Hijacking Campaign 2024 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Offices | Campaign 2024
Posted: July 8, 2024
Updated: October 6, 2025
Wisconsin Workers United first registered with the state to make independent expenditures in the fall state legislative elections in mid-June 2024. The organization's registration materials suggest that it is affiliated with North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters as it shares an address with that union's branch in Kaukauna and its treasurer, Michael Adamavich, is a business representative for the union. Indeed, the first ever recorded contribution received by the committee was $20,000 from that very union. The remainder of its $125,000 income in 2024 came from Wisconsin Infrastructure Investment Now, an organization formed in 2014 to lobby on transportation, energy, mining, and other infrastructure related issues.
The committee first reported spending at the beginning of July with more than $17,500 going for consulting fees and mailing lists to support first-term legislator Rep. Melissa Ratcliff in the 16th State Senate Democratic primary. Ratcliff faced two other incumbent Democratic representatives for the open seat. In the end, Wisconsin Workers United spent nearly $46,000 backing Ratcliff. She won the primary and was unopposed in November.
Eight days before the August 13th primary election, the group reported spending over $49,600 for mailers and online advertising in two other Democratic primaries, the 78th Assembly where it supported three-term redistricted incumbent Rep. Shelia Stubbs, formerly of the 77th, and the 19th Assembly where it backed first-term incumbent Ryan Clancy's challenger. Both Stubbs and Clancy won their respective primaries and, like Ratcliff, were unopposed in the general election.
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.