Hijacking Campaign 2023 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Campaign 2023
Posted: March 24, 2023
Updated: March 25, 2024
This is a tax-exempt nonprofit group that promotes gun safety education and legislation through lobbying and community organizing.
Everytown for Gun Safety supports background checks on all gun sales, stronger gun trafficking and straw purchasing laws, and repealing gun industry immunity.
The group sponsored its first electioneering activities in Wisconsin state elections in the race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court where conservative former Justice Dan Kelly faced liberal Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz on the April 4 ballot.
The winner would determine the ideological balance of the court, controlled 4-3 by conservatives, because one of the conservative justices was retiring.
Protsiewicz won the election and assumed her seat on the court in August 2023.
About two weeks before the election, the group spent over $450,000 to sponsor a 30-second television ad that claimed Kelly was too extreme to sit on the high court because he opposes abortion rights and background checks on all gun sales to protect public health and safety. The group also reported spending about $240 for phone calls to oppose Kelly and support Protasiewicz.
A few days before the election, the group sponsored a 30-second broadcast ad that said Kelly wrote a decision as a former justice that made it easier for dangerous people to carry guns in public. The ad also said Kelly might vote to uphold Wisconsin's abortion ban in the future if he sits on the high court again.
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.