pouring all these millions into, and that’s originally where these billionaires were dumping their money, was into the Republican Assembly PACs and all their money. So it’s they’re also expanding their own map as they’re saying: Hey, maybe Tom Tiffany does have a legitimate chance to win, even in this environment.

Shawn Johnson:
You know, when I look at this big financial push for conservatives here, I can’t help but think about the 2010 election cycle a little bit, because I remember that year, there was a lot of talk in the closing days of the election that unions were the big spenders in that year’s elections. They were the big dogs in that year’s fight and we kind of remember how that turned out. It was pretty much the worst year for Democrats ever, basically, or at least since we’ve been covering politics, Zac, one of the most consequential wave elections that we have covered. And so it doesn’t always work when you pour money into a race. On the other hand, David Crowley is not a well-known household name in Wisconsin, and so when Tom Tiffany can go out and kind of define him, there’s an argument to be made that that money gets more bang for the buck. You’ve talked to both of the candidates very recently David Crowley and Tom Tiffany and you get a sense that an issue, gas prices specifically, could become front and center in this race for governor. How are they talking about it, and why now?

Zac Schultz:
Why now is because they keep skyrocketing. Anyone who has to regularly drive anywhere knows that gas prices are only going up. It’s becoming a bigger issue with diesel, specifically, because that’s rising at an even faster rate. So if you have a diesel truck or you have any connection to truckers that need to bring supplies to your business, or farmers having to worry about harvesting crops or paying for fertilizer, which also deals with diesel and other fuel and oil related subsidies there’s all sorts of issues that are really making this the highest profile. But I think the true answer to that is you have to go beyond maybe the people that watch this program, and it’s the nonpolitically invested people. When do they tune into elections? When it affects them personally and they can feel it. I’ve spoken to so many people, some in my own family, who absolutely hate politics. They don’t want anything to do with it. They don’t want to talk about it. But when gas goes up, when eggs go up, when beef goes up, when they can feel it and see it everywhere, they say: Why is this happening and who can I blame? Which is why in 2022, when we saw gas prices surge, they blamed Biden. Biden can have all the answers in the world about why it was international, it wasn’t his fault. Same thing’s happening now. It’s whoever is in charge is going to get blamed when prices surge, no matter what the nuance in an answer is. And these are voters that don’t look at political nuance. They don’t want to spend 30 minutes hearing about global supply chains or foreign conflicts. They want to know why is it so expensive for me to fill up my truck.

Shawn Johnson:
And, I mean, in this particular election, we do have I think Democrats have a decent cause-effect case to be made here.

Zac Schultz:
It’s a straight line.

Shawn Johnson:
The president, Donald Trump, decided to go to war in Iran. And that has been a huge factor affecting fuel prices. Rich, one of our candidates for governor is in Congress, and this has come up in Congress, of course, with war powers resolutions, you name it. How is Tom Tiffany voting on those and what’s he saying about it?

Rich Kremer:
Well, he voted against the Democrats’ war powers resolution that would have essentially forced an end to the conflict several times. So there’s that, but now he’s essentially saying: Well, the governor Gov. Evers could do something now, you know, there’s various things that the governor could do to ease taxes, et cetera, to bring the price down a little bit. So that’s a bit of a tightrope answer there, where he doesn’t want to cross the president. But also Tiffany did recently say it’s time to wrap up the war. So there’s that. I also want to mention that in the 3rd Congressional District race, which is my home turf here, Derrick Van Orden, a Republican congressman incumbent, he was on Twitter and essentially blaming oil companies for price gouging. That I’ve seen from some other Republicans who you wouldn’t expect that sort of rhetoric focused on industry, or, you know, a big industry like oil and gas. You wouldn’t expect that. So it was kind of notable, and I felt I had to mention it.

Shawn Johnson:
Kind of normally the proudly capitalist captains of industry

Rich Kremer:

Yeah.

Shawn Johnson:

But their backs are against the wall here in this moment in 2026. So the candidates, Crowley and Tiffany, have been talking about other issues with a pretty good link to the national debate. They’ve come out with their own versions of this anti-corruption agenda. I think they framed it a little bit differently, but they both talked about going to fight corruption. Anya, you covered the David Crowley version of this. What’s he talking about?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah, so he kind of came out and he proposed four things that he said would be in his budget on day one. And so that would include banning state officeholders from trading stocks, from participating in prediction markets. There would be a sort of imposed gap on when energy regulators could go to work for energy companies two years and then also a change to kind of public record laws. And he framed this very much in the context of Washington, D.C., and sort of saying: There’s all this corruption going on in Washington, we don’t have the power to address that, but what we can do is kind of fight stuff here. And so it was an interesting way, I think, of trying to frame things against President Donald Trump without necessarily naming him, with the kind of understanding that Tom Tiffany and President Trump are pretty closely linked. The other thing that was kind of interesting is that a couple of days later, Tom Tiffany came out with his own platform. And so it also kind of shows this dynamic right now in this race where the candidates really have to answer one another. And so you see kind of how close they are and how close they understand themselves to be, because they can’t kind of dismiss when one person comes out with a policy proposal, the other person needs to respond.

Shawn Johnson:
Right, it was data centers a few weeks ago, and now corruption. And Rich, you covered the Tom Tiffany version of this up by Eau Claire. What does anti-corruption mean to Tom Tiffany? What’s his platform look like?

Rich Kremer:
Well, he talked a lot about the federal investigations and findings of, you know, Medicaid fraud, et cetera, from, in Wisconsin and elsewhere. There was talk about Minnesota and the fraud that was announced by the federal government in that state. So that’s the kind of fraud he was talking about. He said there’s been success at the federal level, it’s time to look in Wisconsin. So Tiffany’s proposal is to essentially do more audits of every state agency. Wisconsin already has a nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau, and there is a committee in the Legislature that is run by Republicans right now that can tell it to do additional audits on top of, like, the annual audit of state government that is done. And they have done that, and they’ve even audited some groups that have gotten some flak from Republicans, or some money that went to these groups. Like there’s this Newcap organization in Green Bay that had some financial troubles and shut down. So he mentioned those audits, and essentially that his own office the Department of Administration, if he were elected governor would be going through agency budgets as well as the audit bureau. So that’s a little bit of a new thing. And he also said we need more transparency, essentially online dashboards where you can go and see where every penny is spent, how it’s spent. And he referenced a site that I didn’t even know existed, OpenBook Wisconsin, which already does this, but he said it needs to be modernized and just be smoother, because it’s a bit of a clunky website, but interesting information on there. So that’s kind of his pitch.

Shawn Johnson:
So David Crowley going after Congress, where Tom Tiffany serves Tom Tiffany kind of attacking Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, David Crowley’s endorser-in-chief. Zac, why this message at this moment in time in 2026?

Zac Schultz:
I think what we’re seeing from each of these candidates is they are taking the issues that voters say they care about, like affordability, pricing and corruption and government transparency, and they are kind of gaslighting it right around their own issues that have been in their pet projects forever. Because when affordability it’s prices and gouging. And when Democrats, when Republicans talk about affordability, it’s your taxes. It’s the same issues they’ve been doing all along. And this corruption stuff it’s like every single year we hear Republicans talk about fraud in social welfare programs and more audits, more audits. There have been audits all along. As Rich said, none of these are new. They’re not unaudited programs, but it kind of says to the voter: Oh, yeah, we hear what you’re complaining about, and we’re ready to do that, and in fact, it’s something we’ve been talking about all along you should vote for me because that’s what I want to do too. So it’s a way of taking these fears that the voters are really upset about and saying: Hey, you’re already ready to vote for me, that’s what I’m talking about too. So rebranding, relabeling these old packages.

Shawn Johnson:
A new package, not necessarily a new platform. Anya, before we wrap up here, there was a primary on one side for governor and essentially not on the other. You have been covering a unity tour for Democrats led by Francesca Hong, who came up just short in the primary. What is she saying? And does the Democratic Party need unifying right now?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I mean, this is a really kind of interesting moment. So she’s kind of hitting the road to make the case that Democrats have to get this trifecta, they need the Legislature, they need the governor’s office. Because I think there was this question right after the election: Would her supporters kind of go away? And again, with how tight Wisconsin races are, Democrats can’t afford to lose any of those voters. And so this will be a really interesting moment to kind of see how gettable or get-backable her supporters are for Crowley, because he’ll need them to win.

Shawn Johnson:
That’s all the time we have for today. This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. Be sure to follow us on pbsisconsin.org, wpr.org, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.