Milwaukee County GOP Official Connected to QAnon

A QAnon flag. Photo by Anthony Crider. (CC BY 2.0 DEED)

Brett Galaszewski is one of the energetic young activists in the Wisconsin Republican Party, to judge by a story in Spectrum News covering the annual state Republican Convention in June. The story led with his thoughts on how the state party needs to “get more young and old and just everyone who might not know to get involved in the Republican Party in the fold,” as Galaszewski put it. “The Republican Party right now has a turnout problem and we want to help in any way we can.”

Galaszewski is the Midwest Field Manager for Turning Point Solutions, a controversial organization that helps to recruit the next wave of conservative leadership. He told the reporter that Wisconsin is the key battleground for the 2024 presidential election. “All eyes are going to be on us,” he said. “We are hosting the Republican National Convention, we are the birthplace of the Republican Party and so we are about to become the center of the political universe.”

Galaszewski is also a vice chair of the Milwaukee County GOP and recently appeared on the “The Coach Mel Show,” a podcast by QAnon supporter and election denier Melody Jennings, as Media Matters reported. QAnon is a bizarre and toxic group that has pushed internet conspiracy theories, including that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles that kill and eat their victims, a cabal that includes top Democrats like President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama. “QAnon believers have been charged with violent crimes, including kidnappings, assassination plots and the 2019 murder of a mafia boss in New York,” as the New York Times reported.

Jennings has been an active QAnon supporter “who participated in election denial efforts during the 2022 elections by coordinating attempts to intimidate voters at ballot drop boxes,” Media Matters reported. “Jennings even took credit for armed men who staked out drop boxes in Arizona and has been involved with True the Vote, an election denial group with extensive links to QAnon.”

Galaszewski appeared on Jennings’ show to recruit poll workers in Milwaukee and to urge viewers to get involved with the Milwaukee County Republicans’ “Election Integrity Committee.”

“So the first step though is signing up with us, and then a member of our Election Integrity Committee team will call you with the next steps, and there are specific municipality rules that apply to you depending on where you are in Milwaukee County,” Galaszewski explained. “But to become a poll worker, those go directly to me, and we’ve been reaching out to folks within 24-48 hours, right away.”

He also urged listeners “to call their state legislators… and urge them to support impeachment of [nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission leader] Meagan Wolfe…. if you have friends and family in Wisconsin, get on the phone this evening with them and make sure that [if] they haven’t called their state rep already, that they are doing that because this is an all-hands-on-deck effort and it is truly a grassroots, ‘we the people’ movement in Wisconsin.” Republicans have made false claims against Wolfe and threatened to impeach her, but so far the Assembly has avoided taking a vote on this.

Joseph Oslund, communications director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, suggested that Galaszewski’s recruiting effort is part of a pattern for the state Republican Party. “Months after GOP Chair Brian Schimming joined the Milwaukee GOP at a fundraiser with Kari Lake, it’s no surprise to see Republicans cozying up to a QAnon supporter who has spread lies about our elections and coordinated efforts to intimidate voters,” he told Urban Milwaukee. “Turning to conspiracy theorists for help recruiting poll workers tells you everything you need to know about the Wisconsin GOP’s full throated embrace of Donald Trump and his extreme agenda, which threatens our freedoms and runs deeply counter to our Wisconsin values.”

Urban Milwaukee reached out to the state Republican Party for comment but has not heard back.

There have been other signs of extremist election deniers and conspiracy theorists becoming enmeshed in the Wisconsin Republican Party. Cleta Mitchell, the attorney and Bradley Foundation Board member who runs the Conservative Partnership’s Election Integrity Network, ran a meeting in Pennsylvania that featured a QAnon supporter and appeared on a podcast in Virginia that praised QAnon influencers as “wonderful” and “very professional researchers” on elections.

And Turning Point USA Action, the group Galaszewski works for, “worked with about a dozen other groups to support Trump’s 6 January ‘March to Save America’ by bringing busloads of Trump allies to DC for the rally that preceded the Capitol attack,” as The Guardian reported, and Turning Point’s founder Charlie Kirk has been been a vocal exponent “of baseless claims of election fraud” and involved in “running Facebook ads with blatant falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccinations,” the story noted. Kirk was a notable supporter of Dan Kelly, the conservative candidate who lost the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April.

The chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party is Hilario Deleon, who ran the successful Assembly election campaign of former Milwaukee alderman Bob Donovan. Deleon’s LinkedIn profile describes him as a part-time staffer for the Republican Party of Wisconsin since November 2021. Urban Milwaukee attempted to reach out to him for comment, but has not heard back.