Hijacking Campaign 2024 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Offices | Campaign 2024
Posted: August 20, 2024
Updated: October 6, 2025
This is a political action committee (PAC) used by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation to make independent expenditures and direct contributions to support legislative and statewide candidates, overwhelmingly Republican ones. The federation is one of the state’s largest and most influential agricultural lobbying and advocacy groups. Between 2010 and 2023 the group reported over $930,000 on independent expenditures in partisan and nonpartisan state elections.
The PAC first reported spending six days after the August 13th legislative primaries with over $98,500 going for radio ads to support GOP incumbent Sen. Joan Ballweg in the 14th State Senate District against her Democratic challenger Sarah Keyeski.
By the time the election was done, the committee supported spending over $172,500 to support candidates in six senate - the 10th, 12th, 14th, 20th, 24th and 32nd - and 26 assembly races, the 1st, 5th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 32nd, 33rd, 36th, 37th, 38th, 41st, 49th, 50th, 51st, 56th, 57th, 67th, 68th, 69th, 70th, 72nd, 74th, 85th, 91st, 92nd and 96th. All the candidates supported by Volunteers for Agriculture were incumbents, even if fourteen of them were running in districts new to them after being displaced by legislative district maps passed in 2024. All the candidates backed by Volunteers were Republicans except for three Democrats, two in the assembly, Reps. Jenna Jacobson, running in the 50th but formerly of the 43rd, and Jodi Emerson of the 91st, and one in the senate, Sen. Brad Paff of the 32nd.
All but two of the candidates backed by this committee won in November. The two who lost were Rep. Lauren Oldenburg in the 96th Assembly and Ballweg in the 14th Senate. The general consensus among political observers before the election was that their districts had become more Democratic under the new maps.
Last active election: 2023