Hi, Matt Rothschild here with another episode of the Wisconsin Forward Podcast here at Civic Media.
In this episode, we'll be delving into the issue of campaign finance reform.
And it couldn't be more urgent, as we recently concluded,
the single most expensive state Supreme Court race, not only in the history of Wisconsin,
but in the history of this country. It wasn't even close.
Coming in at around $100 million, it shattered the previous record of about $50 million,
which was set here again in Wisconsin in the Proto-Sewitz race.
This year's contest also saw the largest single amount spent by a single individual,
a guy by the name of Elon Musk, who spent roughly $25 million to try to buy a seat on the
Wisconsin Supreme Court. This obscene amount of money and all the mud it splattered all over our
screens, disgusted Wisconsin voters, almost everyone, including Susan Crawford's mom,
one of those ugly ads to stop. So how do we clean up this mess, and how did we get in this mess
in the first place? Those are the questions I'll be trying to answer in this episode.
I'll take the second question first, and then I'll bring on some guests to help with the remedies.
Well, we got in this mess for two reasons. First, because of more than a century of disastrous
US Supreme Court decisions, and then because of a horrendous rewrite of our campaign finance law
in 2015 by Scott Walker, Robin Voss, and the Jerry Mandered Republican Legislature.
The ruinous US Supreme Court rulings relating to campaign finance date back as far as 1886,
in a case called Santa Clara County versus Southern Pacific Railroad, an employee of the court,
but not a single justice, appended a headnote on the decision that said corporations are persons.
And from then on, subsequent Supreme courts reiterated that absurd equation.
Then in 1976, in a case called Buckley-V-Valeo, the Supreme Court announced with a wave of its
magic gavel that money equals speech. These two fallacies laid the foundation for the Citizens
United Case in 2010, when the court ruled that corporations and other groups and individuals could
spend unlimited amounts of money in federal campaigns, so long as they weren't coordinating with the
candidates. Finally, in 2014, in the McCutchen case, the court said that aggregate limits on what a
rich person could spend on federal elections are somehow a violation of the First Amendment.
For Wisconsin, these rulings meant trouble. We used to have a relatively clean election system here
with sensible limits on what any single person could spend. In fact, up until 2015, no one could
spend more than $10,000 on any race for governor or state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. If you wanted to
give your favorite candidate 10 grand, you could do that, but then you couldn't give another dime
to any other candidate or to any political party or to any outside electioneering group.
Walker and leading Republicans in the legislature didn't like these restrictions. Nor did they like
the high-minded rationale for them even. At the time, I was the executive director of the Wisconsin
Democracy campaign, which for its entire existence had made a priority out of getting big and dark
money out of our politics. So I was up there in the gallery of the Wisconsin Senate chamber on the
night of November 6, 2015, when the Republicans decided to vote on their campaign finance bill.
Before getting to the substance of the bill, the senators had a heated discussion about whether to
keep the declaration of policy in the old campaign finance statute, which announced that,
quoting, excessive spending on campaigns for public office jeopardizes the integrity of elections,
and our democratic system of government can be maintained only if the electorate is informed
about the money flowing into our system seems pretty basic. The declaration of policy concluded
with the following righteous claim. The state has a compelling interest in designing a system for
fully disclosing contributions and disbursements made on behalf of every candidate for public office
and in placing reasonable limitations on such activities. Well, the Republicans wanted none of
those niceties and stripped them all out. This set the Democrats off. Restore the language
under Democratic Senator Mark Miller. Why do you want to take it out as Senator Fred Risser,
the longest sitting state legislator in American history? Risser went on, this is a good part of
our tradition. You ought to live by it, but out it went on a party line vote, and so did the
reasonable limitations that Wisconsin had previously set on donations and expenditures and disclosures.
Here's what the Republicans voted to do on that fall evening in 2015. After they dispensed
with the high-minded rhetoric, they made it vastly easier for the super wealthy, like Elon Musk,
or George Sorrows, if you must, or JB Pritzker, or Richard and Elizabeth Eline, or Diane Hendrix,
to dominate our elections. First, the Republicans doubled the amount that individual donors could give
directly to state Supreme Court candidates, lifting the limit from $10,000 to $20,000,
and who's got that kind of money anyway. Then they tore down the $10,000 aggregate limit,
and put no ceiling whatsoever on donations to political parties, or to outside electioneering
groups, or to so-called issue advocacy groups. Plus, they said that candidates could coordinate with
those issue advocacy groups. You know those groups that don't explicitly say vote for or vote
against a specific candidate, but tell you to call up that candidate until that person not to be
so horrible? Senator John Erprenbach had a little fun with this one, warning that we'd see a lot
of more dark money groups crop up with silly names like friends for a sunny day, or we love cheese,
or how about them packers? And guess what? These groups don't have to disclose their donors.
It's totally dark money. Finally, the Republicans kicked off a kind of shell game by allowing candidate
committees, political parties, and all the outside groups to shuffle funds among themselves.
Right before the vote was taken, Senator Chris Larson stood up and said,
this is one of the darkest days of Wisconsin, as more collusion is allowed in our state,
as more cash is allowed in our elections, and more corruption is allowed in our halls.
The bill passed with only one Republican voting against it. His name was Senator Rob Coles.
He told the state journal the next morning that he could not help thinking of his mother
who hated the garbage of politics. He added the mass mailings, the stupid TV ads, the fluff,
all of that is propelled by this bill. And so it has come to be. Before November 6, 2015,
the richest person in America could spend only $10,000 here in Wisconsin to try to influence
the outcome of a political campaign. But since that day, the sky has been the limit.
That's why Elon Musk was able to spend about $25 million, which, by the way,
is a whopping 2,500 times the old limit. And that's why about $100 million was spent here
on all those mud-slinging ads. So how do we rectify this problem? Well, with me to discuss this is
Nick Ramos, the executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Nick, thanks for joining the podcast. Matt, thank you for having me on the show.
And the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has been working on this issue for now.
There are almost three decades. You're celebrating 30 years. So congratulations on that.
What's the solution to this problem? Well, as you've correctly said, it's an issue that
more than 30 years in the making we've been working on. And I think now after another record
breaking Supreme Court race, crazy, huh? Well, I mean, what's the definition of insanity,
Matt? I mean, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Like I feel like our lawmakers here in this state and in this country continue to say money
in our politics as a problem, yet sit on their hands when it comes election time. And so
my thing is is that I think when we're thinking about Wisconsin specifically,
we have to be very specific about the fixes that need to happen that came from that 2015
rewrite of our campaign finance laws, getting really intentional about the disclosures that
end up kind of just becoming an afterthought when it comes to big money in our races. I get
to think about some of the transparency. A lot of times you can be very vague about who you are,
what you do. And we have to get really intentional about just the amount of money that gets to be
able to be transferred between political parties and committees to the candidates. Because I think
that all of the mega wealthy folks that continue to send out a state money and in state money
for our Wisconsin races, I think they are very aware of the fact that, well, I know what my
guardrails are for maxing out to the candidate, but I can also send millions upon millions of
dollars to the party of my choice, to the committee of my choice. And they know that it's going to go
to the candidate of their choice. And so it just becomes this legal money laundering scheme where
the billionaires and the millionaires get to have the parties and the committees do their bidding.
And we need more agency for everyday people like you and I, because the farther away we get from
letting these mega wealthy folks continue to put their thumb on the scales of our races,
the more diluted our voices and our votes are going to be going forward. And what's the possibility
of rewriting that campaign finance law in Wisconsin? I mean, for instance, if Democrats were to
take control of the state legislature in 2026, and there's still a Democrat as governor,
it would be possible then to get a much better campaign finance law to end the show game that
you're talking about, where people can give a thousand times the legal limit to the candidate
to some outside group. And then the outside group or the political party will just shovel over to
the candidate. Yeah, I mean, you know, you mentioned just potentially what the future could hold.
I think right now, while this is very much like a black eye and people feel like they've been
punched in the face having to watch a Supreme Court race that broke is going to break 100 million
dollars when the dust settles. I think Republicans, Democrats, independence alike, and that's why
at the democracy campaign, we have been at the Capitol lobbying our tails off, speaking with
Republicans, speaking with Democrats, speaking with anybody that will have a meeting with us and trying
to get very, very targeted about what we could do right now to fix this. And I know that there's some
bills that are going to be coming here that are going to address these issues. And it's not going
to be the overhaul that we all want. But I think that in the in the immediate, we know we have a
Supreme Court race every year till 2030. And as I said in the beginning, as far as insanity is
concerned, if we don't do anything about this, guess what? Next year's race is going to break 100
million dollars. It's going to break the next record. And we're going to keep doing it until
people realize that maybe we might be better off spending this money and doing, I don't know,
better things with it than just lighting it on fire with direct mail every year or digital ads
or you pick what the tactic is to try and persuade us to vote. Like, I think this is going to be
real opportunities right now with everybody that's here to do some stuff. And what are the
legislators you're meeting with telling you? Well, they all have said they don't want to be glorified
telemarketers going forward. And I think that for them, they don't necessarily feel the fire of
it quite yet. I think that it's going to take some real grassroots people power to really make
the case because I think I think they're already thinking about the next races, the next bills,
the next everything and not necessarily. It's the same loop that we're in. And so, you know,
at the democracy campaign, we built a new money and politics coalition to address this and to build,
you know, that grassroots army that we're going to need to really make the case. And so,
I mean, at this point, I guess we're going to find out what they're really made of. But I think
right now, like, there's an interest. There's an appetite to address it. But I think there's going
to be, there's going to have to be more pressure being applied is the problem that the Democrats have
been able to succeed under the, and beat the Republicans at their own games. So, why change the
game? Is that something you're running into? I wouldn't just make it exclusive to the DEMs,
because I think that under these current parameters that we're in with campaign
finance reform, I think there's been times where it's been advantageous for Republicans as well.
And I do believe that it is created a situation where folks kind of rest on their laurels. Like,
well, we were able to survive and we were able to get through it. So, you know, we just know we need
to out-raise the other person. And if we can keep doing that, then I think we're in business. And it's
just like, doesn't that sound like a crappy business model to you? It's like, oh, well, you know,
I mean, the system's flawed, but, you know, we know that if we just jam our thumbs on it,
it's a little bit harder that like, oh, well, I guess we might just not, we don't need to change
anything. We just know we need to out-raise the other person. And I think that's kind of flawed logic,
if you asked me. And this grassroots movement you're talking about, certainly there's an appetite.
Everyone in the state, every regular person, so sick of the mud splattering on their screens,
they want to see campaign finance reform for sure. So, how are you going to mobilize that sentiment?
At the Wisconsin-Marxie campaign, we had a poll, statewide poll done over 861 samples
back in the middle of February, so on the thick of this Supreme Court race. And 88% of Wisconsin
nights believe legitimately that this issue, money and politics, it's a problem that cuts across
every facet of government. And when you dig a little bit deeper into the numbers, I mean,
but before I even dive deeper, it's like, 88% people agree on an issue like in these times,
can you believe that? I can't. Yeah, that's astronomical. I mean, I think people believing that like,
you see like the unfavorability of like the legislature and whatnot. And I feel like this is our
example of something that is just kind of universal. And honestly, like with what we're seeing at
the federal level, with people arguing say that an oligarchy is forming. And I would argue and
say that, you know, when you got some of the richest clowns up there standing by in the president,
doing all types of goofy things, yeah, I mean, I think it's a good argument. And I would just say that
it's in people's faces right now. And I think that people are tired of feeling like it's just
the richest people to get to have their voices heard. Whereas in a country like ours, your vote
is supposed to be your voice. And yet, it's just hard to make it feel like it's even a competition
when you've got the Uber wealthy just dropping in millions of dollars. And so I think that right now,
people are at a point where they're upset. They want to see some change. And like, it's always been
an issue that we've been dealing with. But I think it's so when people's faces right now, it's hard
to look away. So I think over this next year and change, it's going to be a lot of education about
where we have been and where we can go. And like, I think people will really appreciate being
actually listened to and talked to and not talked at about these issues. And like, give them an
opportunity to be in the car with us is we're getting ready to think about what is going to make
our system better for Wisconsinites now and into the future. And what would that be if you had to
make that choice? Oh, well, I love that you ask that. You know, if I could have it my way and I
burger king sense of the way I would first like I would think about campaign campaign public
financing. And what I mean by that, we have seen models across the state, I mean across the
country specifically where folks have been able to rewrite the system where it gives more
agency to the everyday voter. And what I mean by that is one, thinking about actual real limits
campaign donations. So like right now in this last race for Supreme Court, you could have maxed
out directly to either candidate $20,000. Used to be $10,000. And honestly, if I were waving
a magic wand, I would say for all statewide legislative races, max out is $1,000. Well, for
statewide, for statewide races, not legislative, $5,000. And for legislative races, $1,000. And
honestly, like it would then make it harder, I feel for people to then say, well, I mean, all
these max out donors, they're over here tipping the election in one way or the other, $1,000,
and $5,000 feels really reasonable to me. And then when talking about public campaign financing,
like we have an opportunity to actually create a system where very small amounts of our taxpayer
dollars goes into a fund that then could be tapped into by candidates if they follow certain parameters,
like you need to be able to raise X amounting money from X amount of donors so that you can show
that you've actually been out here speaking to individuals you haven't just been cozying up to
the biggest lobby that wants to help you when you're raised. And places like Seattle and some
others, I think New York, they have vouchers. So when you speak to a voter and you get that voter
to be able to contribute to your candidate and small dollar donations, you get a voucher from them.
You reach a certain threshold of vouchers, then you get to tap into the campaign finance law system
that they have. Sometimes the pool's like $500,000, it could be more, it could be less, but it would
take less of the incentive of having to do your best tap dance for the biggest, most wealthy people
in the room and actually start talking to the everyday people like you and me. And what about
limits to the outside groups and the parties? Well, we have to be very, very careful about Citizens
United because things that we try and attempt to make is the reform here. If it breaks the president
that's been set by Citizens United, it's going to get thrown out and then we're going to have to
start back at Square One. So what I'd be interested in doing is one, when big donations are happening
that there has to be a disclosure of that, I'd be interested in seeing if we could limit the
amount of transfers that go back and forth, instead of it being unlimited, it'd be a fixed number.
And I think that would at least slow down the shell game instead of these guys, they just get to take,
you have $50 million over there, great man, Bob, stick it in a box and then we'll go ship it to
the candidates. Like we could actually be able to try and like slow this down so that it's not as
effective as what it's become. So I think honestly at the end of the day, we really need to just take
the time to make sure the closures are better. There's better transparency when these money transfers
are actually hitting and going back and forth, there should be a publication of that. And like,
it would be great to be able to have some kind of fixed number. We're in a really weird space right
now in 2025. The people are showing up and showing out in a way that I have not seen in a very long
time in this country and maybe not since I've been alive. I think people are not going to look
away from this and they're going to try and apply pressure in ways that we have not seen before.
Of course, I'm not, you know, trying to take that into some kind of dark and gloomy like way,
but I think that like there's going to be opportunities I think to find new avenues for this.
Some of this like populism messaging that I'm seeing across the country where people feel like
they are being left out of the process feel like the elites do not care. And like they will continue
to do this to us unless the people overcome. And so I think it's going to have to be a combination
of laws and lawmakers stepping up to the plate not looking away from the problem. But then like people
continuing to apply this pressure until something gets done. People will not get up off their
butts and do something unless they legitimately think there's a problem. And I think we're at
that critical mass moment in this country where we can be able to leverage the people power into
real substantive change. Well, I hope you're right about that. Nick Ramos, thanks so much for being my
guest on this Wisconsin forward episode. Hey, thank you, Matt. With me now is Senator Chris Larson
of Milwaukee. He's now in his fourth term in the Wisconsin State Senate. He's a real leader of
the Democrats there. And Senator Larson was on the floor standing up for democracy, transparency,
anti corruption that evening in November 2015 when I was up in the Senate gallery watching his
Republican colleagues totally rewrite our campaign finance law. And before we get into how we
remedy what they did that night, Senator, I just wanted your reaction to the first thing they did,
which was kind of surprising to me when I was up there. They took out all the high-minded rhetoric
in the old campaign finance law that talked about the need to limit the size of donations and
expenditures in our campaigns because it would have a corrupting influence and drowned out other
people's voices. And also they stressed the need for transparency in our democracy. And your
Republican colleagues just took all that out and threw it in the waste basket. What was your action
at that time when they did that? I mean, this was a the latest in their downward slide of democracy
in the state of Wisconsin. So it's it is what's the phrase? It was it was not surprising, but it was
still shocking, right? Which is that they are continuing to just decide to decimate the things that
frankly make Wisconsin unique in our history in the progressive movement that had been inspiring
for the entire country to have to, you know, to throw out the old oligarchs that the the old
titans of industry. And we were one of the first to do be able to have have that as part of our
bedrock in our state. And they were just completely ripping it up in an attempt to further galvanize
their power, recognizing that even, you know, this is years after the the gerrymandering of the maps.
And they had already been through a cycle knowing that that was protecting them to some degree.
And then they decided, okay, well, how can we further open the floodgates of money into our state
and obfuscate who is actually trying to buy influence within the Capitol? Well, how do we go about
fixing it? And I hope sooner as opposed to later. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's been 10 years,
which is wild. And I think we're, you know, every day that passes, we're getting more and more
folks who are figuring it out. And if you notice, we just had an election here in the state of Wisconsin,
one of the the most expensive in the history of our state for, for the courts. And in the country
was was the biggest amount of money ever spent on any Supreme Court race in any state in the country
by miles, by like a factor of two. I mean, it was twice what the old record was. The old record
was 50 million. That was set in Wisconsin the last time around. And the previous record was 20
million. So we're talking about five times the record from two times ago. Yeah. You've been a
visionary in introducing a comprehensive package over the last few sessions of campaign finance
reform, which would rectify a lot of the problems caused in the 2015 law. What are a couple
things that you think are most important to fix? So I think the big one is disclosure for start to
start. And I think that's just making sure that like if, if you have a person's employer and
where they're, how much they're donating, obviously. And being able to have that be public is a
big piece of just making sure that everyone has some level of accountability. I mean, the the big
one, if you know, if we're if we've got a magic wand, I'm looking around the studio. I don't know
if it's in here. But if you had a magic wand, we need some magic wand. It would be ending the
ending citizens United because everything else that we do is, you know, it basically is like
throwing water on pavement. Like it's going to find the cracks. And this this citizens United
basically opened up a huge crack in that sidewalk. So by closing it, right, it doesn't solve
everything for sure. But by closing it, that ends up making sure that like money cannot seep
through and over to campaigns without the public knowing about it. Money is not speech. So every vote
should count equally, everybody's voice should count equally, whether you are without housing,
whether you are working paycheck to paycheck, like 60% of America is, or whether you're somebody
who is flying pop stars to outer space for seven minutes, everyone's voice should be equal in America.
What about, I mean, if Democrats got control of the state Senate and the state assembly and there
is still a Democrat in the governor's seat in 2026, that's almost a magic wand. And then you could
do some specific things. You could lower the donations from $20,000 if you think that's too much.
And especially put some ceiling on donations to political parties and to the outside groups.
And then disallow the ridiculous shell game that they allowed in 2015 when they said one party
or committee can pass to the other and can pass to the candidate committee.
Yeah, all of these things. We have the campaign integrity package, which I've introduced, you know,
with Nick's help and the other folks at Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and a whole lot of other
allies who want to see this. And each of these things hits a different point. It cuts the max
pack contribution in half. It makes sure that there is disclosure. It makes sure that like you said,
you can't give, violate this loophole where you can give millions of dollars to a party and that
party can then just shift it right over to the candidate, which is basically what Brad Shimmel
was originally advocating when he went to DC to beg on his knees for money from Elon Musk to give
the money the party let it flow through to him. It would close that. And all of these other
pieces, it would actually, it would, it would, it would bar coordination, which is still only legal
in the state of Wisconsin. I mean, that's the crazy thing. This is from courtesy of the Wisconsin
Supreme Court and then the legislature after the fact put it in the statute that is it's an
issue advocacy group. It's not an independent expenditure group. The only difference is the
issue advocacy group can't use the magic words vote for or vote against the candidate, but they
can do what we've all seen during election time, add to say call such and such a candidate at 608
and whatever the number is until that person just stopping such a horrible person or stop letting
dangerous criminals out on the street. I'm the effect of the ad is don't vote for that candidate.
Right. But according to Wisconsin Supreme Court, it's okay for the candidate
to work with that issue advocacy group to coordinate with that issue advocacy group. And
there are no limits on what an individual can give to the issue advocacy group. On top of that,
that rich individual who's giving to the issue advocacy group can be completely in the dark.
That can be dark money. The issue advocacy group does not have to disclose where they're getting
the money. So this is part of the horror that was brought on by the Wisconsin legislature in 2015
and by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Right. But as you said it perfectly, if we're looking
for more bad stuff to throw on this, you also have the campaign, the ability of corporations to be
able to give contributions, which is something that had not happened prior to 2015 of dumping the
money in to a party and then that party can move that money over, which is a huge problem. It's not
just individuals, but suddenly you have that. And I think sometimes it should go without saying,
but it has to be said. It creates a financial incentive for corporations to give money to
candidates that are going to tax them less so that they have a financial incentive, because you
invest a million dollars into a campaign. But in the end, if you can end up cutting your taxes
by 10 million or 100 million dollars, well, that's just a savvy investment. And they're being savvy
in another way. Some of these corporations are given to both political parties. Right. So no matter
what, they are going to do what do it do better. And a system like that, that's a rigged system.
It's a rigged casino, right? That we are trying to plan it. It's no way to run a state. It's no way
to run a country. It's no way to have a democracy because it's it's not, right? It's led to this.
Unfiltered greed. We're seeing it play out in real time. Unfiltered greed just leads to
massive corruption, which has led us to an oligarchy. And if we're going to go back and roll these
things back, you have to go back to the basics. And I think passing all these bills and even beyond
that, right? If we have that magic one, public financing of elections, right? In a democracy,
it should be ruled by the people. And that's all the people, the majority of the people, not
just a small group that is poisoning the entire system. So until we have public financing of
elections, we're going to keep on like ticking a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. But as you
pointed out, corporations are given a both sides. If the rich folks are given a both sides,
guess who's always represented the rich in the corporations? We just take a step back and realize
the only way this is going to change. If we all say, you know what? We need to step up and make
sure our voices elevated to be heard and push and push and push to make sure that they're heard,
then it will change. Otherwise, those voices just get drowned out because for every
childcare provider that I had in my office, we have probably five lobbyists who are trying to
get in the door to push us on some other issue that most people don't give a darn about. They
don't care. But they're paid to be there and lobbyists have the time to show up. The public
doesn't have the time to show up. The only way that changes is is changing the system so that we
have a publicly financed election system, publicly funded elections, and the people's voice
are all equalized. And we can actually start to solve problems instead of just solving problems
for the rich. Well, I hope we get there soon. Senator Chris Larson, thanks so much for reading my
guest on this podcast. Yeah, thank you. My next guest on this podcast is Maggie Don, the host
of the Maggie Don show heard all across the civic media radio network from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Monday through Friday. Maggie, I listen to your show all the time and you often refer to citizens
united, which is really shorthand for a whole bunch of horrible US Supreme Court decisions on
campaign finance and free speech. How do we solve that problem? How do we overturn citizens united
in the other bad precedents? There's really only two ways, Matt. The first way is that over time
or by Supreme Court reform, be that term limits, expanding the court, perhaps
congressional enacted very rigorous mandatory ethics standards, you end up with a different
Supreme Court composition. And that decision is revisited. The second way that we can fix this is
that we get sick and tired of this garbage and decide that we are going to engage a grassroots
effort to amend the Constitution and we make it so politically painful for candidates and those
that are elected to not support this. So you don't see it taking 20, 30 years necessarily.
It will take as long as people avoid the truth of who is causing their family's pain.
A slight addendum would be this. The third way is that the two-party system starts to decrease
in its importance, things like ranked choice voting, right, that increase voter engagement.
Those kinds of reforms, I think, I think could put us on a path and there's perhaps
lightning in a bottle where you're seeing all of those things happening to a magic sort of degree
and that gives way, right? I think there's multiple ways to get here.
Yeah. Well, Maggie Donne, thanks so much for being my guest today and the Wisconsin Forward
Podcast. It's great here and your voice is always. Thanks for listening to this episode of the
Wisconsin Forward Podcast. On our next episode, I'm going to be talking about an issue close to my heart
and that's conservation in Wisconsin. It's history and where we are today. You won't want to miss
that one.
