Hijacking Campaign 2025 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Campaign 2025
Posted: March 11, 2025
Updated: April 16, 2025
Based in Brooklyn, New York, the Working Families Party PAC is a federally registered political action committee affiliated with the Working Families Party. The party describes itself as a coalition of labor and community groups seeking to elect progressives to local and state offices nationwide. The party’s state affiliate made independent expenditures in the 2016 and 2020 fall, partisan elections but retired its independent expenditure committee at the end of 2024. The national Working Families Party PAC previously made independent expenditures in state Wisconsin elections under the name WFP National PAC.
About three weeks before the April 1st Wisconsin State Supreme Court election, the committee reported spending about $460* for phone banks and printing costs to support Dane Couty Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford against her opponent, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, for an open seat on the court. Liberals had enjoyed a 4-3 majority on the officially nonpartisan high court since the April 2023 election; the election of Schimel, a former Republican state attorney general, would have given control of the court back to conservatives. Crawford's victory ensures liberal control of the court for the next three years.
Three days after filing its first spending report, the group revelaed it had spent about an additional $18,300 for campaign literature, online advertising and texting to support Crawford and oppose Schimel.
Thirteen days before the April election, Working Families Party PAC reported spending nearly $22,500 for brochures and texts backing Crawford and opposing Schimel.
Eight days from the election, it reported spending about $187 for Facebook ads to support Crawford and oppose Schimel.
Four days before the April elections, it reported spending about $12,700 for phone calls and copying expenses in the court race. It also reported spending in the Wisconsin State Superintendent of Public Instruction race for the first time, with about $1,600 going towards copying expenses. The group supported first term incumbent Jill Underly against challenger Brittany Kinser, an educational consultant and fomer charter school lobbyist. Like the supreme court, the post is officially nonpartisan, but the state Democratic party supported Underly and the GOP Kinser. Underl won reelection.
The day before the election, it reported spending about $41,200 for canvassing, mailing and texts in the high court race and about $8,800 for the same in the school superintendent contest.
Two weeks after the election, Working Families Party PAC reported it had spent more on canvassing in the two races, about $36,000 in the court campaign and $5,500 in the superintendent of pubic instruction contset.
*In keeping with its mission to elect local officials, at the same time the group first reported spending in the high court race, it also spent nearly twice as much - $900 - in a Madison aldermanic race.
Last active election: 2024
This organization is an unregistered independent expenditure committee that is required to report any such spending done within 60 days of a primary or an election to the Wisconsin Ethics Commission per Chapter 11, Subchapter X of Wisconsin Statutes.