Third Party Donations Favor Neubauer

Lisa Neubauer and Brian Hagedorn.

Less than a month before the April 2 elections, six special interest groups are spending more than $407,000 on outside electioneering activities in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Five of the groups are supporting Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer and one group is backing her opponent, Appeals Court Judge Brian Hagedorn. Neubauer has support from mostly Democratic campaign contributors and labor unions and Hagedorn has drawn support from Republican and conservative contributors and groups.

Groups backing Neubauer and together spending just over $401,000 include:

Greater Wisconsin Committee, which is spending more than $162,000 on television advertising;

Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is spending $131,140 on brochures and canvassing;

For Our Future, which doled out about $79,900 for brochures and canvassing;

Center for Popular Democracy, which spent $18,000 on campaign literature;

Greater Wisconsin Political IE Fund, which spent $10,000 on digital advertising.

Hagedorn’s outside support came from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, which spent $17,300 on canvassing and staff.

For more details about the groups, click on their names or visit the Democracy Campaign’s Hijacking Campaign 2019 feature.

Another group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said earlier this week that it would spend $350,000 to support Neubauer. The focus of the group, which is run by former Democratic U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, is to elect Democrats to state and federal offices, and to promote redistricting reform.