Hijacking Campaign 2023 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Campaign 2023
Posted: February 10, 2023
Updated: March 26, 2024
This Arlington, VA based, anti-abortion political action committee (PAC) describes itself as a "partner" of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an organization last directly involved in Wisconsin politics with the 2019 state supreme court election. The PAC's treasurer, Jennifer Gross, is also the treasurer for Election Integrity PAC, which was involved in several Republican primaries in 2022. Women Speak Out first reported making independent expenditures in Wisconsin state-level elections with the 2022 gubernatorial race.
Women Speak Out reported spending almost $143,000 for phone calls and mailers to support former Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly in the Feb. 21 nonpartisan primary where he vied with three other candidates, two liberals and another conservative, for the right to run in the April 4, 2023 election for the ten-year seat vacated by retiring conservative Justice Patience Roggensack. As Roggensack was a member of the court's 4-3 conservative majority, her retirement put the ideological direction of the court up for grabs.
Kelly, a 2016 appointee to the court by former GOP Governor Scott Walker who was voted off the court in 2020, and Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz, who was perceived as, and ran as, a liberal, made it through the primary.
Protasiewicz won the election and joined the court the following August giving the high court a 4-3 liberal majority.
After the primary, the group spent over another $2 million in the election for canvassing, campaign literature, texting, phone calls and television and online advertising costs.
A 30-second television ad the group sponsored in late March accused Protasiewicz of imposing a light sentence on a child rapist.
A day before the election, the PAC ran broadcast, digital, and cable versions of an ad that accused Protasiewicz of being on the side of "predatory abortion profiteers."
Last active election: 2022
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.