Hijacking Campaign 2023 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Campaign 2023
Posted: January 30, 2023
Updated: March 25, 2024
Spring: Oath • Spending
This is a Downers Grove, Ill. group funded by rightwing billionaire Richard Uihlein that makes independent expenditures to help elect conservative judges.
Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, of Lake Forest, Ill., founded Uline, a shipping and packaging supply company. The couple are among the leading backers of Republican and conservative state and federal candidates and causes in the country.
In November 2022, Fair Courts announced it would spend millions of dollars to support conservative former Justice Dan Kelly’s bid to return to the high court. Kelly was appointed in 2016 by GOP Gov. Scott Walker to fill a vacancy on the court but failed to win election in 2020 to a full 10-year term.
The winner of the open-seat race in April would replace retiring conservative Justice Patience Roggensack determing whether or not conservatives would keep their 4-3 majority on the court.
Kelly was among four candidates – two conservatives and two liberals – who squared off in the nonpartisan Feb. 21 primary. Kelly and liberal Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz survived the primary and faced each other in the April 4 election.
In late January, before the primary, the group reported spending $300,000 on a statewide 60-second radio touting Kelly as a conservative whose election would prevent liberals from taking a 4-3 majority on the high court.
In early February, the group reported spending more than $512,000 on a television ad in the Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Wausau viewing areas that mirrored the earlier radio ad. It said Kelly's election would prevent a liberal takeover of the Supreme Court.
By the time of the primary, Fair Courts had reported spending a total of nearly $2.4 million on television ads in support of Kelly.
At the beginning of March, the organization created a now inactive website promoting Kelly.
In early March, the group sponsored an ad claiming Protasiewicz gave a light sentence to a convicted felon who abducted and raped a 15-year-old girl. A few days after the ad premiered, Fair Courts reported spending another $975,000 for television ads backing Kelly.
With less than four weeks to go before the election, Fair Courts reported spending over another $800,000 for television advertisments and mailers to support Kelly.
About three weeks before the election, it reported spending over another $459,000 for radio ads backing Kelly.
About a week before the election, Fair Courts reported spending over $600,000 for television and Facebook advertising in the race. A few days later, it reported yet another $100,00 for television advertising. Like several others run by this group and others, the television ad accused Protasiewicz of handing down a light sentence in a rape case.
The day before the election, it reported spending a further $225,000 for online advertising to support Kelly.
In spring 2022, the group spent $250,000 on television ads to support a conservative Waukesha County circuit judge’s successful bid for the state’s 2nd District Court of Appeals. At the time, Fair Courts’ treasurer and address were the same as the treasurer and address listed for Restoration PAC, a superPAC almost solely funded since 2016 by Uihlein.
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.