Hijacking Campaign 2025 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Campaign 2025
Posted: March 23, 2025
Updated: April 4, 2025
Organized in 2019, Blue Sky Waukesha, Inc. is a liberal leaning group based, as its name implies, in Waukesha County. It first made independent expenditures in the 2020 Wisconsin State Supreme Court election. Between 2020 and 2024, it spent about $139,000 on outside electioneering activities in state-level elections in Wisconsin.
Ten days from the April 1st elections, the group first reported making independent expenditures in the Wisconsin State Supreme Court and State Superintendent of Public Instruction races. It spent over $11,700 on postcards in the former contest to support Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford. Although the court is officially nonpartisan, the state Democratic party backed Crawford and the state GOP her opponent, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, himself a former Republican office holder. The two were in competition to replace a retiring liberal justice on a court where liberals won a 4-3 majority in the 2023 election; the election of Schimel would have given control back to conservatives. With Crawford's victory, liberals should maintain control of the court for at least the next three years.
Blue Sky Waukesha spent over $4,000 on postcards backing incumbent Jill Underly for superintendent of public instruction. Underly, first elected in 2021, faces challenger Brittany Kinser, an educational consultant and former charter school lobbyist. Like the high court, the office is officially nonpartisan, but support for the two contestants divided along partisan lines with Democrats supporting Underly and Republicans Kinser. Underly won reelection.
The day of the election, Blue Sky reported spending about $20,600 for postcards between the two races. Two days after the election, it reported spending about another $2,500 for online advertising between the two contests.
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.