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Money Floods Wisconsin's Election Says Watchdog

pixabay.com

Outside groups supporting Republican candidates have outspent other groups supporting Democrats by roughly a 4-1 margin. That's the assessment of a political funding watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Executive Director Matthew Rothschild details some of the independent expenditure totals...

"...The Koch brothers group are the biggest players right now. The Koch brothers group, 'Americans For Prosperity' is spending $5.5 million on independent expenditure ads telling people who to vote for and who to vote against. That's far and away the biggest group doing this kind of advertising...."

The second group is Right Direction PAC, the Republican Governor's Association, that has spent nearly $4 million followed by the Wisconsin Freedom PAC spending $ 1.3 million....

"...right there you have more than $10 million being spent on behalf of some Republican candidates by some of these outside groups. For some of these Democratic groups, there's not even a group spending a million dollars...."

Rothschild says those dollars are dollars that must be reported as to who is donating. He says there has been a change in approach by some of the donors...

"..The interesting thing in Wisconsin now is the Koch brothers are doing express advocacy, independent expenditures. They're telling people explicitly who to vote for and who to vote against. Until this year, the Koch brothers had been spending money on these so-called issue advocacy groups, listing the candidate's name and asking to contact this candidate and not be such a scoundrel..."

More information is available at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaignwebsite.

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