January 28, 2015

An influential Milwaukee business group that strongly supports a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks has contributed about $1.3 million to an electioneering group that helped Republican Governor Scott Walker win three elections to remain in office.

January 27, 2015

Republican Governor Scott Walker, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, has formed a new 527 fundraising group.

January 27, 2015

Democratic legislators say they want to ban sales of powdered alcohol and add electronic cigarettes and other vapor smoking devices to the state smoking ban.

January 26, 2015

The Department of Natural Resources wants to look at the environmental, health and economic effects of the growing frac sand industry in Wisconsin amid rumblings that Republican legislators may again try to remove local control over frac sand facilities.

January 22, 2015

A new agreement announced Wednesday between the state of Wisconsin and a tribe that wants to build an $800 million casino in Kenosha comes less than a month before Republican Governor Scott Walker must render a final decision on the project.

“The Supreme Court effectively sold our democracy to the highest bidder.”

Posted: January 21, 2015
Updated: February 16, 2015

January 21, 2015

Executives of a Canadian energy distributor that wants to triple the amount of crude oil it transports through Wisconsin have contributed $1,475 since 2007 to candidates for statewide office and the legislature, including $950 to Republican Governor Scott Walker.

“Citizens United opened the floodgates, and our democracy is drowning”

January 20, 2015

Jan. 21 is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC, which said that corporations, unions and other associations could give unlimited amounts of money to try to elect candidates of their choice so long as they don’t coordinate their activities with their chosen candidates.

January 20, 2015

Three electioneering groups that frequently sponsored negative broadcast ads and mailings during the state’s fall elections accepted more than $1 million each in 2014 from Wisconsin contributors, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review found.

To the Joint Legislative Audit Committee

January 14, 2015

The Government Accountability Board was created in 2007 with nearly unanimous, bipartisan legislative support to enforce the state’s elections, campaign finance, ethics and lobbying laws. It has done so in a

January 13, 2015

Republican Governor Scott Walker and two GOP Senate and Assembly leaders say it’s unlikely they’ll approve a gas tax hike to pay for expensive road projects after powerful special interests that have contributed $5.4 million to their campaigns opposed it.

January 12, 2015

A legislative proposal that appears to give school privatization interests a greater say over public and private school accountability standards was introduced by Assembly Republicans only a couple of months after pro-school voucher interests spent more than $850,000 to help elect Republican legislative candidates in the 2014 fall elections.

January 9, 2015

Authors of a proposed constitutional amendment to change the way the chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is chosen have accepted nearly $780,000 from special interests since they’ve been in office.

Posted: January 8, 2015
Updated: October 22, 2015

There has been a dramatic change in who funds the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

January 6, 2015

Diane Hendricks, who urged Scott Walker to push for "Right to Work" legislation four years ago, gave the Republican Party of Wisconsin $1 million between January 1, 2014, and October 20, 2014, which was the last available reporting period.

December 11, 2014

The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign today announced that veteran journalist Matt Rothschild will replace Mike McCabe as the group’s executive director.

Republican groups got twice as much as Democratic groups

September 10, 2014

Madison – Wisconsin contributors gave $5.3 million between January 2013 and June 2014 to political groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts on electioneering activities but must disclose the donations to federal tax authorities, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review found.

Legislative candidates accepted nearly $4 million between January and June

August 7, 2014

Madison – Legislative candidates and fundraising committees accepted nearly $4 million during the first half of 2014 and incumbents held an $8 to $1 cash advantage over challengers at the end of June, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review found.

Walker, partisan divide fueled out-of-state contributions in 2013

July 8, 2014

Madison – Wealthy out-of-state special interests continued to flood Wisconsin with millions of dollars in contributions in 2013 – a trend that began a few years earlier with unprecedented recall elections that drew national attention from big-money donors.

Legislators accepted $2 of every $3 from donors who couldn’t vote for them

June 17, 2014

Madison – Legislators who approved a state budget and dozens of other policy and spending proposals in 2013 that benefited special interests accepted $2 of every $3 in campaign contributions from well-heeled donors who could not vote for them, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review found.

Posted: June 4, 2014
Updated: October 8, 2014

The statistics below are based on documents published by the Government Accountability Board (GAB). Updated to reflect board action on June 11. An asterisk (*) indicates a change since the original posting.

Just a handful of high-end donors could bury state and local elections in cash

April 30, 2014

Madison – Wealthy donors could have funneled more than $6 million each to candidates in the 2010 and 2012 state and local elections if the state’s $10,000 aggregate annual limit on campaign contributions had not existed, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign analysis found.

April 3, 2014

Mike McCabe will be stepping aside as the Democracy Campaign’s director at the end of 2014. At the request of members of WDC’s board of directors, Mike has agreed to stay involved with the organization by joining the board once a new executive director is hired.

Republicans have three times more cash stashed away than Dems

February 26, 2014

Madison – Republican legislative campaign committees started the 2014 election year with nearly three times more cash in their campaign accounts than Democrats, and both parties used mega-fundraising committees to milk special interests for nearly a third of the legislative campaign cash raised in 2013, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign analysis found.

Citizen groups to Assembly: Bring money-in-politics resolution to a vote

January 21, 2014

On the fourth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, an alliance of 34 citizen groups called on the state Assembly to vote on a legislative proposal to authorize a statewide referendum in November 2014 on whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended to effectively overturn Citizens United and related decisions that have intensified the influence of money in politics and diminished the voices of ordinary citizens.