Transcript
What’s Going on With Campaign Finances (Hour 3)
Daybreak w/ Brian and Jamie · Thu Feb 26, 2026
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Now back to more of Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
Thank you so much for joining us this morning a bright and sunshiney morning and of course a lot of the state sticking with us anybody who's listening to WMDX Either you know over the air on their app.
They are now listening to Stephanie Miller So we you know if you want to stick with us just change the stations or change
the
So I didn't want to interrupt Charles and all of his great thoughts.
I wanted to make sure that Charles could
get out everything he needed to, because it's a very important poll.
And if you were listening to the show behind the show on the stream, we were having an interesting conversation about the current races taking place around the state.
But
Again, the primaries in April, April 7th.
So we'll be covering that extensively.
This I found very interesting, because we all know that Wisconsin has a reputation of being a big drinking state.
And that leads to problems on the road.
More than 7,000 impaired driving crashes happened in Wisconsin every year.
They happen every year, so the majority of impaired driving crashes are alcohol related, as you can imagine.
But that's according to the State Department of Transportation.
Nearly a quarter of those crashes each year are related to drug driving.
Now, the legislature has approved another tool for law enforcement to screen for drug driving saliva tests.
And I've got to say, as I did more reading on this, I'm 100% behind this.
else you
Yeah, and I think this is interesting because it's going to basically screen for drugs such as THC, opiates, stimulants, or certain prescription medications as well.
And under this particular legislation, officers could collect a saliva sample during a traffic stop and then run a quick screening test.
Those results would not be admissible though in court.
They could establish probable cause though for an arrest or
a more precise follow-up test like the blood draw.
This saliva sample would be destroyed after the screening.
And I agree with you.
Police have had, for how many years have we had breathalysers?
It's been a test for alcohol right there
on the
But when it comes to drugs, they've basically had to rely on those field sobriety tests and their own observations.
And when you're talking nearly a quarter of impaired driving crashes involving drugs in this state, it makes sense that they would have this tool at their disposal to make sure that not only the driver who's impaired, but other drivers on the road are also safe.
Yeah, and those like you said they're still gonna use all the other tests and This is not the first time that Dane County has tried this though, right?
They were in a pilot study that went with the department the Wisconsin State Laboratory of hygiene, which I didn't even know was a thing but but it is and they did this pilot program and the pilot found that the saliva test provided results that were consistent with blood draws, which is the be all end all of
of these tests.
It is an interesting debate and the problem is it's a very layered argument because cannabis can be very, very effective in treating pain and
Really, if you're enjoying cannabis at home, it's no different than you enjoying a couple of beers or some whiskey or whatever.
The problem isn't with the cannabis itself.
It's back going to personal responsibility.
It's the person who uses it.
This beer is perfectly legal in Wisconsin.
If I have 10 beers and get in the car,
Is that the beer's fault or is that my fault?
If I am sitting around my house with my buddies and Parker fires up his big wizard bong and we're doing bong rips and then I decide to get in the car, is that Parker's fault or my fault or the weed's fault?
You can't blame the devil's cabbage.
You've got to blame the person who is using it.
Or is it the food's fault, right?
And so it's essentially the same argument, but you're right.
It absolutely doesn't put anybody else at danger.
I mean, this bill right now is heading to Governor Tony Evers.
And if it's signed...
Wisconsin would actually be one of 27 other states that allow some form of roadside drug testing.
So this isn't going to be a test of whether it helps catch impaired drivers.
This is going to really be whether it's implemented responsibly and protects people's rights along the way.
And I think that's what people are worried about.
John from Oshkosh chiming back in after our conversation here saying, using alcohol is bad, but legal argument is not a strong one.
if it's
It is definitely not.
I disagree with John.
I don't think having a drink is a bad thing.
Is it bad for my health?
Probably.
But in moderation, I don't think anything is that bad.
But again, that's a personal thing.
I don't understand the legal argument part of it.
The part of it is, if you can have a drink at home,
you
can have a drink at a restaurant, if you are impaired, that's you being impaired and making the decision to drive.
It's the same with any sort of substance that will impair you if you make that decision.
And let's be honest, even without legalization, that many accidents
in Wisconsin that are based around the drug driving is not going away.
And the interesting part is that the Dane County Sheriff made a point of saying, listen, yes, we understand that in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, cannabis is legal.
Well, even if you ingest it, if you're across the line and you ingest it,
And then you're still driving in Wisconsin.
Guess what?
It's still illegal.
You're still driving impaired.
They can still lock you up and Judging from driving around this country from states where it is legal to states where it is not legal boy, they're watching because we were in Colorado a couple years ago and I had never I had never tried cannabis and Whether some people don't believe what when I say this until two years ago.
I had never tried cannabis
and we were in Colorado and my daughter was joking with me like oh let's stop at a dispenser and I was like no no no so we're driving we're driving back and once we crossed from Colorado into Nebraska the amount of state police lined
pulling people over coming out of Colorado because they were sure that there was you know I don't know what profile they were using our profile obviously didn't fit right right
The old couple and their daughter driving back didn't fit the, we gotta pull these people over.
But yeah, the enforcement is there.
It's not the legality that is...
going to stop.
There's a lot of things that are illegal that people still do.
Tiffany from River Falls listening on WCFW, which is 93.5 the tap chiming in on our text line this morning saying, sounds like the firearms argument.
It's not the gun's fault, it's the person's fault.
If you do want to comment this morning, 1-855-752-4842, 1-855-75 Civic.
Now, for anybody who is wondering, because you mentioned this was a pilot program in Dane County, the Dane County Sheriff, Calvin Baer
actually backs this legislation and did so
during
Now, he says that without this saliva test, his office has relied on those field sobriety tests to assess drivers for drug impairment.
And in case you're wondering, no amount of intoxication by a restricted control substance such as marijuana is legal for driving in the state of Wisconsin as of right now.
So, you know, and again, I think,
It's not legal to do a lot of things, right?
You're not supposed to drive under the influence.
But again, if you're gonna have one drink, people do that all the time, right?
You
just have
You have to know when enough is enough or when maybe you maybe hit that line and that's when you need to have somebody else drive you, grab an Uber or whatever it might be.
But in this particular case, I'm always for things
that keep impaired people off the roads and keep
the rest
And I don't quite buy Tiffany's parallel between the firearms argument and cannabis argument I think if you were saying we're gonna legalize all drugs heroin everything else maybe you can make that maybe you can make that jump but I don't think firearms and cannabis are you're not comparing apples and apples you're comparing apples and oranges and yes are there too many guns sure are the amount of people who own guns greater than the amount of people that use cannabis
I don't have the actual numbers, but I'm going to assume yes.
There's more people who would own a gun.
Guns are a different story.
So you have to, if you want to compare alcohol and cannabis, you've got two intoxicants there, low level, proven not to be, not to be 100% safe, but not to be as deadly as...
firearm or a heroin or something like that.
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As the big voice guy said, it's all facts, no fiction.
So here's a fact.
A senior treasury official who is a Trump donor serving as Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence is leaving his post after privately raising concerns about a White House backed crackdown on alleged fraud within minutes.
Minnesota's Somali community.
So more fallout.
This one, the Somali fraud thing
is kind
And he had privately questioned a new treasury initiative that increased the federal monitoring of international payments from the Minneapolis area.
That policy requires banks to collect
additional personal information on certain overseas transactions.
Now, some career officials and banking leaders also have raised concerns to the administration, calling the order overly broad and warning that could amount to some sort of blanket surveillance of an entire community, which I think is probably what the administration is hoping for would be my guess.
Critics say it raises privacy, though, in constitutional issues.
The administration is saying that it is committed to aggressively pursuing fraud and protecting taxpayer dollars.
While I'm all for that, maybe we should actually be protecting the taxpayer dollars and going after fraud in the correct...
places because this entire investigation stemmed from Nick Shirley, who is a YouTube journalist, all of 23 years old.
He received information from the Minnesota GOP and then he did this long, long documentary type newscast where he basically tried to find fraud within the Somali daycares.
And that's where all of this stems from.
watched any of this, it is it's insane because he was shocked and he made this a point that it had to be proof of fraud that he couldn't just wander into a daycare center.
Anybody who's left their child at a daycare center knows the doors are locked.
You have to get buzzed in one door.
Sometimes you have to get buzzed in a second door.
There's always somebody at the front who's keeping track.
The one the one daycare center that he found that had no one in it.
Because they were closed that day.
Well, that's fraud.
You can't close ever, I guess, according to Nick Shirley, who I'm going to object to the use of the term journalist.
Now, Hurley himself has denied opposing the effort publicly.
He's reportedly being considered for another role within the administration.
So we'll see.
I mean, he's a top donor.
Donald Trump.
He's an ally.
But here's the thing that gets me in these types of stories.
So if this guy had any doubts about this particular story and this crackdown and how it was being handled, especially around privacy and all of this sweeping financial monitoring, this isn't
just a partisan criticism, right?
And it also
fits a
I
And that creates...
The impression that if you're pushing back even internally you're going to essentially fight a losing battle and then you get shelved or you get quieted in some role where you absolutely have no way of Being involved in what is actually being practiced by this administration That's a scary pattern that we were in right now with this this particular president
said
once
I actually sat down and watched the entire thing because I wanted to know exactly what was being said in it, right?
And I wanted to make sure that I understood the context of all of it.
It is...
First of all, there's some dude who just, that's what I'll call him.
He's some older dude, he's got all this list, and he just rides around with him, and they are literally like Hegney and Lacey out there, trying to like take down nefarious crime rings of daycares.
And it's the craziest looking at things.
They don't even have a sign.
They misspelled words on their sign.
There's no cars in this parking lot.
That's essentially what this entire documentary is, why they are harassing.
They're harassing people.
Can you drop their
Network.
From Lake Superior to Lake Michigan, this is Wisconsin's Morning Conversation.
Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
You remember 2025, that's when Wisconsin witnessed the most expensive state Supreme Court race ever.
That renewed concerns of a lot of people over corporate and dark monies influence on state elections.
Well, Montana is attempting to change how corporate and dark money are funneled into those elections.
And to tell us about that and whether maybe could this proposal work in Wisconsin, Jeff Mangan is with us.
He's the founder and president of Transparent Election Initiative, transparentelection.org is their website.
Jeff, thanks for being here this morning.
So for those of us who...
just recently heard about the Montana proposal.
What is it and how did this come about?
Certainly, first of all, thanks, Brian.
Thanks, Jamie for the invite.
Appreciate it.
We love talking about the Montana plan.
I'm not only in Montana, but across the country.
Now it's we'd love to inspire folks and I appreciate you reaching out and having us on your show.
The Montana plan is simply taking look at the way states give.
when a business wants to incorporate in a state right now, the state issues a corporate charter that basically gives them all general powers.
And the courts have said all general powers means the same powers as basically a human being.
So all of the regulations that states have put on over the last 150 years, cause it's been about 150 years since anyone really took a look at how a corporate or how a state's court
Charter Corporations.
We've been regulating on that general power theory.
So all the regulations have been on general powers.
But I'll dive into that in a second.
But how this came about?
I was Montana's Commissioner of Political Practices from 2017 to 2023.
You know, Montana, we have basically one commissioner of political practices, a small little office of three staff that's responsible for the entire state's campaign finance disclosure, transparency, all local and state elections, plus state employee ethics, plus all the lobbying that's done at the legislative level.
So small little office.
Lots of, you know, lots of work, never enough money, never enough time to actually dig into things.
So that's when I really was introduced to the, you know, what Citizens United has done in small states like Montana, small population states and others.
And as part of that, I had wonderful colleagues from across the state that I got to know.
And one of those individuals was Commissioner Weintraub with the FEC.
We became good friends.
Her Chief of Staff, Chief Legal at the Times, a gentleman by the name of Tom Moore.
And Tom and I and Ellen, we remain friends for the, you know, since 2017, exchange cards, those types of things.
But in 2024, Tom reached out to me and said, Jeff, I've got this.
This mechanism that can undo citizens united.
I wrote a white paper.
Would you take a look at it?
I said sure it was like Friday night.
He's on the east coast You know seven o'clock sent it over 30 pages read it called him up forgot that I was two time zones away And said Tom we're doing this in Montana and that's literally how it started Tom's research into the mechanism on
which I will talk about in a second, and my desire to put this in front of Montana citizens and now hopefully citizens across the country, say this is a real way to actually undo Citizens United.
After all these last 16 years, we've thrown up our hands and set up.
Supreme Court's ruled.
corporations are people, they have these free speech rights, we can't do anything.
And we're here to tell you, we actually do have the power to do that.
We just kind of forgot about that ability.
So that's how it came about.
And that's where the nuance is going to be.
What is our ability to basically overturn Citizens United?
I mean, they say that corporations have First Amendment rights to spend independently in elections.
Is this some sort of state-level workaround?
Are you directly trying to challenge the precedent that's been set?
Explain that to us, if you would.
Nope.
Actually, Citizens United is just one of the reasons we're doing this.
When the Montana plan is enacted, it doesn't overturn Citizens United.
It basically makes it moot.
It doesn't matter in the state of Montana because it won't apply to our corporations.
So we're not undoing that.
We're looking at it a totally different way.
We've always looked at.
particularly citizens united in regulations in campaign finance through that lens of the First Amendment.
We haven't looked at how corporations are actually authorized to do business in the state in the first place.
So we move from the First Amendment.
I want everybody to move from the First Amendment and just move over to the 10th Amendment.
States create their own corporations.
It's not a federal government.
There's no federal regulations that come down.
Each state creates its own corporations.
And like I said, for the last 150 years, all states have basically given their corporations, all corporations, general authority to do business in their state, these general powers.
And that's what we've been regulating on ever since.
So Citizens United was basically the underlying portion of that was a regulation on
on a power that the state of Virginia had already given the non-profit citizens united.
They said that was illegal because they have these, you know, you give them all the general powers and they have the same powers as you and I. So we're taking one step further going back to what states, what the state can do when they charter a corporation in the first place.
And it's simple, is they'll have all these other powers, limited liability, the ability to own property, the ability to
higher and fire employees, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all of those same powers with the exception of one.
And that powers the power to spend in politics.
They don't have the power, the right doesn't apply.
So it really is that simple.
And it's not something new.
And before all the states gave all these general powers to corporations, before that states would enact very, give very specific charters to.
corporations.
You could only be a railroad.
You could only be a railroad for 10 years.
You could only own property within certain, you know, whatever it might be.
They would give very specific powers to corporations, and that's all that they could do.
But as states, we've got more and more states, states begin to compete to have businesses incorporated in their state.
New Jersey was one of the first and said, oh,
If you come incorporate in our state, you'll have all the general powers of everyone else, all general powers.
And every other state decided to follow that realm.
But they never gave up the power to go back and change those initial powers in the first place.
We just haven't thought about doing it.
So it's a really unique way of looking at it.
Tenth Amendment, corporate law has nothing to do with the First Amendment.
It's how every business works anyway.
They rely on the powers that the state gives them.
So they're going to have to undo if this is successful and we think it will be, and of course it will be litigated and all the way to the Supreme Court.
But if they strictly look at corporate law in the 10th amendment, if they don't follow what we're doing, they're going to be throwing out precedent after precedent after precedent and just over it up, really up over.
It's the word I'm thinking about.
Are you holding or?
Yeah, just I mean, it would just.
put businesses in a tailspin because not only affect elections, it would affect, you know, insurance and banking and financial things and, you know, work with the shareholders, et cetera, et cetera, if they want to carve out this little exception for, oh, states can't, they have the power to do all these other things and tell the corporation all these other things, but they can't do that.
So it would be, it would be really interesting.
You can go to transparentelection.org to get all the information.
And I guess that's why there's people who still had questions about why do all these companies incorporate in Delaware?
And you answered that because every state is doing it differently.
In Montana in particular, what roadblocks are in front of trying to get this plan passed?
Because it seems to make sense.
Corporations.
Yes, well, that's
true.
Corporations, the political, industrial establishments, everyone has gotten used to working under a Citizens United for the past 16 years.
Kind of forgot about, things used to be a lot different before 2010 really in the way people not only campaigned for office or raised money or worked with corporations.
and others and the beauty of the Montana plan, the beauty of it to me and to citizens is it affects everybody the same.
There's no carve out for good C4s or bad C4s, friends of a political side or not friends of a political side.
And that's kind of where the, you know, where, where that opponent goes is, well, they want it to affect
the way the other people spend money and work, but they don't want it to affect themselves.
So when I say it affects everybody, it affects for-profit corporations, you know, C-corps, S-corps, LLCs, it affects nonprofits, C3s, which shouldn't be spending an election in the first place, C4s, unions, associations, and
That's, you know, and when people are, well, unions, C4, they have a really good C4.
We've been, you know, it's like, ah, well, if you want to make this work, you know, you got to rip the Band-Aid off and make it work.
So you either, you're either for dark money or you're not.
You're either against dark money or you're not.
So C4s have been that conduit for all of this dark money since Citizens United.
So a C4 simply, and they're very good C4s, social welfare organizations, a lot of them doing a lot of good work.
And, and I like to tell folks when I talk about this is guess what they get to do after the Montana plant?
They get to be really damn good
social welfare
organizations to do your work.
And doing all the good work that they wanted to do, they just won't be able to write a check from their general fund to support or oppose a candidate or an issue.
And that's kind of where the rub is.
Well, that's where the rub is, particularly with some of the larger ones that have become this machine for.
moving money through.
So a C4, a person gives a lot of money to a C4 to remain anonymous because they don't have to identify their donors.
The C4 writes a check to a political action committee.
The political action committee then discloses, like it should, where they got that contribution from and they disclose that it's the C4.
But no one ever knows about those underlying donors.
So we're going to take that away.
So and if you want to raise money, still support issues, create a pack.
Only accept contributions.
You could only accept in Montana.
Only accept contributions from individuals.
Disclose all of that.
Same thing, you know.
are the
they fall?
People love it.
And all you have to do, and I'm sure you know this too, and I usually start off every conversation I have with somebody.
It doesn't matter what political persuasion they are.
Just ask them the question, do you think there's too much money in politics?
And every single one of them say yes.
There
is
then we've got an agreement we can start talking about what potential solution is so people love it They see probably the same thing we were talking about right before the show started Jamie All of they see all this money flooding in they don't know who's paying for the messaging They can't make an informed decision on a candidate or an issue because there's just so darn much of it They don't know who to trust.
Yeah
And if we think back, it's only been 16 years before that, things were a little bit different.
Candidates and folks who are talking about issues, they come to your door, they talk to you.
You could go out and see them.
You could ask those questions.
You could take a look at their mailer and find out it came from the campaign, yada, yada, yada.
And you didn't have to worry about all of this money flooding.
And it's just gotten, I mean,
Every day I get an email.
Well, Jeff,
Founder
we're still getting through.
There you go.
Civic Media Network.
Daybreak.
Now back to more of Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
Oh, I heard a little, I heard a little have it your way coming in.
That's because.
How many times have you thought to yourself, well, I've had a fast food experience and maybe I'm happy about it, maybe I'm not.
I wish I could talk to somebody in charge.
Well, we know we can't call the clown and talk to Ronald McDonald.
We know we can, we can, the head of Culver's is always on his commercials, but I'm betting he's not taking our
Burger King, you're not gonna get the creepy, you're not gonna get the creepy king, but you're gonna get just as close because Burger King is...
We talk about transparency all the time.
Burger King is ready to be transparent.
Yes.
They're giving customers direct access to its president, Tom Curtis.
They publicly shared his phone number for feedback.
This couldn't possibly go wrong.
This is it.
There's nothing that could
You can share your experience, suggestions or...
complaints directly with company leadership now I full disclosure one I am not paid by Burger King but two out of I I love Burger King the whopper is the whopper beats any other fast food burger and I know I'm a huge fan of culvers that
That kept me fed through both pregnancies.
Really?
I craved very few things when I was pregnant with both of my boys.
Chicken Whoppers with a frozen Coke?
Oh, that was my go-to.
Every single time Corey would say to me, should we go get something to eat?
Like here I am, this pregnant woman on
bed
I'd be
be like, where do you want
The move, though, of giving out Tom Curtis' phone number, or this phone number that Parker is so diligently working on over there, is tied to Burger King's longtime slogan, Have It Your Way, where they emphasize that customers help shape the brand's direction.
And according to Burger King, guest feedback has already influenced menu innovations.
Okay, here we go.
Great dialing
I'm at Burger King really appreciate you calling to share your thoughts on your BK experience in general Your feedback is really important to me and we have tons of calls coming in right now, which is awesome But it also means that I can't return every single call,
but I will tell
you that we are looking at every single one
every single text and listening to every single voicemail.
So record your message after the beep or you can text me at this number and we're going to get back to you as soon as possible.
Thanks again and have a great day.
Bye now.
My name is Jamie Martinson.
I'm a host of a radio show in Wisconsin.
It's called Daybreak on the Civic Media Network.
We were talking about this ingenious marketing plan that you have, and we just wanted to show our listeners that it was real.
My co-host Brian Noonan is here.
We are Burger King fans, and thank you so much for being open to your customers.
That's all we really had to say today.
because
Tom.
Squid ink or whatever in the bun.
No, that was weird.
They do go out on a limb for like special holidays a lot.
And I don't, I mean, I get it.
It's promotional.
It's advertising.
I get it.
Curtis says that he's looking forward to live, open and honest conversations by getting these calls to better understand guest experiences.
And really, I mean, in the fact
In the fast food industry, this is pretty rare to be able to call a number, whether it's legit or not.
And by the way, that number, in case you're a Burger King connoisseur.
Oh yes, now
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