Tea Party Express
Posted: March 30, 2011
Updated: January 16, 2014
Estimated Spending: $70,000
This phony issue ad group formed in 2009 after a national bus tour - organized by the California-based Our Country Deserves Better PAC - that rallied Tea Party members around the country.
The Tea Party Express backs conservative Republican candidates for state and federal offices as well as the usual conservative causes – lower taxes and smaller government. The group also takes conservative policy positions on issues like immigration, health care, federal spending and defense, among others.
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The Tea Party Express sponsored a television ad less than a week before the April 5 spring election that claimed Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg was backed by union bosses and was turned down for four open state and federal judgeships between 2000 and 2009 because “she just isn’t qualified.”
Kloppenburg, a veteran assistant state attorney general, faced incumbent Justice David Prosser, a former Republican legislative leader who the ad proclaimed a “fair and respected judge.”