CAMPAIGNS
How does WMC spend money to get a corporate-friendly legislative environment? What has WMC done to stack the state Supreme Court? Who else does WMC attack in its advertising? Who benefits from its spending?
WMC has been using paid issue advertisements since the mid-1990s. Usually, these issue ads come during legislative, judicial and gubernatorial political campaigns. In 1996, WMC spent $400,000, but in the past 12 years the WMC Issues and Mobilization Council has dumped millions of dollars in issue ads.
The millions of dollars they have spent have not been without consequences for the organization. One Wisconsin Now’s WMC Watch added considerable pressure and attention to the organization's tactics. A petition drive started by OWN’s WMC Watch generated over 15,000 communications to board members of WMC.
EPIC Systems, the Wisconsin-based national leader in health care technology announced in mid-2008 it would no longer do business with organizations that had members serving on the board of directors of WMC. As result, David Cullen of J.P Cullen & Sons Construction abruptly resigned from WMC’s board. Earlier in the year, board member David Wittwer, CEO of TDS Metrocom left the board. Speculation and email communication led many to conclude it was over WMC’s smear campaign against defeated Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler.
A humbled WMC spent 2008 running positive communications on behalf of five high-profile Assembly Republican campaigns, but only one of its candidates, Keith Ripp, managed to win election.
During the first half of 2009, WMC has unsurprisingly reemerged. It has waged numerous negative issue campaigns, targeting Democratic supporters of the Wisconsin budget plans, as well as Rep. Ron Kind for his support of the Employee Free Choice Act. WMC’s full-throated return to the negative issue ad wars is augmented by new and old spending players on the right wing, including All Children Matter, the now-inactive Wisconsin Institute for Leadership, Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity and the newest-participant, the MacIver Institute, reportedly led by convicted felon and former GOP Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen.
Learn more about WMC's involvement in campaigns by choosing a year at the right. Each year has examples of the issue ads WMC has run and a detailed analysis of WMC's issue ad campaign for the year.
