November 7, 2023
A southeastern Wisconsin group has spent more than $100,000 on broadcast and newspaper ads threatening to boot GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos unless he revs up the impeachment process against the state’s top elections official.
The group, the Wisconsin Election Committee, Inc., sponsored a 60-second ad on two Milwaukee television stations and a radio station that cost about $109,000. The ad’s narrator said the security and fairness of Wisconsin’s elections in 2024 were threatened if Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, remains on the job.
The broadcast ad accused Vos of holding up the impeachment process and that he should be recalled or replaced through a primary election challenge next fall unless he relents and allows the impeachment resolution introduced by a group of Assembly Republicans to move forward.
The broadcast ad and a newspaper ad also falsely accused Wolfe of allowing drop boxes, ballot harvesting, and local governments to accept private money to help pay for election administration during the 2020 presidential election.
State corporate records and ad buy documents showed Harry Wait and Adam Steen were among the leaders of the Wisconsin Election Committee, Inc., which was created in early October.
Wait, of Union Grove, faces felony and misdemeanor charges for illegally requesting absentee ballots for Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason last year. Wait also runs H.O.T. Government, a group that pushes false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 elections.
Steen was a Republican legislative candidate who unsuccessfully challenged Vos in the 2022 Republican primary with the backing of former President Donald Trump.
Shortly after the ads were aired, Vos sent the impeachment resolution to a legislative committee to consider, but claimed his action wasn’t the result of pressure from the ad campaign. Vos said the impeachment effort won’t move forward anyway because a Dane County Circuit Court judge has barred lawmakers from removing or replacing Wolfe until the judge rules in a lawsuit brought by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul seeking to keep Wolfe on the job.