$1 Million In Donations to City Politicians
Our Political Contributions Tracker hits $1 million, reveals who’s giving and getting cash.
Three fundraising leaders: Joe Davis, Tom Barrett (back behind the money) and Bob Donovan.
If you want a favor from a politician, contribute to his or her political campaign. That’s how the world works, and it’s no different in the City of Milwaukee.
To track that shadowy world of insiders, Urban Milwaukee created its Political Contributions Tracker, or PCT, as we like to call it, back in March. At that point we had entered data into our digital tracker from the three latest reporting periods, with $482,414 in contributions to politicians from some 2,000 people.
We’ve continued to expand our data base and have by now tracked $1,050,639 in contributions from 3,509 people from the last six reporting periods, going back to January 2015. All told, that’s taken about 350 person hours to create, paid for by our crowd funding campaign (thank you, folks) completed last fall. We currently have data only for the Common Council and mayor’s race (no school board, judges, or other city-wide offices) and will continue adding future reports, even as we also work backwards to enter data from older reports. We intend to finish all the city records (judges, school board, city-wide offices of comptroller, treasurer and city attorney) and then move on to the county.
The Political Contributions Tracker is easy to find: it’s the first drop-down item under Politics on our website’s navigation bar.
What does the data show?:
-A heck of a lot of money, more than $1 million, going to politicians in less than two years.
-The top fundraisers were, not surprisingly the candidates for mayor, Tom Barrett (more than $305,000 during this period), Ald. Bob Donovan ($193,774) and Joe Davis ($117,391). The fourth place politician was a surprise: Ald. Jose Perez, with $95,291. Less surprising was the fifth place ranking for Bob Bauman, given the downtown alderman’s access to major city businesses.
-The top donor, by far was developer Frank Crivello, who contributed $18,104. In addition, his sons Joe ($9,214) and Anthony ($14,748) were top contributors, while Ryan Trost, Senior Vice President of Finance for Phoenix Investors, LLC., gave $3,564 (and his wife Ashleigh Trost pitched in another $4,354). And that’s just scratching the surface of all the many Crivello-family connected donations.
-Many of the other donors are what might be called the usual suspects, from restaurant or tavern owners like Nick Anton ($6,207 donated), to developers like The Moderne creator Rick Barrett ($4,788), PR operatives like Carl Mueller ($3,376) and business leaders like Dennis Kuester ($3,000), the former CEO of M&I Bank and board chair of the Bradley Foundation.
The biggest surprise in compiling the data has been the messy state of the the city’s campaign finance data. As we noted back in March, we were shocked by what we found: people listed with many different versions of their name, contributions listed as given by an anonymous-sounding LLC, contributions credited to two people, what appear to be loans to candidates that aren’t listed, addresses listed as being in Milwaukee that are actually outside the city. “All of this makes it far harder to see a true picture of political contributions in the city,” says Urban Milwaukee publisher Dave Reid. “And some of it may even be illegal.”
We’ve continued to go a step further than any other contribution tracker in Milwaukee or the state, matching contributions to real people. For example, linking contributions listed as coming from Harjeet Walia and Rick Walia to the same person since one is his legal name, and the other is the name he more commonly goes by. It also includes making sure the many people named Michael Murphy in the metro area are each uniquely credited with their contributions.
Through these efforts we have found a number of errors or questionable records in reports that we will be ultimately be bringing to the City of Milwaukee Election Commission. In addition, there are a handful of reports that seem to be missing that we want to discuss with the commission.
Countless extra hours continue to go into retyping handwritten or scanned reports, with intern Carter Liebscher working tirelessly to retype reports and translate sloppy handwriting. Kudos to Ald. Chantia Lewis and former council candidates Tory Lowe, Justin Bielinski and Meagan Holman for filing their information in a completely digital and easily accessible format. In our opinion, the city should require this of every candidate, to insure the information is as accessible to the public as possible.
But that may be difficult given that one of the worst transgressors is Mayor Barrett. While Barrett is complying with the city’s campaign finance regulations, his campaign made the switch this year from reporting via a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to a format that requires us to retype the reports. Whatever his campaign’s reasons for doing so, it’s a step backwards for transparency in government.
Mr. Mayor, may we suggest the example starts at the top. If you’re not filing all your contributions in the most publicly accessible fashion, why should anyone else?
Political Contributions Tracker
Displaying political contributions between people mentioned in this story. Learn more.
- December 27, 2018 - Tom Barrett received $1,000 from Rick Barrett
- June 28, 2018 - Tom Barrett received $6,000 from Frank Crivello
- December 13, 2017 - Tom Barrett received $1,500 from Rick Barrett
- November 13, 2017 - Tom Barrett received $100 from Carl Mueller
- March 7, 2017 - Robert Bauman received $200 from Nick Anton
- January 18, 2017 - Robert Bauman received $772 from Rick Walia
- July 19, 2016 - Robert Bauman received $250 from Nick Anton
- June 27, 2016 - Robert Donovan received $792 from Nick Anton
- June 26, 2016 - Robert Donovan received $100 from Carl Mueller
- May 16, 2016 - Robert Donovan received $6,000 from Anthony Crivello
- May 16, 2016 - Robert Donovan received $6,000 from Joe Crivello
- March 30, 2016 - Tom Barrett received $100 from Carl Mueller
- March 28, 2016 - Michael Murphy received $100 from Carl Mueller
- March 28, 2016 - Michael Murphy received $250 from Rick Walia
- March 9, 2016 - Justin Bielinski received $100 from Tom Barrett
- March 9, 2016 - Tom Barrett received $100 from Carl Mueller
- February 26, 2016 - Robert Donovan received $6,000 from Frank Crivello
- February 5, 2016 - Joe Davis, Sr. received $6,000 from Joe Crivello
- February 5, 2016 - Joe Davis, Sr. received $6,000 from Anthony Crivello
- January 21, 2016 - Robert Bauman received $375 from Frank Crivello
- January 18, 2016 - Robert Bauman received $386 from Nick Anton
- November 19, 2015 - Robert Bauman received $250 from Frank Crivello
- November 19, 2015 - Robert Bauman received $200 from Carl Mueller
- November 11, 2015 - Tom Barrett received $100 from Carl Mueller
- November 9, 2015 - Robert Bauman received $386 from Nick Anton
- November 2, 2015 - Tom Barrett received $130 from Carl Mueller
- November 2, 2015 - Tom Barrett received $1,000 from Carl Mueller
- November 2, 2015 - Tom Barrett received $2,600 from Rick Barrett
- July 8, 2015 - Joe Davis, Sr. received $3,000 from Dennis Kuester
- March 27, 2015 - Robert Bauman received $100 from Carl Mueller
- March 27, 2015 - Robert Bauman received $100 from Frank Crivello
- March 14, 2015 - Robert Bauman received $386 from Nick Anton
- February 5, 2015 - Joe Davis, Sr. received $6,000 from Frank Crivello
- September 11, 2014 - Robert Bauman received $100 from Carl Mueller
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This is why we have Trump and Bernie the working families feel tha they do not have any clout.
Since Mayor Tom Barrett received the most donations and is the “worst transgressor”, why is his picture covered up with the benjamins?
The image conveniently covers Barrett’s face with one hundred dollar bills even though Barrett is stated in the article of being the worst transgressor.
Chris, your response is interesting. If you read the caption under the photo it lets you know that’s Barrett behind all the money, which his defenders could take as a slap at him.
Interesting and weird that he posted it twice.
Hey WCD, in 140 characters or less: “If ur a Trump voter & u don’t see picking a Goldman exec for Treasury as a giant middle finger in ur face I want to sell u a time share.”
We cannot imagine anyone giving those clowns money for running the worst city in the state and top ten worst in countryy.
Milwaukee is hardly the worst city in the state. I mean have you ever been to Brookfield? It’s just a mall and chains and white people. That’s it. It’s awful. You probably love it.
Bruce, I did not comment on the caption I commented on the image. Would you not agree that the one hundred dollar bills cover up a vast majority of Barrett’s picture? In fact, until I read the caption, I did not recognize that there was a picture of Barrett in the image.
Chris, it’s a quick image that was created. If you’re suggesting we are trying to hide the results of our own story, that would be a strange way to operate, as our goal is to maximize traffic. So let me invite you to please tell everyone you know and promote everywhere you can our story showing Barrett raised the most money and is the biggest transgressor when it comes to publicly accessible reporting of his contributions.
It is not hard to see Barrett. His name is in the middle under the image and his image is in the middle. Some people see what they want to see, not what is there.
I think you guys are all missing the real story here: There are bills on someone’s face in a picture!
WCD I think you should write an article about it.
Bruce, once again, would you not agree that Barrett’s picture is not mostly covered up by the one hundred dollar bills image, unlike Joe Davis and Bob Donovan’s picture?
No one ever said anything about hiding the results.
It is my opinion that the person who is stated in the article as the, “worst transgressor”, is the least visible in the image. Does that not make sense to you?
Chris: So it bothers you that one person’s face is covered up more than others, but not because it’s “hiding the results”, but because that person stands out in the results?
You should be a defender of people’s faces getting covered up in pictures, because of x but not because of x.
Isn’t it fitting that the person that receives the most money is the person with the most money covering them in the image? I just can’t fathom reading nefarious intent here.
It’s fitting that the person with the least transparent contributions is also the one who’s face is most obscured – by money.
When that was first pointed out my initial impression was that it was deliberate – an iconic representation of Barrett being the least transparent with his campaign contributions.
When I heard it’s just how it turned out when they superimposed, i was like: oh, I suppose that makes more sense.
“For each political donor, Urban Milwaukee is creating a “personnel file,” a page with all donations listed, plus all stories involving that person and all listed chronologically, giving readers an easy way to track all information about a particular contributor. That personnel file will grow, as we add press releases, photos, articles and contributions related to that person, all in one place. You’ll also find relevant links to donations and donors in all stories we publish.”
This is an excellent approach.