WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:25.080 Big money pours into Wisconsin for the midterms with a big financial edge for conservatives. 00:25.080 --> 00:29.800 Who's behind the push and what are the candidates saying about issues ranging from gas prices 00:29.800 --> 00:36.800 to corruption? 00:59.800 --> 01:05.680 You covered this group, they are pretty much brand new and already they're a huge spender. 01:05.680 --> 01:10.680 Tell us about who they are and what they're doing here. 01:10.680 --> 01:14.720 By my math they're the biggest spender so far in 2026. 01:14.720 --> 01:19.040 So who they are, they're called First Amendment LLC. 01:19.040 --> 01:26.520 It is an express advocacy group so it's not affiliated with any specific candidate, etc. 01:26.520 --> 01:32.120 or a campaign but it is obviously a conservative group because all the money they're putting 01:32.120 --> 01:37.880 into Wisconsin is going against Democrats and it's a lot of money too. 01:37.880 --> 01:43.040 We're talking about this group was created last week and on the same day it reported 01:43.040 --> 01:52.400 spending around $13 million and that's divided up by $9 million going against David Crowley 01:52.400 --> 01:58.880 in the race for governor and the remaining $3.4 million or so going into key assembly 01:58.880 --> 02:06.160 and senate races as Republicans and Democrats for control of the state legislature and this 02:06.160 --> 02:11.440 money we don't know much about what it's going to be used for but in the filing it said it 02:11.440 --> 02:19.240 will be for direct mail, campaign literature, phone calls, digital ads, that sort of thing. 02:19.240 --> 02:24.760 It's hard to tell where the money's coming from, who this group is, it appears to be 02:24.760 --> 02:31.440 affiliated with a different Virginia based PAC called Make Liberty Win and Fox News did 02:31.440 --> 02:39.400 an article not long ago about a tech investor essentially putting $40 million into Make Liberty 02:39.400 --> 02:40.400 Win. 02:40.400 --> 02:45.680 I wasn't able to see in the federal campaign finance reports whether that money was transferred 02:45.680 --> 02:50.080 over but it appears that this new group is flush with cash. 02:50.080 --> 02:54.320 Okay and so this comes into an environment where we already knew who some of the big 02:54.320 --> 02:59.960 donors were in Wisconsin because they do report their contributions and Republicans had a 02:59.960 --> 03:04.640 pretty big advantage there too did they not? 03:04.640 --> 03:11.560 They did yeah and just the top spanners this year I mean it is the first amendment LLC 03:11.560 --> 03:16.160 group and then it's the Republican Party of Wisconsin those are the two top spenders 03:16.160 --> 03:23.040 and if you look back to 2022 the last race for governor it was Tony Evers was the number 03:23.040 --> 03:29.880 one spender in state politics and the second place runner up was the Democratic Party of 03:29.880 --> 03:35.240 Wisconsin so we're seeing a little bit of a flip of those two parties in terms of the 03:35.240 --> 03:39.640 money that they're bringing in and spending and when it comes to who's giving to the parties 03:39.720 --> 03:46.440 you have big contributions from billionaires Diane Hendricks and the U-lines Richard U-line 03:46.440 --> 03:52.960 also has his own group that's running ads to help Tom Tiffany this is a bit of a flip 03:52.960 --> 03:58.080 as we Rich mentioned there in terms of what we've gotten used to in Wisconsin where Democrats 03:58.080 --> 04:02.320 seem to know how to use this state law that lets unlimited money flow around from parties 04:02.320 --> 04:03.320 to candidates. 04:03.320 --> 04:07.200 Right so you mentioned those mega donors who have essentially put tons of money into 04:07.200 --> 04:11.360 the Republican Party of Wisconsin and that's using a kind of loophole in campaign finance 04:11.360 --> 04:15.760 law that says that there's a cap on how much individuals can donate to campaigns there 04:15.760 --> 04:20.120 is not a cap on what you can give to parties and then what parties can spend and so this 04:20.120 --> 04:24.560 was a law that was passed by Republicans but then Democrats ended up using to kind of great 04:24.560 --> 04:29.120 effect over many years but so I think there's a couple of different reasons for that potentially 04:29.120 --> 04:32.960 so one reason is just like a very kind of local reason which is that the former chair 04:32.960 --> 04:37.240 of the Democratic Party Ben Wickler is just known for his kind of fundraising prowess 04:37.240 --> 04:42.160 and he has a sort of national profile among national Democrats he's very well respected 04:42.160 --> 04:46.960 among sort of DC Democratic circles so he was really the person it wasn't like the Democratic 04:46.960 --> 04:50.960 Party immediately took advantage of the law it was when he came into leadership in the 04:50.960 --> 04:55.320 Democratic Party the Democrats really kind of took this and ran with it so it's possible 04:55.320 --> 04:59.760 now that he's no longer in leadership but that has had some effect on the state party's 04:59.760 --> 05:03.840 ability to fundraise I think another thing also that's going on here though is that even 05:03.840 --> 05:08.800 though the governor's race is going to be very tight and is very important and even 05:08.800 --> 05:14.320 you know sort of national politico's recognize that the Wisconsin governor's race is important 05:14.320 --> 05:18.400 Democrats are also trying to flip Congress and so you know I went and looked at a number 05:18.400 --> 05:22.800 of the kind of big Democratic mega donors who often try to put money in Wisconsin state 05:22.800 --> 05:27.480 elections and they're still spending money this year but they are spending it on congressional 05:27.560 --> 05:31.480 races in other states so we're seeing much less of their money come through the Democratic 05:31.480 --> 05:36.120 Party and that's why I think you know the combination of huge funding from Republicans 05:36.120 --> 05:39.800 and then some amount of kind of taking their foot off the gas from Democrats shows that 05:39.800 --> 05:47.080 big split. Zach you know I kind of got a theory in politics that when you see these big donors 05:47.080 --> 05:51.520 put a lot of money into a race like ours like the race for governor they feel like they have 05:51.520 --> 05:54.960 a chance at getting something that they want right that they they feel like they have a 05:54.960 --> 06:00.960 chance of winning. I mean is it fair to say that Republicans are looking at Wisconsin as maybe 06:02.080 --> 06:06.080 friendly ground in an unfriendly environment? It's interesting because you have to look 06:06.080 --> 06:09.840 at both the national environment and the state environment to realize there is a difference in 06:09.840 --> 06:15.840 what we're seeing out of the Midwest and Northern American races in Minnesota tightening up 06:15.840 --> 06:21.280 Wisconsin's always tight. Michigan Senate they're the polling out of Maine Senate being a lot tighter 06:21.280 --> 06:26.160 which is the opposite of what we're hearing out of the South which is you know Texas Democrats 06:26.160 --> 06:31.280 doing well in Kansas Senate race being competitive and these things that we really hadn't heard of 06:31.280 --> 06:36.080 in kind of expending of what Ani was talking about the map is so large that these Democratic 06:36.080 --> 06:40.400 national donors are being pulled in a lot of different directions whereas in the past Ben 06:40.400 --> 06:46.640 Wickler could say hey support Tony Evers to protect Wisconsin's electoral votes in the presidential 06:47.440 --> 06:52.400 election. Protect the assembly so that Tony Evers veto still matters when it comes to drawing these 06:52.400 --> 06:57.440 maps. Invest in our our Supreme Court races so we can redraw these maps and declare what 06:57.440 --> 07:02.240 gerrymandering is. That argument has already been won and so every investor needs a new 07:02.240 --> 07:06.320 argument of why they need to invest and it may be that some of them are just looking in different 07:06.320 --> 07:11.440 directions and getting maybe greedy from a Democratic point of view of hey where Cal squing win 07:11.440 --> 07:16.000 forgetting that Wisconsin's still competitive. This race will be closer than some of those other 07:16.080 --> 07:21.760 races where they are investing millions and neglecting the the Democrats here and I think 07:21.760 --> 07:28.240 you also have to look at what does it matter for the assembly because if we're talking about the 07:28.240 --> 07:32.800 state Senate being more likely to flip to Democrats because you only need to win a couple seats and 07:32.800 --> 07:36.960 one of them looks pretty solid and they've got a couple good battleground options and if they 07:36.960 --> 07:41.760 think they're going to lose the Democratic race for governor because they have this national 07:41.840 --> 07:46.720 wave overtaking Tom Tiffany's ability to compete their backstop is the assembly where they're 07:46.720 --> 07:52.480 very localized races they only have to win a handful of these seats to stop the Democrats 07:52.480 --> 07:56.960 from doing anything they want in the next session if they hold the assembly so that's worth pouring 07:56.960 --> 08:01.120 all these millions into and that's originally where these billionaires were dumping their money 08:01.120 --> 08:07.360 was into the Republican assembly packs and all their money so it's they're also expanding their 08:07.360 --> 08:12.400 own map as they're saying hey maybe Tom Tiffany does have a legitimate chance to win even in this 08:12.400 --> 08:18.080 environment. You know when I look at this big financial push for conservatives here I can't help 08:18.080 --> 08:23.840 but think about the 2010 election cycle a little bit because I remember that year there's a lot of 08:23.840 --> 08:29.200 talk in the closing days of the election that unions were the big spenders in that year's elections 08:29.200 --> 08:36.080 they were the big dogs in in that year's fight and we kind of remember how that turned out it was 08:36.080 --> 08:41.280 pretty much the worst year for Democrats ever basically but at least since we've been covering 08:41.280 --> 08:46.320 politics Zach one of the most consequential wave elections that we have covered and so it doesn't 08:46.320 --> 08:51.680 always work when you pour money into a race on the other hand David Crowley is not a well-known 08:51.680 --> 08:59.120 household name in Wisconsin and so when Tom Tiffany can go out and kind of define him there's a 08:59.120 --> 09:04.160 argument to be made that that money gets more bang for the buck you've talked to both of the 09:04.160 --> 09:11.440 candidates very recently David Crowley and Tom Tiffany and you get a sense that an issue gas 09:11.440 --> 09:17.600 prices specifically could become front and center in this race for governor how are they talking 09:17.600 --> 09:23.120 about it and why now why now is because they keep skyrocketing anyone who has directly drive 09:23.120 --> 09:28.160 anywhere knows that gas prices are only going up it's becoming a bigger issue at diesel specifically 09:28.160 --> 09:33.440 because that's rising at even faster rates so if you have a diesel truck or you have any connection 09:33.440 --> 09:38.880 to truckers that need to bring supplies to your business or farmers having to worry about 09:38.880 --> 09:43.840 harvesting crops or paying for fertilizer which also deals with diesel and other fuel and oil 09:43.840 --> 09:49.520 related subsidies there's all sorts of issues that are really making this the highest profile 09:49.520 --> 09:54.560 but I think the true answer to that is you have to go beyond maybe the people that watch us program 09:54.560 --> 09:59.760 and it's the non politically invested people when do they tune into elections when it affects them 09:59.760 --> 10:04.560 personally and they can feel it I've spoken to so many people some of my own family who 10:04.560 --> 10:08.320 absolutely hate politics they don't want anything to do with it they don't want to talk about it 10:08.320 --> 10:13.440 but when gas goes up when eggs go up when beef goes up when they can feel it and see it everywhere 10:13.440 --> 10:20.160 they say why is this happening and who can I blame which is why in 2022 when we saw gas prices surge 10:20.160 --> 10:24.800 they blamed Biden Biden can have all the answers in the world about why it was international it wasn't 10:24.800 --> 10:30.160 his fault same things happening now it's whoever is in charge is going to get blamed when prices 10:30.160 --> 10:34.160 surge no matter what the nuance and an answer is and these are these are voters that don't look 10:34.160 --> 10:38.640 at political nuance they don't want to spend 30 minutes hearing about global supply chains 10:38.640 --> 10:42.880 or foreign conflicts they want to know why is it so expensive for me to fill up my truck 10:44.000 --> 10:50.320 and I mean in this particular election we do have I think democrats have a decent cause effect 10:50.320 --> 10:56.480 case to be made here is the straight line the president Donald Trump decided to go to war in 10:56.480 --> 11:05.200 Iran and that has been a huge factor affecting fuel prices rich one of our candidates for governor 11:05.200 --> 11:10.880 is in congress and I'm this has come up in congress of course with war powers resolutions you name it 11:11.760 --> 11:19.360 how is Tom Tiffany voting on those and what's he saying about it well he voted against the 11:19.840 --> 11:24.640 the democrats war powers resolution that would have essentially forced an end to the conflict 11:25.680 --> 11:32.160 several times so there's that but but now he's essentially saying well the governor 11:32.160 --> 11:37.280 governor evers could do something now you know there's various things that the governor could do to 11:37.280 --> 11:43.600 ease taxes or etc to bring the price down a little bit so that is that's a bit of a tight 11:43.600 --> 11:51.120 rope answer there where he doesn't want to cross the president but also Tiffany did recently say 11:51.120 --> 11:57.840 it's time to wrap up the war so there's that I also want to mention that in the third congressional 11:57.840 --> 12:04.880 district race which is my home turf here Derek van Orden a republican congressman incumbent 12:05.760 --> 12:12.320 he was on twitter and essentially blaming oil companies for price gouging and that I've seen 12:12.320 --> 12:19.440 from some other republicans who you wouldn't expect that sort of um rhetoric focused on 12:19.440 --> 12:26.800 industry or or you know a big industry like oil and gas you wouldn't expect that so it was 12:26.800 --> 12:31.520 kind of notable and I felt I had to mention kind of normally the proudly capitalist 12:32.320 --> 12:38.080 captains of industry but their backs are against the wall here in this moment in in 2026 so the 12:38.080 --> 12:43.920 candidates Crowley and Tiffany have been talking about other issues with a pretty good link to 12:43.920 --> 12:49.280 that the national debate uh they've come out with their own versions of this anti-corruption 12:49.280 --> 12:53.360 agenda I think they they framed it a little bit differently but they they both talked about 12:53.360 --> 12:59.200 gonna fight corruption on you know you covered the David Crowley version of this what's he talking 12:59.200 --> 13:04.080 about yeah so he kind of came out and he proposed four things that he said would be in his budget 13:04.160 --> 13:09.920 on day one and so that would include banning state office holders from trading stocks from 13:09.920 --> 13:16.480 participating in prediction markets there would be a sort of imposed gap on when energy regulators 13:16.480 --> 13:22.720 could go to work for energy companies two years and then also a change to kind of public record 13:22.720 --> 13:29.200 laws and he framed this very much in the context of Washington DC and sort of saying that there's 13:29.200 --> 13:34.000 all this corruption going on in Washington we don't have the power to address that but what we can do 13:34.080 --> 13:38.960 is kind of fight stuff here and so it was an interesting way I think of trying to frame things 13:38.960 --> 13:44.320 against President Donald Trump without necessarily naming him with the kind of understanding that 13:44.320 --> 13:49.040 Tom Tiffany and President Trump are pretty closely linked uh the other thing that was kind of interesting 13:49.040 --> 13:53.840 is then a couple of days later Tom Tiffany came out with his own platform and so it also kind of 13:53.840 --> 13:58.240 shows this dynamic right now in this race where the candidates really have to answer one another 13:58.240 --> 14:03.280 and so you see kind of how close they are and how close they understand themselves to be 14:03.280 --> 14:07.600 because they can't kind of dismiss when one person comes out with a policy proposal the 14:07.600 --> 14:13.040 other person needs to respond right it was data centers a few weeks ago and and now corruption and 14:13.040 --> 14:21.440 rich you covered the uh Tom Tiffany version of this up by Eau Claire uh what what what is anti-corruption 14:21.440 --> 14:28.000 mean to Tom Tiffany what's his platform look like well he talked a lot about the federal 14:28.000 --> 14:36.960 investigations and findings of uh you know Medicaid fraud etc from the in Wisconsin and elsewhere 14:36.960 --> 14:43.440 they there was talk about Minnesota and the um the fraud that was announced by the federal government 14:43.440 --> 14:49.520 in that state so that's the kind of fraud he was talking about he said there has been success 14:49.520 --> 14:57.200 at the federal level it's time to look in Wisconsin so Tiffany's proposal is to essentially do more 14:57.200 --> 15:03.760 audits of of every state agency and Wisconsin already has a nonpartisan legislative audit bureau 15:03.760 --> 15:08.560 and there is a committee in the legislature that is run by republicans right now that 15:08.560 --> 15:15.920 can tell it to do additional audits um on top of like the annual audit of state government that is 15:15.920 --> 15:22.080 done and they have done that and they've even audited some some groups that have gotten some some flak 15:22.080 --> 15:29.040 from republicans um or some money that went to these groups like there's this new cap organization 15:29.040 --> 15:35.360 in green bay that had some financial troubles and and shut down so he mentioned those audits and 15:35.360 --> 15:41.120 essentially that his own office the department of administration if he were elected governor 15:41.120 --> 15:46.800 would be going through agency budgets as well as the audit bureau so that's a little bit of a 15:46.880 --> 15:52.720 new thing um and he also said we need more transparency essentially online dashboards 15:52.720 --> 15:59.040 where you can go and see where every penny is spent how it's spent and he referenced a site that 15:59.040 --> 16:03.760 i didn't even know existed open book wisconsin which already does this but he said it needs to be 16:03.760 --> 16:09.520 modernized and and just be smoother because it's a bit of a clunky website but interesting 16:09.520 --> 16:15.680 information on there so that's kind of his pitch so uh david growley going after congress where 16:15.760 --> 16:20.240 tom tefney serves tom tefney kind of attacking democratic governor tonyivers david krauley's 16:20.240 --> 16:26.800 endorser in chief zack uh why this message at this moment in time in 2026 i think what we're seeing 16:26.800 --> 16:32.560 from each of these candidates is they are taking the issues that voters say they care about like 16:32.560 --> 16:39.120 affordability pricing and corruption and government transparency and they are kind of gaslighting 16:39.120 --> 16:42.880 it right around their own issues that have been in their pet projects forever because when democrats 16:42.880 --> 16:47.840 talk about affordability it's prices and gouging and when democrats and when republicans talk about 16:47.840 --> 16:52.400 affordability it's your taxes it's the same issues they've been doing all along and this corruption 16:52.400 --> 16:57.760 stuff it's like every single year we hear republicans talk about fraud and social welfare programs 16:57.760 --> 17:02.240 and more audits more audits they've been audits all along as rich said none of these are new they're 17:02.240 --> 17:07.040 not unaudited programs but it kind of says to the voter oh yeah we hear what you're complaining 17:07.040 --> 17:10.960 about and we're ready to do that in fact it's something we've we've been talking about all along 17:10.960 --> 17:15.040 you should vote for me because that's what i want to do too so it's a way of taking these 17:15.040 --> 17:19.440 fears that the voters are really upset about and saying hey you're already ready to vote for me 17:20.000 --> 17:25.040 that's what i'm talking about too so rebranding relabeling these old packages a new package not 17:25.040 --> 17:32.080 necessarily a new platform uh on you before we wrap up here uh there uh was a primary and one side 17:32.080 --> 17:38.320 for governor and essentially not on the other you have been covering a unity tour for democrats 17:38.400 --> 17:43.920 led by francesca hong who came up just short in the primary what is she saying and does 17:44.480 --> 17:48.640 the democratic party need unifying right now i mean this is a really kind of interesting 17:48.640 --> 17:52.880 moment so she's kind of hitting the road to make the case that democrats have to get this trifecta 17:52.880 --> 17:56.720 they need the legislature they need the governor's office because i think there was this question 17:56.720 --> 18:02.720 right after the election would her supporters kind of go away and again with how tight wisconsin 18:02.720 --> 18:07.120 races are uh democrats can't afford to lose any of those voters and so this will be a really 18:07.120 --> 18:12.400 interesting moment to kind of see how gettable or get backable her supporters are for Crowley 18:12.400 --> 18:16.560 because he'll need them to win all right that's all the time we have for today this has been 18:16.560 --> 18:23.760 inside wisconsin politics be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org wpr.org youtube or wherever you 18:23.760 --> 18:37.440 get your podcasts 18:39.760 --> 18:41.040 all right nonya 20 seconds 18:44.720 --> 18:48.800 yeah okay that was rich rich coffin too i know it was 18:49.520 --> 18:57.360 it wasn't me it was not on you maybe let the record show 18:57.520 --> 19:04.880 i coughed for the first six programs and here's the heck seriously ill 19:06.880 --> 19:11.760 what do you have to say then my sinus infections were non-transmissile 19:12.720 --> 19:15.120 nice 19:32.240 --> 19:34.800 okay 19:41.760 --> 19:55.760 Big money pours into Wisconsin for the midterms with a big financial edge for conservatives. 19:55.760 --> 19:57.240 Who's behind the push? 19:57.240 --> 20:02.280 And what are the candidates saying about issues ranging from gas prices to corruption? 20:02.280 --> 20:04.560 This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.