Hijacking Campaign 2018 | Independent Expenditures | Issue Ads | Candidates | Offices | Campaign 2018
Posted: May 8, 2018
Updated: June 18, 2021
This group lists only an Appleton, Wis. post office box as its address, and an individual named Bruce Barrett as its treasurer in paperwork filed with the state to make independent expenditures in a June special election for the 1st Senate District called after the incumbent, Republican Sen. Frank Lasee, vacated the seat late in 2017 to take another job with the state.
The group appears to have a federal political action committee (PAC) that first appeared in 2016 when it raised about $71,100 and spent about $70,300, on independent expenditures to support Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Gallagher in Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District.
Most of the PAC’s 2016 fundraising, $53,500, came from Midwest Growth Unlimited, followed by Dennis Kuester, of Naples, Fla., a former M&I Bank chairman from Wisconsin, $10,000, and Matthew Nguyen, a New York City investment fund manager, $7,000. Federal reports show the PAC only raised $500 and spent $110 through the first six months of 2018.
Midwest Growth Fund sponsored a series of radio ads and a mailing in the special election to support Republican candidate Alex Renard, an executive at his family-owned Renco Machine Co. in Green Bay. Renard lost the May 15 primary to GOP Rep. Andre Jacque, of De Pere. Jacque, in turn, lost the June 12 general election to Democrat Caleb Frostman. (Jacque defeated Frostman later that year in a November rematch.)
This organization is registered with the Government Accountability Board/Wisconsin Ethics Commission as an independent expenditure committee following the January 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.