Hijacking Campaign 2023 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Campaign 2023
Posted: February 10, 2023
Updated: March 26, 2024
This committee, based in Ottawa, Ill., filed paperwork to make independent expenditures in a spring 2023 special election to fill the vacant 8th Senate District seat in suburban Milwaukee.
According the its website, the group wants to make voting easy and accessible, end partisan gerrymandering, and defeat “the Toxic Tribalism tearing our families, friendships, and country apart.”
In early February, the group reported spending about $9,300 on mailings to oppose GOP Rep. Janel Brandtjen in the three-way Feb. 21 special election Republican primary. Brandtjen, an Assembly Republican from Menomonee Falls since 2014, is a supporter of Trump and his false claims that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, was stolen.
Brandtjen lost the primary to Rep. Dan Knodl, of Germantown, who went on to defeat Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin in the April 4 general election.
This organization is an unregistered independent expenditure committee that is required to report any such spending done within 60 days of a primary or an election to the Wisconsin Ethics Commission per Chapter 11, Subchapter X of Wisconsin Statutes.