Hijacking Campaign 2022 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Offices | Campaign 2022
Posted: October 29, 2022
Updated: March 25, 2024
Based, in Washington, D.C. Wisconsin RINO Hunters first registered with the state to make independent expenditures in late September 2022 and does not appear to have lasted as an organization much beyond the Nov. 8 election. The group's now nonexistent website, a single web page, said the group would do anything it takes to defend the country from "liberal extremists" and "RINO traitors." RINO" is a derisive term used to describe Republicans seen as too liberal. Since the group has not yet had to file a campaign finance report, little is known about the group's support. The group's address, however, is identical to that of D.C.-based political consulting firm Total Spectrum.
Eleven days before the election, the group filed its first spending report indicating that it had spent nearly $620,000 for mailers and online advertising to oppose GOP candidate for governor Tim Michels.
The online ads - here and here - accused Michels of being a Republican in Name Only (RINO) and claimed that Independent candidate Joan Ellis Beglinger was the only true conservative running for Wisconsin governor.
In addition, Wisconsin RINO Hunters ran a now defunct website called Joan for Wisconsin that touted Beglinger and featured a page attacking Michels.
After filing its initial report, the organization spent about another $62,700 for phone calls and online ads opposing Michels.
All this activity was on behalf of a candidate who had suspended her campaign in September and backed Michels in the general election.
According to reports filed by the committee, all independent expenditures were paid to Liberty Group, Inc., a corporation with a listed address in the reports identical to that of Total Spectrum and RINO Hunters itself. A corporation of the same name, also in Washington, D.C., but with a different reported address, funded another independent expenditure committee active in a Republican primary in August, Patriots for Wisconsin.
This organization is registered with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission as an independent expenditure committee following the January 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.