Hijacking Campaign 2024 - Information on Stronger Wisconsin Fund

Posted: July 24, 2024
Updated: October 6, 2025

Stronger Wisconsin Fund first registered with the state in June 2024 to make independent expenditures in the fall state legislative elections. The organization’s registered address is a post office box in a commercial mailing service based in Eau Claire. The organization had a registered domain, strongerwisconsin.org, created in May 2024 but no website matching that domain has been found.

Stronger Wisconsin Fund raised $450,00 in 2024, all of that from Americans 4 Security, Inc, a shadowy corporation that has provided financing to two other independent expenditure committees active in 2024, Speak Free Or Die and Wisconsinites for Liberty Fund. Americans 4 Security’s registered office address matches that of a UPS shipping center in Plover, Wis. and its registered corporate agent is Matthew M. Fernholz, a Waukesha attorney and former president of the Milwaukee Chapter of the Federalist Society, a national legal association that promotes conservative and libertarian legal theories. Fernholz also serves as a registered contact for Stronger Wisconsin Fund.

Stronger Wisconsin spent over $408,000 for mailers, texts, radio, and online advertising in sixteen Republican primaries. It reported no further spending after the primaries concluded. All the primaries were in Republican districts and many included incumbent legislators running against each other or in districts new to them because of the 2024 passage of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s legislative redistricting plan.

The districts were:

1st Assembly District where it supported incumbent Joel Kitchens.
4th Assembly District where it supported incumbent David Steffen.
6th Assembly District where it supported first-term incumbent Peter Schmidt against Rep. Elijah Behnke then representing 89th Assembly. Behnke had been placed into Schmidt’s district by the new legislative maps.
24th Assembly District where it supported Sen. Dan Knodl against Rep. Janel Brandtjen. This was a new district for both candidates. At the time, Knodl represented the 8th State Senate District but chose to run for the assembly rather than run against a more senior GOP senator that had been drawn into his district. This is rematch of the 2023 special election primary for the 8th State Senate District.
27th Assembly District where it supported Brian Hilbelink against Linda Rae Brill for a seat left open as the Republican incumbent had been redrawn into a new district, the 26th.
35th Assembly District where it supported two-term incumbent Rep. Calvin Callahan.
55th Assembly District where it supported Rep. Michael Schraa, then representing the 53rd, against the district's first term incumbent Nate Gustafson. Like Schmidt and Behnke, the two had been drawn into the same district.
57th Assembly District where it supported Rep. Kevin Petersen, nine-term incumbent of the 40th.
67th Assembly District where it supported Rep. David Armstrong, two-term incumbent in the 75th.
68th Assembly District where it supported Rep. Rob Summerfield, formerly of the 67th.
69th Assembly District where it supported Rep. Karen Hurd, formerly of the 68th.
74th Assembly District where it supported first-term incumbent Rep. Chanz Green.
87th Assembly District where it supported Brent Jacobson in a two-way primary for seat left open by the retirement of a GOP legislator.
88th Assembly District where it supported Ben Franklin in a two-way primary for another left open by the retirement of a GOP legislator.
98th Assembly District where it opposed former state Rep. Don Pridemore in a two-way primary for a seat left open when its Republican incumbent was placed in a new district.
20th Senate District where it opposed former Rep. Tim Ramthun. Ramthun, who left the legislature to run for governor in 2022, faced Sen. Dan Feyen, the two-term incumbent in the 18th State Senate.

All candidates backed by Stronger Wisconsin won their primaries except for Schmidt in the 6th, Hilbelink in the 27th and Schraa in the 55th. All the primary winners won election in November.

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.