Hijacking Campaign 2024 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Offices | Campaign 2024
Posted: August 16, 2024
Updated: October 6, 2025
The Wisconsin Initiative IE first registered with the state to make independent expenditures in June 2024 and is sponsored by The Wisconsin Initiative, an organization based in Verona, Wisconsin that advocates for progressive causes. State records show that the Wisconsin Initiative, the parent organization, was created in June 2021. Although this is the first time the organization has reported independent expenditures in Wisconsin state elections, the group was active in the 2022 fall elections when it ran "issue ads" instead.
The Wisconsin Initiative IE had but two sources of income in 2024. It received $115,000 from its corporate sponsor and $2.55 million as a corporate contribution from the Washington, D.C. based Our American Future Action, the advocacy arm of the Our American Future Foundation. The contribution from Our American Future Action was the first the committee received and that came just a week after the committee first registered with the state.
The committee started spending the day after the August 13th primaries, when it reported spending over $83,600 to support Democrats and oppose Republicans in two senate - the 18th and 30th - and four assembly races, the 53rd, 88th, 89th and 92nd. A couple of days later, it reported spending over $105,000 in the 8th Senate. Towards the end of October, it reported spending in one more district, the 94th Assembly.
With the exception of the 94th Assembly, where the incumbent was a Democrat, all the races were for seats represented by Republicans retiring or running in other districts because of new legislative district maps passed earlier that year. In the 92nd Assembly, the Republican candidate, Rep. Clint Moses, was the two-term representative for the 29th but displaced from his old district by the aforementioned maps. Similarly, the Republican candidate in the 8th Senate, Sen. Duey Stroebel, was the incumbent for the 20th Senate at the time.
The Wisconsin Initiative IE spent over $2 million for mailers and online advertising in the election and scored wins in all three senate races, and two in the assembly, the 89th and the 94th.
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.