SALON

Friday, Aug 5, 2011 5:06 PM UTC

Where is all the Wisconsin money coming from?

More than $30 million -- from the left and the right -- has poured into the state as the recall campaign heats up

By

Topics: Wisconsin, War Room, 2012 Elections, Campaign Finance,

Where is all the Wisconsin money coming from?Residents in Glendale, Wis., which is also also Sen. Alberta Darling’s district, line up Tuesday, July 12, 2011, to vote in a Democratic primary election ahead of a recall election next month. Darling is one of six Republican state senators being targeted for recall for supporting Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill. Three Democratic state senators are also being targeted for recall for fleeing the state to stall action on the bill. (AP Photo/Dinesh Ramde)(Credit: AP)

The ongoing state senate recall elections in Wisconsin have never been a local issue. Since Gov. Scott Walker introduced a bill early this year to curb public workers’ collective bargaining rights, the Badger state has been at the epicenter of a national battle over the fate of unionized labor. At present, the fight is playing out in the form of recall elections, in which Democrats are trying to gain control of the Wisconsin Senate and Republicans are retaliating with recall efforts of their own.

Both Republicans and Democrats on the national stage want to use Wisconsin to set a fulcrum for the 2012 debate, with Democrats emphasizing their support for working families and Republicans stressing the need to curb spending. Unsurprisingly, a mountain of outside money has poured into the recall efforts on both party sides. A reported $31 million is being spent by interest groups to influence the elections, according to estimates from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Compare this to the amount spent on all the Senate races in the state in 2010: $3.75 million.

The $31 million, which is going towards two sets of recalls (the six Aug. 9 elections targeting Republicans and two more targeting Democrats state senators a week later), is pretty evenly-split between the parties.

A coalition of labor unions acting under the title “We are Wisconsin” has reportedly spent $8.8 million on Democratic recall efforts and, as such, is the biggest spender on the left. The Greater Wisconsin Committee, a liberal advocacy organization, has donated $1.5 million. Neil Sroka, press secretary of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told ABC News that his group “have joined up with another liberal activist group, Democracy for America, to spend $2 million in the state — $1.5 million on television ads and $500,000 on grassroots work.”

On the Republican side, donations from an array of groups add up to millions of dollars. Two Koch brothers-backed groups, Americans for Prosperity and Citizens for a Stronger America, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars into TV ads and mailers (some of which have been accused of tampering with the elections by telling Democratic voters the wrong date to return ballots, as we reported this week).

Mother Jones points out, however, that although the conservative fundraising tally equals that of the Democrats, far more of it is dark money: “The left-leaning groups usually disclose their donors, while the right-leaning groups mostly don’t.” Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign told the magazine that two-thirds of the recall spending comes from undisclosed sources and that he “blames the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision for allowing so much anonymous spending.”

Disclosed or undisclosed, the staggering amount spent on these recall races indicates that their outcome is about more than control of Madison. It’s about the future of the country.

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com. More Natasha Lennard.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 15 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
252 points253 points | 10 comments
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
250 points251 points | 52 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
185 points186 points | 1 comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
55 points56 points | 8 comments
vote
Today in How Did I Miss This: Iowa GOP is pushing to cut the pay of the remaining Supreme Court Justices that voted for legalization of gay marriage.
61 points62 points | 7 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations