A record amount of money spent on Wisconsin recall
AP
Updated June 7, 11:45 a.m. ET
(CBS News) Outside groups spent at least $33 million the Wisconsin recall race - at least six times the money groups spent the first time Republican Scott Walker and Democrat Tom Barrett squared off just two years ago.
Mike McCabe, who tracks campaign spending for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign predicts that when all the donations have been reported, the candidates and independent groups will have spent between $75 and $80 million on this race.
By comparison, in the 2010 Wisconsin gubernatorial race featuring the same two candidates, the total spending was $37.4 million, according to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (WDC), an independent campaign funding watchdog. And there was only $6 million in spending by outside groups, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
The spike in outside spending began last year, in the first round of recall elections, when 9 of the 33 Wisconsin state senators fought for their jobs. Outside groups spent $44 million.
With three weeks to go, as of May 21, the last disclosure deadline before recall election day, Walker had raised $30.5 million, while Tom Barrett had raised $3.9 million, according to public disclosure reports tallied by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
The reason Walker could exceed the state's legal limit on donations of $10,000 per donor is due to a 1987 loophole (pushed by a former state legislator who later ran afoul of the law) providing an exception for any incumbent targeted by a recall.
As a result, Walker received-seven-figure donations from 3 of the nation's top 10 Super PAC donors as well as from Wisconsin's richest woman.
Houston homebuilder Bob Perry and Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Aldeson, who have given millions to super PACs, each gave walker $250,000 this year (Perry also gave another $250,000 to Walker last year). Wyoming investor Foster Friess, who bankrolled Rick Santorum's presidential campaign, gave $100,000.
The donors bankrolling the 2012 super PACs
Wisconsin billionaire Diane Hendricks gave Walker $500,000. Hendricks, the largest donor from Wisconsin, is head of the nation's largest roofing and siding company ABC Supply. She is worth $2.2 billion and she ranks #188 on the Forbes 400.
Of $33.2 million spent by outside groups, according to WDC, $24.7 million from independent expenditure groups and $8.5 million from advocacy groups that run what are euphemistically called issue ads.
The top outside groups for Walker were:
Right Direction Wisconsin, created by the Republican Governor's Association (RGA), which gave $8.7 million.
Billionaire David Koch, one of the main backers of Americans for Prosperity. He gave $1 million to the RGA.
- Americans For Prosperity (AFP), a conservative group linked to David and his brother Charles Koch, spent $3 million. Tim Phillips, president of Americans for prosperity told CBS News that beyond airing ads, his group sent 75 trained staffers into Wisconsin to knock on doors for Walker.
"They're on their way back to states like Florida and Michigan and Colorado and Ohio, and they're going to keep doing the same grassroots work, educating folks on President Obama's disastrous economic record and what folks can do about it," Phillips said in an interview.
"I think it was genuinely a big test case for can you take on the biggest special interest group - government unions - in one of their core states, Wisconsin, and win with a free market message? And Governor Walker proved that you can," he said.
In addition, AFP spent $7 million promoting Walker's agenda last year, launching an ad campaign just two days after the governor introduced legislation ending collective bargaining for public unions.
Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (affiliated with the Chamber of Commerce), spent $2 million for Walker.
The anti-union Center for Union Facts spent $1 million, the National Rifle Association spent $800,000, and the Tea Party Express spent $400,000.
The top outside groups for Barrett was Greater Wisconsin Political Expenditure Fund, which is a consortium of Democratic Party groups, which spent a combined $7.3 million.
- AFSCME, the union that represents government workers, spent at least $4.3 million, while the AFL-CIO raised $1.25 million and the teachers union, the NEA, spent $1.1 million. The SEIU spent $920,000.
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A record amount of money spent on Wisconsin recall
LOL!
When Obama is defeated in November, does he get to keep his donations?
The share of income in this country for the middle class has gone down almost exactly as the decline in union membership has. Unions represent ALL workers, unions or not. The anti-worker, self-hating right wingers are living their wet dream now.
With current trends and resentment towards the unions for their destruction of American labor, good luck on finding a sympathetic State that wants anymore union lackeys.
Yes, we're in a global economy, but instead of raise-the-bottom globalization, which would have assured a minimal level of income for the people who actually make things and provide services, we've had race-to-the-bottom globalization, with jobs moving wherever the labor cost is cheapest and environmental and labor protections are non-existent. And guess who gets all the excess money....
Deregulation is always sold as a way to cut red tape and free up creative entrepreneurs. But somehow it always works out as a way to demand concessions from unionized workers and impose concessions on non-unionized workers. Ask truck drivers or flight attendants or airline pilots like Sully Sullenberger about "deregulation"!
Now, having failed to stand up for ourselves in the private sector, too many Americans are turning around and treating public employees as if THEY'RE the enemy. And ignoring critical factors like the fact that MOST public employees have NO Social Security eligibility.
EVERY employer, private and public, ought to be providing AT LEAST the equivalent of Social Security for its workers. "The taxpayer" has no more right to rip off employees than other employers. And any citizen who takes the Preamble to the Constitution seriously ought to be boycotting any corporation that makes its executives obscenely wealthy by ripping off its line employees.
"You're on your own," the Republicans tell us, and some of us are dumb or selfish enough to agree. But the fact is, "We're all in this together," and we need to understand that and make it the cornerstone of our day-to-day and Election-Day actions!
LOL!
CBS News: Providing excuses for the Democrats for the last 60 years.
WHAT A SHOCK!
After three years of organized obstructionism...blocking all administration efforts to relieve the plight of average American who is increasingly desperate as their homes are lost...
Thanks to eight years of the Bush/Cheney Gang, who oversaw the largest transfer of wealth (THEFT) in the history of the human race...these SOBs still have plenty of spare cash to buy elections with millions for GOP attack ads.
It is a severe indictment of the intellegence of the American voter that these semi-treasonous criminals, who worked hard to make conditions WORSE...should then be rewarded for their anti-American efforts in their bid to regain POWER...the only thing that matters to them!
ALL REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE VIGOROUSLY PROSECUTED AS MEMBERS OF AN ONGOING CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE!
(and the financial crisis could be ended by giving HBO the broadcasting rights to televise creative executions with entertaaining embellishments...EVERYONE would find the money for that)
A lovely thought, but...
You would make Hitler blush!