Hijacking Campaign 2024 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Offices | Campaign 2024
Posted: September 22, 2024
Updated: October 6, 2025
This committee was newly formed in fall 2018 by Wisconsin Conservation Voters, a statewide environmental advocacy group, to make independent expenditures to support candidates for the state legislature and other state offices such as governor and the supreme court. Between the fall 2018 election and the 2023 state supreme court and special legislative elections, this committee spent over $6.74 in state-level elections in Wisconsin. Since 2010, Wisconsin Conservation Voters, as an organization, has used four different committees in state elections, including this one, to make independent expenditures amounting to $8.8 million, placing the group among the highest spending outside electioneering groups in Wisconsin state elections.
Wisconsin Conservation Voters first reported making independent expenditures in one senate and two assembly races about six weeks before the November 5th legislative elections, but expanded its spending to encompass two senate - the 8th and 30th - and seven assembly races, the 53rd, 61st, 85th, 88th, 89th, 91st, and 94th. All the supported candidates were Democrats.
After spending more than $1.5 million for direct mail, online advertising, and other costs, five of the committee's favored candidates won, two in the senate - Jodi Habush Sinykin in the 8th and Jamie Wall in the 30th - and three in the assembly, Ryan Spaude in the 89th, Jodi Emerson in the 91st, and Steve Doyle in the 94th. The last two were incumbents. As for Spaude and Wall, they were running in open seats vacated by Republican incumbents who sought election in new districts after they were displaced by new legislative district map while Habush Sinykin defeated just such a displaced incumbent.
Last active election: 2023
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.