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?
You covered this group, they are pretty much brand new and already they're a huge spender.
Tell us about who they are and what they're doing here.
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, etc.
or a campaign but it is obviously a conservative group because all the money 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 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.
It's hard to tell where the money's 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.
Okay 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 and Republicans had a
pretty big advantage there too did they not?
They did yeah and just the top spanners 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 and when it comes to who's giving to the parties
you have big contributions from billionaires Diane Hendricks and the U-lines Richard U-line
also has his own group that's running ads to help Tom Tiffany this is a bit of a flip
as we 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.
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 like a very kind of local reason which is that the former chair
of the Democratic Party Ben Wickler 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 DC Democratic circles so he was really the person it wasn't like the Democratic
Party immediately took advantage of the law it was when he came into leadership in the
Democratic Party the Democrats really kind of took this and ran with it so it's possible
now that he's no longer in leadership but 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 politico's 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 are 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 funding from Republicans
and then some amount of kind of taking their foot off the gas from Democrats shows that
big split. Zach 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 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? 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's always tight. Michigan Senate they're 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 in Kansas Senate race being competitive and these things that we really hadn't heard of
in kind of expending of what Ani 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
Wickler 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 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 and 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 Cal squing win
forgetting that Wisconsin's still competitive. This race will be closer than some of those other
races where they are investing millions and neglecting the 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 you 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 packs 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. 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's 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 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 but at least since we've been covering
politics Zach 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 a
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 why now is because they keep skyrocketing anyone who has directly drive
anywhere knows that gas prices are only going up it's becoming a bigger issue at diesel specifically
because that's rising at even faster rates 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 us program
and it's the non politically 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 of 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 things happening now it's whoever is in charge is going to get blamed when prices
surge no matter what the nuance and an answer is and these are 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
and I mean in this particular election we do have I think democrats have a decent cause effect
case to be made here is the straight line 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 I'm 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 well he voted against the
the democrats war powers resolution that would have essentially forced an end to the conflict
several times so there's that but but now he's essentially saying well the governor
governor evers could do something now you know there's various things that the governor could do to
ease taxes or etc to bring the price down a little bit so that is that's a bit of a tight
rope 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 third congressional
district race which is my home turf here Derek van Orden a republican congressman incumbent
he was on twitter and essentially blaming oil companies for price gouging and that I've seen
from some other republicans who you wouldn't expect that sort of um rhetoric focused on
industry or 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 kind of normally the proudly capitalist
captains of industry but their backs are against the wall here in this moment in in 2026 so the
candidates Crowley and Tiffany have been talking about other issues with a pretty good link to
that the national debate uh they've come out with their own versions of this anti-corruption
agenda I think they they framed it a little bit differently but they they both talked about
gonna fight corruption on you know you covered the David Crowley version of this what's he talking
about 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 office holders 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 DC and sort of saying that 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 uh the other thing that was kind of interesting
is then 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 right it was data centers a few weeks ago and and now corruption and
rich you covered the uh Tom Tiffany version of this up by Eau Claire uh what what what is anti-corruption
mean to Tom Tiffany what's his platform look like well he talked a lot about the federal
investigations and findings of uh you know Medicaid fraud etc from the in Wisconsin and elsewhere
they there was talk about Minnesota and the um 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 has been success
at the federal level it's time to look in Wisconsin so Tiffany's proposal is to essentially do more
audits of of every state agency and 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 um on top of like the annual audit of state government that is
done and they have done that and they've even audited some some groups that have gotten some some flak
from republicans um or some money that went to these groups like there's this new cap organization
in green bay that had some financial troubles and 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 um 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 open book wisconsin which already does this but he said it needs to be
modernized and 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 so uh david growley going after congress where
tom tefney serves tom tefney kind of attacking democratic governor tonyivers david krauley's
endorser in chief zack uh why this message at this moment in time in 2026 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 democrats
talk about affordability it's prices and gouging and when democrats and 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 and social welfare programs
and more audits more audits they've 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 in fact it's something we've 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 a new package not
necessarily a new platform uh on you before we wrap up here uh there uh was a primary and 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 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 uh 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 all right that's all the time we have for today this has been
inside wisconsin politics be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org wpr.org youtube or wherever you
get your podcasts
all right nonya 20 seconds
yeah okay that was rich rich coffin too i know it was
it wasn't me it was not on you maybe let the record show
i coughed for the first six programs and here's the heck seriously ill
what do you have to say then my sinus infections were non-transmissile
nice
okay
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.