Hijacking Campaign 2024 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Offices | Campaign 2024
Posted: October 31, 2024
Updated: October 6, 2025
Speak Free Or Die positions itself as a defender of 1st Amendment freedoms and originally registered with the state as an independent expenditure committee to back then Sen. Roger Roth in his losing 2022 bid for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. This is the first time the committee has reported any spending on behalf of a candidate in a state election since then, but it did spend $7,500 in the spring 2023 election to support a yes vote on a referendum question on bail reform.
Little else is known about the organization. At the time of the election, its only known address matched that of a packing and shipping business in Bayside. The committee reported raising $212,000 between 2022 and 2023, $145,000 of that coming from Americans 4 Security, Inc. As for Americans 4 Security, its registered office address matches that of a UPS shipping center in Plover, Wis. and the 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 was also listed as contact for another independent expenditure committee active in 2024, Stronger Wisconsin Fund. Americans 4 Security was the sole funder of Stronger Wisconsin in 2024 and of another independent expenditure committee involved in the 2024 elections, Wisconsinites for Liberty Fund.
In 2024, Speak Free Or Die raised $65,000, all of it from the Jobs First Coalition Political Fund, another independent expenditure committee involved in the 2024 elections. Moreover, the influx of funds from Jobs First came on the very same day - October 29 - Speak Free Or Die recorded its first independent expenditure in the 2024 elections. That contribution was crucial to the organization's efforts as it had less than $3,400 in its coffers at the time.
Speak Free or Die reported spending over $60,300 for radio ads and mailers opposing Democratic incumbent Rep. Steve Doyle in the 94th Assembly. Despite the committee's efforts, Doyle was reelected.
Last active election: 2022
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.