Will $100M Supreme Court elections be the new normal in Wisconsin? It shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be that way

For release: Monday - May 5, 2025

Image: Billionaire businessman Elon Musk arrives for a town hall meeting wearing a cheesehead hat at the KI Convention Center on March 30, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The town hall is being held in front of the state’s high-profile Supreme Court election between Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, who has been financially backed by Musk and endorsed by President Donald Trump, and Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Guest Commentary by CCWI Director Jay Heck

Published by the Wisconsin Examiner - May 5, 2025

On April 1 Wisconsin voters decisively voted against unprecedented, massive outside interference in our state Supreme Court election by the nearly $30 million from the richest and second (to Donald Trump) most egotistical person in the world – Elon Musk. In handing Musk’s endorsed candidate, Brad Schimel, a more than 10 percentage point, 269,000-vote drubbing, Wisconsinites rendered the nation a great service by humiliating Musk here and thereby driving him from the corridors of power and influence in Washington D.C. where he has been savaging vital U.S. government services and programs that helped the poorest people in our nation and in the world.

Wisconsin also opted to preserve recent democracy reforms in our state by maintaining the current 4-3 progressive majority on the Court. Fairer and more representative state legislative voting maps and the restoration of the use of secure ballot drop boxes for voters will be preserved and the possibility of new and enhanced political reform is possible in the years immediately ahead either through upholding reforms passed legislatively, through court action, or both.

But what can be done about the obscene amount of political money raised and spent to elect a new Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice in 2025 – as much if not more than $105 million – by far the most amount ever spent in a judicial election in the history of the United States? Wisconsin faces new state supreme court elections every April for the next four years and a continuation of such frenzied and out of control spending for the foreseeable future seems both unbearable and unsustainable.

Voluntary spending limits for Supreme Court candidates with the incentive of providing them with full public financing if they agree to statutory spending limits is a possibility. Wisconsin actually had such a law in place for exactly one Supreme Court election in 2011. The Impartial Justice Act was made possible by passage with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the Wisconsin Legislature and enactment into law in 2009. In 2011, both candidates for a seat on the high court agreed to the voluntary spending limits of $400,000 each and received full public financing. That campaign was robust, competitive and the result was close, which is what you would expect in Wisconsin. And it cost just a tiny fraction of the more than $100 million that was spent in 2025.

Unfortunately, later in 2011, then-Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature defunded the Impartial Justice Act and all other public financing for elections. Four years later, Walker and the GOP completely eviscerated and deformed Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws. They did away with limits on what political parties and outside groups can raise and spend in elections, increased individual campaign contribution limits and, most alarmingly, legalized previously illegal campaign coordination between so-called issue ad spending groups and candidates, which greatly increased opportunities for corruption and undue influence through campaign spending. Disclosure requirements were weakened and, in some instances, dismantled altogether.

In just four short years, Wisconsin was transformed from one of the most transparent, low spending and highly regarded election states in the nation to one of the worst, least regulated special interest-controlled political backwaters in the nation, akin to Texas, Louisiana or Florida.

This current corrupt status quo will remain in place for the upcoming state Supreme Court elections in 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2029 unless the governor, Legislature and the Wisconsin Supreme Court take action and do the following:

• Re-establish an “impartial justice” law for the public financing of state Supreme Court elections modeled after the 2009 law which was in place for only one election before it was repealed. Update and revise it to better fit current times and circumstances including more realistic spending limits and higher public financing grants.
• Establish clear recusal rules for judges at all levels in Wisconsin that clearly decree that if a certain campaign contribution is reached or surpassed beyond a certain threshold amount, then the beneficiary of that contribution (or of the expenditure against her/his opponent) must recuse from any case in which the contributor is a party before the court.
• Restore sensible limitations on the transfer of and acceptance of campaign funds and make illegal again campaign coordination between outside special interest groups engaged in issue advocacy with all candidates for public office — particularly judges.
• Petition the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the disastrous 2010 Citizens United vs F.E.C. decision which ended over 100 years of sensible regulation of unlimited corporate, union and other outside special interest money in federal and by extension state elections, unleashing the torrential flood of campaign cash drowning democracy today.

These are common-sense, achievable reforms that, if enacted into law, would go a long way toward restoring desperately needed public confidence in the fairness, impartiality and trust in Wisconsin’s courts and in particular, our Wisconsin Supreme Court which was regarded as the model for the nation and the best anywhere a quarter century ago. But it will take determined action by all three branches of Wisconsin’s state government working together with the voters to uphold election integrity and curb corruption in a way all of us can embrace.

Ultimately, of course, it’s up to us, the voters, to hold our governmental institutions accountable and ensure that they work for us instead of for their own narrow interests  and those of the donor class. In this critical season of resistance and defiance against tyranny — speak up, make noise and ensure that your voice is heard. Demand real reform and an end to the corruption of our representative government.

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Jay Heck

608/512-9363 (cell)

Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 Johnson St, Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703

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To be truly fair Wisconsin courts must be free from big political money

For release: Tuesday - April 30, 2024

Image: A Gavel

"We went from being the progressive good government promised land to the political wasteland of the country."

 

The Wisconsin Examiner released Jay Heck's guest commentary piece on 4.29.24.

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The April 12 announcement by Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, our state’s longest serving and most respected and distinguished court member, that she will not run for re-election in 2025, sent shockwaves through the political biosphere.

Next year’s spring election was already expected to be hugely expensive and fiercely contested.  But now, with the three-term justice bowing out, the stakes for ideological control of Wisconsin’s highest court are even greater. The price tag of the April 2025 election to succeed Justice Bradley is universally predicted to exceed the astronomical $57 million spent in 2023 in Wisconsin between current Justice Janet Protaciewicz and her opponent, former Justice Daniel Kelly — by far the largest amount of money ever spent in any state supreme court election in American history.

The unprecedented and obscenely high amount of political money being raised and spent in Wisconsin Supreme Court elections is a fairly new and horrific development in our state. It wasn’t always this way here and it cannot and should not continue. 

When I started with Common Cause in Wisconsin in 1996, the Badger State was still considered to be the national beacon for democracy, competitive but civil political discourse and clean elections and — most notably — was said to have the best, most impartial and least corruptible system of courts, at all levels, in the nation.  

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, was looked upon as the gold standard for how a state’s highest court should be elected and how it should conduct itself in the dispensation of justice to its citizens. It was widely respected, admired and even revered.   

The Supreme Court in turn set the tenor, tone and standard for Wisconsin’s Court of Appeals, circuit courts and municipal courts — all also widely praised and heralded.

Among the foremost champions in the nation for democracy and of free and fair elections, Wisconsinites decided long ago that our judges at all levels should be elected by the citizenry — not appointed or selected by a singular, select public official or by some elite entity. And so, since achieving statehood in 1848 Wisconsin has held nonpartisan elections for judges, almost invariably in the spring when voter turnout is never as robust as it is in partisan, November elections.

For many years the system worked well in Wisconsin. Elections for the Wisconsin Supreme Court were relatively tame and civil affairs where candidates were judged on their impartiality and on their judicial qualifications and temperament. Political affiliation and partisan leanings were not only downplayed, they were discouraged and much frowned upon. The central focus of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates was on their impartiality and ability to uphold that long-held legal principle that justice is or should be blind, that courts should not make judgments based on appearance or on pre-ordained political disposition. What was prized above all by voters was the behavior any citizen would want and expect from a justice: that she or he be fair and impartial. 

But beginning in 2007 Wisconsin Supreme Court elections experienced a seismic shift. Partisan conservative special interest groups led by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) cynically calculated that buying influence with the Wisconsin Supreme Court was at least as important and far more cost effective than trying to buy a friendly legislative majority. And so they began pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars, most of it secret or “dark” money into judicial races to support candidates for the high court they deemed sufficiently “business friendly.”  

In 2009, the conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court also adopted a new recusal rule for justices and judges who were the recipients of campaign contributions.  In many other states in the nation, justices and judges must step away from and not participate in cases where one or more of the parties has contributed to that judge beyond a determined threshold, for the very rational and evident reason that a larger campaign contribution likely had an influence on the recipient and that transaction thereby created a conflict of interest for the justice or judge.  

But the Wisconsin Supreme Court majority adopted verbatim a recusal rule written by WMC which was essentially that no recusal at all is required if a campaign contribution is received. It is up to each justice or judge to decide whether or not to step aside. As a result, according to a 2014 study of judicial recusal rules across the nation, Wisconsin had the 47th weakest such rules of the 50 states. That “self-recusal” standard remains in place today.

The Wisconsin Legislature and former Gov. Jim Doyle reacted to the shocking special interest spending frenzy by deep-pocketed special interest groups in the 2007 and 2008 Wisconsin Supreme Court elections by enacting into law sweeping and effective bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation — the Impartial Justice Act of 2009 — which imposed voluntary spending limits of $400,000 on candidates for the high court in return for full public financing of their campaigns – and no solicitation of private contributions. With no private money flowing into their campaigns, justices could be truly impartial and beholden to no campaign donor other than to the public. 

The new law was the most advanced and sweeping of any judicial campaign finance system in the nation and a model for clean elections and in reducing the influence of money on the judiciary.

But less than 18 months later in 2011, incoming Gov. Scott Walker and the new Republican legislative majority repealed the Impartial Justice Act and went even further by ending the 30-year-old partial public financing system and spending limits for all other state elective offices.

And then in 2015, Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature took an axe to the remaining safeguards and limitations in Wisconsin’s campaign finance law, including lifting virtually all limits on special interest money that could be raised and spent, weakening disclosure requirements and, most alarmingly, legalizing campaign coordination between special interest groups running phony issue advocacy communications with candidates — including Supreme Court candidates.

This insidious coordination had long been prohibited in Wisconsin and still is in almost every other state in the nation and in federal elections.

In less than a decade, between 2007 and 2015, Wisconsin was transformed from one of the more transparent and least “big money influenced” political campaign systems in the nation to one of the states with the least transparent disclosure requirements, corrupted by outside big dollar special interest groups and big donors. 

We went from being the progressive good government promised land to the political wasteland of the country.  

While there likely is not a lot that can or will be done to improve and reform Wisconsin’s judicial elections before the next state Supreme Court contest in April 2025, political leaders of all ideological stripes ought to begin to think about how to change the corrupt status quo.  Here are a few suggestions for inclusion in the necessary clean-up:

• Re-establish an “impartial justice” law for the public financing of state Supreme Court elections modeled after the 2009 law which was in place for only one election before it was repealed.  Update and revise it to better fit current times and circumstances including more realistic spending limits and higher public financing grants.
• Establish clear recusal rules for judges at all levels in Wisconsin that clearly decree that if a certain campaign contribution is reached or surpassed beyond a certain threshold amount, then the beneficiary of that contribution (or of the expenditure against her/his opponent) must recuse from any case in which the contributor is a party before the court.
• Restore sensible limitations on the transfer of and acceptance of campaign funds and make illegal again campaign coordination between outside special interest groups engaged in issue advocacy with all candidates for public office — particularly judges.
• Petition the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the disastrous 2010 Citizens United vs F.E.C. decision which ended over 100 years of sensible regulation of unlimited corporate, union and other outside special interest money in federal and by extension state elections, unleashing the torrential flood of campaign cash drowning democracy today.

Wisconsin needs to begin to figure out a better way to elect state Supreme Court justices and judges at all levels and those discussions need to begin in earnest now.  The upcoming 2025 state Supreme Court election to replace Justice Ann Walsh Bradley has already begun.  But there will be no rest for the weary as more equally critical state Supreme Court elections follow in April 2026, 2027, and 2028.

We cannot continue down the current path. If there is no change a $100 million election is in our immediate future. We can and must do better. Wisconsin enacted bipartisan legislation to fix our state Supreme Court elections in 2009 and we can and should again.  

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Jay Heck

608/512-9363 (cell)

Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 Johnson St, Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
www.commoncausewisconsin.org

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Out of Control Campaign Spending and Weak Recusal Rules Undermine Wisconsin's Courts

Wednesday – June 2, 2021

Photo from S Bughdaryan on Unsplash 

Note: This guest editorial first appeared in The Wisconsin Examiner on June 1, 2021

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Wisconsin, from statehood in 1848 to about a decade and a half ago ago in 2007, had a national reputation for having one of the most respected, impartial, nonpartisan, fair and trusted state court systems in the nation.

Much of this was because there was a generally held belief among Wisconsinites of all political persuasions and ideologies that the courts should be “above politics as usual.” In order to maintain the confidence of the citizenry, judges and justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court had to be scrupulously nonpartisan and impartial and not be perceived as having been compromised by outside lobbying pressure, campaign contributions or other political influence.

For decades, this standard not only survived, but flourished, and as recently as the early 2000’s the Wisconsin Supreme Court was held up by legal experts across the country as the “gold standard” for how justices should be elected and serve once in office in a state supreme court. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals, the 72 county circuit courts and the hundreds of municipal court judges also were perceived as having the highest standards for impartiality, nonpartisanship and fairness. And while Wisconsin legislators fell into public disrepute in the aftermath of the worst political scandal in the state in a century — the legislative caucus scandal of 2001-2002 — the reputation of state courts was enhanced by the way they adjudicated those trials and in their execution of equal justice under the law.

However, the landscape began to shift 14 years ago when outside special interest groups for the first time began to pour millions of dollars into the election of two state Supreme Court justices, one each in 2007 and in 2008. The expenditures made by conservative business organizations, principally the Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, proved to be pivotal, particularly in 2008 when an incumbent justice was defeated in a nasty, vicious, scurrilous campaign in which a record amount of money was spent — more than $8 million. It marked only the second time in state history that an incumbent state Supreme Court justice was defeated.

Since then, big special interest money has been the norm in Wisconsin Supreme Court elections, culminating in the most expensive in history in 2020 when Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jill Karofsky defeated incumbent Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly and more than $10 million was spent – half of it by outside special interest groups.

And even more alarming, the “cancer” of big money special interest group spending is spreading to lower court elections. Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of dollars of ideological, partisan, and out-of-state, conservative special interest money flowed into two Wisconsin Court of Appeals elections – one in northern Wisconsin and another near Milwaukee.

There had really been no recusal standard for justices or for other court judges receiving campaign contributions or benefiting from “independent” spending by outside interest groups prior to 2007 because campaign money was not a significant factor in judicial elections. Then things changed dramatically. In 2009, in reaction to the unprecedented amount of money spent in the 2007 and 2008 elections, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was petitioned to adopt a recusal rule that would force a justice to recuse her or himself from a case in which one of the parties in the case had donated $1,000 or more to a justice, either directly or to an outside special interest group spending in support of that justice’s campaign. It was rejected by a 4 to 3 vote.

The following year, in 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its controversial Citizens United v. F.E.C. decision, which effectively opened the way for corporations and other outside groups to make unlimited expenditures on behalf of candidates, including judges. Despite this, and shortly thereafter, the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted 4 to 3 to adopt, verbatim, a recusal rule written by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association, which said that justices could choose whether to recuse themselves from a case but that receiving a campaign contribution of any size from one or more of the parties need not disqualify them from adjudicating the case. This was essentially, no recusal standard at all.

In 2011, the Wisconsin Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker repealed the Impartial Justice Law, which had been enacted in 2009 and had provided full public financing of elections of candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court who voluntarily agreed to limit their total spending to $400,000. In 2015, Walker and the Legislature repealed longstanding prohibitions on campaign coordination between candidates and “independent” outside interest groups, thereby effectively eviscerating contribution limits for all elections in Wisconsin and making judicial elections much more partisan.

The result of all these actions has been that much more money, most of it undisclosed and unregulated, is flowing into elections in Wisconsin, including into nonpartisan judicial elections at all levels. It was in this context and very different and new political environment that 54 retired jurists from all over Wisconsin, including two former state Supreme Court justices, petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2017 to adopt strong and clear recusal rules for justices and judges at all levels with specific thresholds that would trigger mandatory recusal. Wisconsin was found to have the fourth weakest judicial recusal rules in the nation and these retired jurists sounded the alarm.

But a conservative majority of five justices voted against conducting any public hearings on the petition and similarly, in April of 2017, by the same 5 to 2 vote the Supreme Court rejected the petition of the retired jurists and kept the current policy of “self-recusal” in place.

In late 2017, Public Policy Polling of Raleigh, N.C., polled Wisconsinites on a number of issues, including two on judicial elections and recusal rules. The answers to the two questions showed that 83% of Wisconsinites strongly or somewhat support greater disclosure of campaign contributions and less spending in judicial elections, while only 10% strongly or somewhat oppose greater disclosure and money. Similarly, 82% of Wisconsinites strongly or somewhat favor the adoption of stronger recusal rules for judges while only 12% strongly or somewhat oppose them. Clearly, citizens in Wisconsin support stronger election campaign finance disclosure, less spending and stronger judicial recusal rules.

Currently, greater spending in judicial elections at all levels and weak recusal rules that compromise the integrity of judges and undermine citizen confidence in the courts have combined to tear down the once highly regarded impartiality and untainted reputation Wisconsin courts held nationally less than two decades ago. Can we reverse this calamitous slide downward and regain the trust of our citizenry?

The answer is yes. By adopting strong recusal rules, reinstituting public financing of elections, limiting campaign spending and enhancing disclosure we can reclaim our courts at all levels. It’s a tall order and big task but one we need to undertake in order to restore fairness and justice for all.

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Guest columnist Jay Heck
For the past 25 years, Jay Heck has been the Executive Director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. He is the chief spokesperson and leads the organization in all facets of its operation.

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Contact: 

Jay Heck

608/256-2686 (office)
608/512-9363 (cell)

Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 Johnson St, Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
www.commoncausewisconsin.org

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Common Cause in Wisconsin: Political Reform Year in Review

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Thursday, December 21, 2017

After nearly a year of the most dishonest, destructive and incompetent President of the United States in history – and another year of the most anti-progressive, least ethical, most secretive and anti-democratic Governor and State Legislature in state history – the United States, Wisconsin and CC/WI all still stand!

That is no small achievement in the current political atmosphere and power alignment – both in Washington, D.C. and in Madison, WI. In Wisconsin, we have even advanced the cause of redistricting reform and judicial recusal, and have not lost any further ground in voting rights and campaign finance reform. Yet.

Here is a summary of our work in these areas this year:

Fighting Partisan Gerrymandering

CC/WI has been a leader in the statewide effort to enact a nonpartisan redistricting process for Wisconsin since 2013, when we united legislators, reform organizations and citizens in support of adopting Iowa’s nonpartisan redistricting process. We forced the Republican-controlled Assembly to finally hold a public hearing on the issue in 2016 and we have mobilized unanimous support from all the state’s daily newspaper editorial boards.


The Capital Times cartoonist, Mike Konopacki, recently created this cartoon with CC/WI as the subject.

This year, we took the leading role in forcing GOP legislative leaders to cap the amount of taxpayer money they will spend on defending Wisconsin’s unconstitutional 2011 legislative district maps and to disclose the law firms they hired, and we have been all over the state educating Wisconsinites about the pending case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Gill v. Whitford, which declared Wisconsin’s 2011 maps illegal, and which would, if the nation’s highest court upholds a federal court decision, dramatically curtail hyper-partisan gerrymandering, nationwide. New CC/WI State Chair, former State Senator Tim Cullen of Janesville, is a leader in the landmark court case. We have also gathered nearly 4,000 of our target goal of 5,000 signatures in support of redistricting reform legislation – Senate Bill 13/Assembly Bill 44 – which we hope to reach in early 2018. If you have not signed the petition yet, or have but know others who haven’t, please go here and do so!

For more on this issue:

Plain Talk: Full-time state legislators don't have time for us
December 6, 2017 - Dave Zweifel, The Capital Times

VIDEO: Gerrymandering in Wisconsin: The Issues Before the Supreme Court
November 28, 2017 - UW Oshkosh American Democracy Project

VIDEO: Interview with CC/WI Dir. Jay Heck on Gerrymandering & Voter ID in Wisconsin
December 4, 2017 - Senior Beat

Voting Rights

CC/WI continues to counter the suppressing effect of Wisconsin’s extreme and restrictive voter photo ID law (in full effect since 2016) by providing information to eligible citizens about what they need to be able to vote and what documentation they must have to obtain the requisite form of photo ID. We have been the leading resource for college and university students to find out if their student ID is acceptable at polling places and how to get the correct form of ID if it isn’t. CC/WI partners particularly closely with the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin to get more citizens the information they need to vote. This is critically important because the voter photo ID law caused Wisconsin to experience a large drop off in voter turnout in 2016 compared to 2012 and Donald Trump carried the state by just about 22,000 votes – in part because of this voter suppression.

For more on this issue:

Study: Black voter participation plummeted in 2016
November 7, 2017 - Bob Hague, Wisconsin Radio Network

Campaign Finance Reform

During the summer, CC/WI participated in a press conference in the Capitol to support a package of campaign finance reform measures, which we pointed out would merely restore to Wisconsin some of the laws we had in place 20 years ago and which have all been destroyed by Walker and the GOP-controlled legislature over the past seven years. Included in the package is a measure advanced by CC/WI that would once again prohibit campaign coordination between candidates and outside special interest groups running phony issue advocacy communications, and one that would require disclosure of the donors to all electioneering communications, not just those that explicitly state “vote for,” or “defeat.”

For more on this issue:

Wisconsin Democrats join good-government groups in push for campaign finance reform
June 8, 2017 - Louis Weisberg, Wisconsin Gazette

Wisconsin Democrats Propose Tougher Campaign Finance Laws
June 7, 2017 - Hope Kirwan, Wisconsin Public Radio

Judicial Recusal

In late July, CC/Wisconsin single-handedly reignited the important issue of recusal for judges in the receipt of campaign contributions or benefiting from special interest “outside” electioneering spending, with the recent opinion-editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin’s largest newspaper.

The conservative majority (5 of 7) on the Wisconsin Supreme Court last April voted 5 to 2 not to adopt sensible recusal rules for judges at all levels proposed last January by 54 retired state jurists, including two former Supreme Court justices. The majority would not even allow a public hearing on the matter. Wisconsin currently ranks 47th of the 50 states in the strength of its recusal procedures. But the issue is front and center in the upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, 2018 to replace retiring ultra-conservative justice Michael Gableman, the state “poster child” for the need for judicial recusal.

CC/WI organized well-attended public hearings and forums on the issue during October in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Madison, and former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices (Janine Geske and Louis Butler), current Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, and other prominent jurists participated. CC/WI must and will continue this critical work in early 2018.

For more on this issue:

Judicial Recusal
October 31, 2017 - Greg Stensland, "Between The Lines," Radio Plus - WFDL, Fond du Lac

VIDEO: Common Cause Wisconsin Town Hall Meeting on Judicial Recusal
October 24, 2017 - WisconsinEye


CC/WI has continued to call out Gov. Scott Walker and the anti-reform, reactionary Wisconsin Legislature on other issues as well and we will never give up pushing for the common sense, effective political reform measures that once made this state a model for the nation.

We will continue to educate Wisconsinites about, and mobilize citizen support for, these reforms until we prevail. We need your end-of-the-year support, as soon and as generous as possible, so that we can carry the fight into 2018 – a critical election year in Wisconsin with a pivotal State Supreme Court contest in April and Gubernatorial, State Legislative, and U.S. Senate and House elections. Please help us now so that we can continue our mutual quest to increase the number of Wisconsinites advocating for change and the achievement of genuine, progressive reform.

"Snail mail" your check or credit card payment (Visa, MC, American Express, Discover) to Common Cause in Wisconsin, P.O. Box 2597, Madison, WI 53701-2597, or you can make a contribution online to CC/WI here.


With best wishes for the Holiday Season and for a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

Sincerely,


Jay Heck – CC/WI Director

P.S. For the past two decades, CC/WI has been one of Wisconsin’s most respected political reform advocacy organizations. One reason may be our doggedness and persistence. Please read this newspaper editorial from earlier this year that details how CC/WI just won’t give up. Neither can you. Wisconsin’s state motto is “Forward!” Let’s go that way. Help us now!

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Jay Heck
608/256-2686 (office)
608/512-9363 (cell)



Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI  53703
608/256-2686

Want Good Government?
Join Common Cause in Wisconsin!
www.CommonCauseWisconsin.org

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CC/WI End-of-Summer Reform Review

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Thursday, August 31, 2017

Obviously, 2017 has been a tough and difficult time for Wisconsinites like us, who care about honest, progressive, enlightened, open, and transparent state and federal government and politics. With the most dishonest, least qualified person ever to occupy the White House – Donald Trump – and the most regressive, egocentrically hyperpartisan, reactionary Governor in state history – Scott Walker – we have faced some daunting challenges and stinging setbacks: not just since Trump’s election last Fall, but since Walker and an ultra-conservative Republican majority swept into power in 2010 and have been dismantling Wisconsin’s honest, fair, transparent and democratic traditions, ever since.

But CC/WI has not backed down and we will never quit standing up for what we all know Wisconsin was once, should be, and will be again – a model and beacon of light for the rest of the nation, not the shameful political backwater we have been transformed into: somewhere between Alabama and Mississippi.

The very good news is that we are making progress in advancing our core democratic reform agenda during 2017: nonpartisan redistricting reform, curbing voter suppression, campaign finance reform, recusal for judges receiving campaign contributions, and stopping conservatives from destroying democracy by convening an unprecedented “constitutional convention” to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.

Here’s what we are doing:

Fighting Partisan Gerrymandering

CC/WI has led the statewide effort to enact a nonpartisan redistricting process for Wisconsin since 2013, when we united legislators, reform organizations and citizens in support of adopting Iowa’s non-partisan redistricting process. We forced the Republican-controlled Assembly to finally hold a public hearing on the issue last year and we have mobilized unanimous support from all the state’s daily newspaper editorial boards. This year, we took the leading role in forcing GOP legislative leaders to cap the amount of taxpayer money they will spend on defending Wisconsin’s unconstitutional 2011 legislative redistrict maps and to disclose the law firms they hired, and we have been all over the state educating Wisconsinites about the pending case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Gill v. Whitford, which declared Wisconsin’s 2011 maps illegal, and which would, if the nation’s highest court upholds a federal court decision, dramatically curtail hyperpartisan gerrymandering nationwide. New CC/WI State Chair, former State Senator Tim Cullen of Janesville, is a leader in the landmark court case.

We have also gathered nearly 4,000 of our target goal of 5,000 signatures in support of redistricting reform legislation – Senate Bill 13/Assembly Bill 44 – which we hope to reach this Fall. If you have not signed the petition yet, or have but know others who haven’t, please go here and do so!

Voting Rights

CC/WI continues to counter the suppressing effect of Wisconsin’s extreme and restrictive voter photo ID law (in full effect since last year) by providing information to eligible citizens about what they need to be able to vote and what documentation they must have to obtain the requisite form of photo ID. We have been the leading resource for college and university students in the state to find out if their student ID is acceptable at polling places and how to get the correct form of ID if it isn’t. CC/WI partners particularly closely with the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin to get more citizens what they need to vote. This is critically important because the voter photo ID law caused Wisconsin to experience a large drop off in voter turnout in 2016 compared to 2012 and Trump carried the state by just 22,000 votes – in part because of this voter suppression.

Campaign Finance Reform

In June, CC/WI participated in a press conference in the Capitol to support a package of campaign finance reform measures, introduced by State Senator Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee), which we pointed out would merely restore to Wisconsin some of the laws we had in place 20 years ago and which have all been destroyed by Walker and the GOP-controlled legislature over the past seven years. We have a long way to go to get back to where we were, and educating Wisconsinites about what we need to do is crucial.

Judicial Recusal

In late July, CC/Wisconsin single-handedly reignited the important issue of recusal for judges in the receipt of campaign contributions or benefiting from special interest “outside” electioneering spending, with the recent opinion-editorial in the Sunday Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin’s largest newspaper.

The conservative majority (5 of 7) on the Wisconsin Supreme Court last April voted 5 to 2 not to adopt sensible recusal rules for judges at all levels proposed last January by 54 retired state jurists, including two former Supreme Court justices. The majority would not even allow a public hearing on the matter. Wisconsin currently ranks 47th of the 50 states in the strength of its recusal procedures. But the issue is front and center in the upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, 2018 to replace retiring ultra-conservative justice Michael Gableman, the state “poster child” for the need for judicial recusal. CC/WI is organizing public hearings and forums on the issue this Fall in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Madison and former jurists and you, the citizens of Wisconsin, will participate!

Measures to Amend/destroy the U.S. Constitution

Despite many other pressing state budget issues of great concern to Wisconsin citizens, Republicans in the State Assembly carved out time in June to vote on measures no one is calling for except for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and some other wealthy special interest groups that bankroll the state GOP – such as Wisconsin Club for Growth. Measures to make Wisconsin the 28th state (of 34 needed) to call for an “Article V Constitutional Convention” passed.

All are misguided measures written for the stated purpose of adding a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but which would take us well beyond even that draconian, disastrous outcome. A convention like this has never been called and assembled before in our nation's history since the first and only Constitutional Convention establishing the nation in 1787 and it could be a very destructive and dangerous event. It could extend well beyond a balanced budget measure and go on to alter or eliminate citizen rights currently protected by the Constitution. Voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, an end to democracy and freedom itself. The possibilities are endless.

Seven Assembly Republicans joined all the Assembly Democrats in voting against the call for a convention. Public opposition and pressure by CC/WI played a big role in their opposition. Fortunately, prospects for passage in the State Senate appear much less certain at this time. GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) has expressed grave reservations about the matter, as have other State Senate Republicans. But we will have to work hard to make sure it is not passed in that chamber because Walker is very supportive of it.

Now, let me get straight to the point on a related issue: CC/WI needs your financial assistance – as soon and as generous as possible to continue and to build on this body of work. Please send your check or credit card payment (Visa, Master Card, American Express, and Discover) today. We need it. Period, end of story. Here is our address:

Common Cause in Wisconsin
P.O. Box 2597
Madison, WI 53701-2597

If you would prefer to make a contribution to CC/WI online, go here. Or, you can call the CC/WI office in Madison to make a credit card payment/contribution: 608/256-2686. I will likely answer the phone and would be delighted to talk with you!

Thank you for caring about democracy in Wisconsin. I am grateful to you.

Sincerely,

Jay Heck – Wisconsin Director (since 1996!)

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Jay Heck
608/256-2686 (office)
608/512-9363 (cell)



Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI  53703
608/256-2686

Want Good Government?
Join Common Cause in Wisconsin!
www.CommonCauseWisconsin.org

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Russ Feingold Joins Other Wisconsin Congressional Candidates in Telling Voters Where He Stands on Democracy Reform

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For Release: Thursday - September 8, 2016

Wisconsin voters are demanding to know where candidates for federal public office stand on democracy reform solutions and several Wisconsin congressional candidates, including Democratic US Senate nominee Russ Feingold, have heard voters’ calls and answered the "Who Will Fight Big Money" questionnaire.

Launched by a coalition of national democracy reform groups and led by Common Cause, the "Who Will Fight Big Money" campaign is a nonpartisan effort to get congressional candidates from across the country on the record on solutions that will bring balance to our democracy, including increasing political spending disclosure, overturning Citizens United, enacting citizen-funded election systems, and reducing barriers to the ballot box. Since the campaign’s launch, nearly 40,000 people have visited WhoWillFightBigMoney.org, and thousands have sent emails and tweets to candidates urging them to fill out the questionnaire.

“Every Wisconsin congressional candidate should listen to voters and fill out this questionnaire,” says Common Cause in Wisconsin Executive Director Jay Heck. “This campaign lays out a common sense agenda that voters in both parties support and are demanding to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard and that candidates are able to focus on the needs of everyday voters instead of those of just the big donors.”

Wisconsin congressional candidates who have filled out the questionnaire in addition to Democratic US Senate nominee Russ Feingold include Democratic challengers Khary Penebaker (5th CD), Sarah Lloyd (6th CD), and Mary Hoeft (7th CD). You can find all completed questionnaires by Wisconsin congressional candidates at:

www.whowillfightbigmoney.org/wisconsin

If your incumbent U.S. House Member and/or challenger have not yet answered these questions, demand that they do so. You have a right to know and they have the duty and responsibility to respond.

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CONTACT:

Jay Heck
608/256-2686 (office)
608/512-9363 (cell)




Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI  53703
608/256-2686

Want Good Government?
Join Common Cause in Wisconsin!
www.CommonCauseWisconsin.org

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Walker signs GAB Destruction and Campaign Finance Deform into Law

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For Release: Wednesday - December 16, 2015

Walker Enacts into Law the Assault on Democracy in Wisconsin
Sets Good Government Back to the 19th Century

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Governor Scott Walker today signed into law two measures that had the support of virtually no Wisconsin citizens and which were designed for one purpose only: to consolidate and maintain one party political control of Wisconsin as we head into a critical Presidential election year. Both measures were crafted and rammed through the Legislature to please Eric O'Keefe of Wisconsin Club for Growth, Charles and David Koch, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Wisconsin Right to Life, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, National Review magazine and a handful of other powerful politicians and right-wing partisans who are far more interested in consolidating their political power than in the well being of the vast majority of Wisconsin citizens.

Henry F. Potter, the richest and meanest man in Bedford Falls, would have approved.

The corrupt status quo in Wisconsin has not only prevailed this past Fall, it has triumphed completely. For now. The majority party in the State Assembly and State Senate moved Wisconsin far back into the past, vanquishing more than 100 years of transparency and sensible limits on special interest political money – reforms which, in part – date back to the Governorship of Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

This assault on democracy, while supported and encouraged by Walker, was largely the handiwork of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and a cadre of hyper-partisan Republican legislators whose lust for total and absolute political control trumps any lingering respect they may have had for bipartisanship and for open, transparent, accountable and honest state government.

The destruction of the eight-year-old, non-partisan Government Accountability Board was based on completely discredited charges, false premises, character assassination and outright falsehoods. The enactment into law of both the GAB destruction (Assembly Bill 388) and campaign finance deform (Assembly Bill 387) measures – together with the recently enacted law to exempt political crimes from being investigated under the state’s John Doe process – will all combine to allow political corruption to take root and flourish in Wisconsin.

This will be remembered as one of the saddest and darkest chapters, at the end of one of the most horrendous legislative floor periods, in our state’s 167-year history – when honest, accountable and transparent state government was systematically dismantled in favor of hyper-partisan political advantage, retroactive decriminalization, and revenge.

The entire process under which Assembly Bills 387 and 388 were first unveiled in October, fast-tracked through a single public hearing in Madison only, and then rammed through committees and rushed to the floor of the Wisconsin Assembly and slammed through, before being stalled for a week in the State Senate, has been among the most abusive, disrespectful, secretive and utterly anti-democratic in the history of the Wisconsin Legislature.

The first measure up for preordained adoption and passage by the GOP-controlled Legislature was what we have been calling "Campaign Finance Deform." It will:

* Codify into law the ability of candidates to be able to collude and coordinate with outside special interest groups in campaigns as long as the outside groups avoid using a few selective and limited words in their communications, such as "vote for" or "defeat" or "support." This is what is known as "express advocacy." Outside communications that use virtually any other words, however negative or laudatory, can be coordinated with candidates and, furthermore, require no reporting or disclosure of the donors. This is relatively unprecedented in the nation. Only Florida allows this. But the Wisconsin measure goes even further than Florida by allowing coordination between candidates and outside groups who engage in express advocacy as long as there is no explicit discussion of that coordination! What it all means is that a tsunami of secret money from within and outside of Wisconsin can flood our elections to influence our votes. No other state allows for as many opportunities for political money to escape simple, basic disclosure as this legislation will allow in Wisconsin. The purpose is simple: to keep Wisconsinites as ignorant as possible about who is influencing elections and controlling public policy-making in this state.

* Allow political parties and legislative campaign committees (slush funds controlled by state legislative leaders) to collect significant corporate and other special interest money and individual contributions of any amount, with no limit for distribution to candidates and allows them to run undisclosed phony issue ads and to coordinate with phony issue ad groups. This will greatly enhance the power of the major political parties in the state but, much more alarmingly, will vastly increase the power of legislative leaders with unlimited political money to bestow upon, or withhold from candidates, at their whim, and to crush any dissent and threaten with primary opposition those legislators who defy the leaders and try to exercise independent judgment. This was at the heart of the 2001-2002 Legislative Caucus Scandal – political money in the Capitol compromising and undermining pubic policy-making. This provision will lead to far more secret money and opportunities to engage in illegal activity without detection.

* Eliminate the currently required information about employers from individuals who make political contributions to candidates for state office. All that will be required to be reported will be the name, address and occupation of the donor. Which tells the public very little about her or him.

Republican legislative proponents of AB 387 have continually made the completely false and erroneous claim that they "had to" craft this legislation in order to bring Wisconsin into "compliance" with the Citizens United vs. F.E.C. U.S. Supreme Court decision of 2010 and because of other court decisions since that time. While some revisions to Wisconsin's decades-old campaign finance law are necessary, the revisions in this legislation most certainly are not required. Coordination can still be limited and disclosure can certainly be required. This measure was specifically designed to shroud Wisconsin in an impenetrable veil of secrecy and dark money, destroy transparency, and inject Wisconsin with an unlimited and inexhaustible supply of special interest money to ensure Republican control of state government for the near and distant future. That's not democracy, it's oligarchy.

Then, the majority party undertook the dismantling and destruction of the 8-year-old, nonpartisan Wisconsin Government Accountability Board. Twelve Republican State Senators who voted to establish the GAB in 2007, voted to destroy it. Nothing changed in the intervening 8 years except the politics. So these 12 State Senators were all for the GAB before they turned against it.

The hyped-up charges and accusations made against long-time State Elections Board and GAB Director Kevin Kennedy, and against the retired judges themselves, were vicious, scurrilous, hyperbolic, exaggerated, and – almost entirely – just untrue. But the right-wing echo chamber faithfully repeated the misinformation continually, the real facts be damned. And there were other, more practical, hyper-partisan political reasons to destroy the GAB. Revenge and the unquenchable thirst for absolute control over a state agency that had the independent power to investigate political corruption, trumped the truth. The GAB destruction legislation:

* Gets rid of the six non-partisan judges and replaces them with two six member commissions, one for elections and one for ethics, comprised of partisan political appointments – three Republicans and three Democrats – which all but guarantees tied votes and, therefore, gridlock and inaction.

* Gets rid of Kevin Kennedy. He has overseen elections and campaign finance law in Wisconsin for more than 30 years, capably and in a scrupulously non-partisan manner. He will be replaced by two administrators who will be selected by partisan legislative leaders.

* Most significantly, it eliminates the independent, "sum sufficient" funding for investigations by the GAB into possible political corruption (being perpetrated by legislators, for example). This was the absolute most critical and central component of the creation of the GAB in 2007. Without it, the GAB is under the complete control of the legislative leadership. This independent stream of funding for investigations acted as a huge preventative tool for corruption in the Capitol. Without it, the GAB will be feared by no one and ignored by most. That is by design. The GAB will be transformed into another Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation – a toothless, ineffective state agency with no ability to effectively enforce election, campaign finance, ethics and lobbying law. And it will likely be utilized as a tool to aid in the achievement of the partisan political goals of the leaders of the Legislature and the Governor.

These profoundly anti-democratic measures are not the sum total of the majority party’s assault on good government in Wisconsin. Renewed attempts to weaken and even eviscerate our state’s open records laws, as well as to undermine the effectiveness of the respected non-partisan Legislative Audit Bureau by adding partisan political appointments in all state agencies, are in the works for early 2016. And there may be more.

Thomas Jefferson said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. And so it is that Wisconsinites must, not only be more vigilant to stave off further erosion of our democratic institutions, but we must also organize, register to vote, turn out and work as never before to take back Wisconsin from those who seek to destroy it.

We will never forget these past several months when democracy and transparency in Wisconsin were brutally assaulted and curtailed. But we will never give in or surrender and will continually strive to restore democracy to the state, which was once the national icon for honest, open, accountable and clean politics and good government in the nation. This battle has already been joined and will not cease until we once again prevail.

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CONTACT:

Jay Heck
608/256-2686 (office)
608/512-9363 (cell)



Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI  53703
608/256-2686

Want Good Government?
Join Common Cause in Wisconsin!
www.CommonCauseWisconsin.org

Read More...

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