Wisconsin politicians denounce the "billionaire loophole" that makes state elections so expensive, but they're still raising tons of cash. | Getty Images

Two high-profile candidates for governor of Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Democratic former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, have denounced the unlimited flow of cash into state political campaigns. Then, practically in the same breath, both men announced their plans to raise tens of millions of dollars, signalling to their less well funded primary opponents that they might as well get out of the way.

In an interview with PBS Wisconsin on Dec. 5, Tiffany criticized “that pass-through loophole, I call it the ‘billionaire loophole,’” in Wisconsin law, adding, “there’s just so much money that comes into Wisconsin.” 

“You can cry about it or you can compete,” Tiffany continued. “We choose to compete … We’re hoping to raise $40 million.”

As Baylor Spears reports, Tiffany actually voted for the “billionaire loophole” he now criticizes back when he was serving in the state Senate in 2015. 

Mandela Barnes, in a recent campaign stop in Madison, told Spears and other reporters that he has raised a “strong haul,” in the first week of his campaign, and that he intends to raise a staggering $50 million by the end of the race. He added that he doesn’t like the role of money in politics. “It’s not a good sign,” he said, and his future goal is “to get big money out of politics” and enact “campaign and ethics reform.”

Back in 2015, when Republicans were ramming through the “billionaire loophole,” Barnes opposed it, saying at the time that it would allow “shady special interest money and allow for more corruption to go undetected and unprosecuted.”

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, remembers that moment well. Under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, Republican legislative majorities passed the law eviscerating campaign finance limits along with other measures getting rid of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board and eliminating the John Doe procedure that was used to criminally prosecute leaders of both political parties for campaign finance crimes in the infamous caucus scandal of the early 2000’s.

The 2015 law doubled the amount individuals could give to candidates. More importantly, it eliminated all limits on state party contributions to candidates and allowed coordination between candidates and outside groups that make issue ads supporting the campaigns. Donors were able to give as much as they wanted to political parties, which then funneled that money to candidates, creating the billionaire loophole to which Tiffany belatedly objects. The 2015 law cleared the way for outsiders like Elon Musk to pour limitless cash into state races to try to affect the outcome.

“The Republicans did that in 2015 because they were convinced that they would have a great financial advantage since they generally raised more money from donors and special interests,” says Heck. “Of course, what they didn’t anticipate was [former Wisconsin Democratic Party chair] Ben Wikler and the Democratic Party’s ability to take that big hole in the law and use it to raise massive amounts of money.”

Recently, Democrats in Wisconsin have been beating Republicans in the fundraising arms race. In 2025, in the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history, Susan Crawford, the candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court supported by the Democratic Party, raised $28.3 million compared with Republican-supported Brad Schimel, who raised $15.1 million. Outside special interests accounted for most of the spending on the race, with Musk alone putting in nearly $20 million through his political action committees and millions more laundered through the state Republican Party for Schimel, while the Democratic Party of Wisconsin funneled $10 million to Crawford.

The lesson of the 2015 law, says Heck, is, “be careful what you wish for.”

That certainly applies to Republicans, who lost the two most expensive state Supreme Court races in history as well as the last two record-breaking gubernatorial races won by Gov. Tony Evers with $93 million in total spending in 2018 and $164 million in 2022. 

But it also applies to Democrats, who cannot count on continually bringing in more money than Republicans.

More importantly, when it costs tens of millions of dollars to win state elections, regular voters’ voices are drowned out by billionaires, who are not investing in candidates just out of the goodness of their hearts.

Heck believes that change will only come when voters demand reform, most likely because a big scandal clearly illustrates that politicians are doing favors for their donors in exchange for campaign cash.

“It’s going to require a bipartisan coming-together to establish some limits,” Heck says. 

Even as the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the floodgate for campaign spending with the Citizens United decision, which in 2010 struck down a federal ban on political donations from corporations, and McCutcheon v. FEC, which in 2014 found that annual caps on total political donations from one person are unconstitutional, states have the ability to impose limits. 

A report by the National Conference of State Legislatures shows Wisconsin is one of only 11 states that allow unlimited candidate contributions by state parties and among the top 10 for the highest limits on PAC contributions to candidates. Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and most other states limit how much political parties can accept, which reduces the Elon Musk effect. Plus, “We are one of few states that allows so-called coordination between political candidates and outside groups,” Heck says.

The problem is that candidates, while acknowledging that massive amounts of money fueling their campaigns is a bad look, don’t want to unilaterally disarm. 

But now, as the Trump administration drags the country to new levels of overt corruption, it could be a good time for a campaign that ties together billionaires’ destructive influence on society and the fact that they are buying our democracy. 

“There has to be public disgust with the amount of money being spent,” says Heck. “If a candidate put corruption front and center, it might get a lot of traction.”

Christine Neumann Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, speaks at a press conference on the Wisconsin Supreme Court case challenging the legality of Wisconsin law enforcement agencies' cooperation agreements with ICE | Photo via Voces de la Frontera Facebook video

In Wisconsin we have been watching in horror as President Donald Trump’s lawless immigration crackdown terrorizes communities in our neighboring states of Minnesota and Illinois. 

Here at home, so far, things are mostly quiet. Farmers in western Wisconsin report no ICE raids on the dairies where 60% to 90% of workers are immigrants without legal status. There have been a few high-profile arrests and deportations in Milwaukee, Madison and Manitowoc, but nothing like the scenes of chaos in the streets of Chicago and Minneapolis, where masked federal agents are aiming guns at civilians, smashing out car windows and dragging parents from their children, hustling them off to detention centers to be fast-tracked out of the country without due process.

One of the most disturbing things about this campaign of terror is that it seems to be directed by the president’s whim. In a Thanksgiving post full of invective and schoolyard insults directed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, Trump denounced the Somali community he claimed was “completely taking over the great State of Minnesota.” One week later, CBS News confirmed that ICE operations were underway targeting Somali immigrants in the Twin Cities.

Since we can’t count on the federal government to stay inside the bounds of reason or the law, it is critical that local and state leaders stand up to the racist, unconstitutional and unAmerican assault on immigrants. 

It was good news when, on Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court accepted a case filed by the state chapter of the ACLU on behalf of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, contending that Wisconsin law enforcement agencies do not have the authority to make arrests or keep people in jail on detainers based solely on ICE’s administrative warrants.

Tim Muth, the ACLU of Wisconsin’s senior staff attorney, said hundreds of people throughout the state are being illegally held for days.

“It is extremely important for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to determine whether any law enforcement in Wisconsin has the legal authority to put or keep people in jail when they have not committed a crime and when no judge has issued an arrest warrant,” Wisconsin immigration attorney Grant Sovern wrote in an email to the Examiner. “Anyone in Wisconsin would want dangerous people to be kept from the public. But ICE is currently making no determinations about dangerousness or the likelihood to show up for a hearing if a summons is issued. A summons is a perfectly rational and legal way to address a civil legal question like someone’s immigration status. Jailing people before any independent adjudicator determines someone to be dangerous is against the Constitution and not the Wisconsin way.”

At a press conference Wednesday, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces, told the story of a landscaper in Green Bay who was picked up for driving without a license (immigrants without legal status are barred by a 2007 state law from obtaining driver’s licenses). He was sent to county jail and then handed over to ICE. “He was a grandfather, very active in his church,” Neumann-Ortiz said, describing him as “someone who does not represent any kind of threat to society at all” and who, on the contrary, is a pillar of his community and beloved by his family. 

Voces helped fight the deportation in a case that is still working its way through the courts. “At least he’s out and together with his family,” Neumann-Ortiz said. “But that’s an example of how people can be impacted by this.” 

As it scrambles to meet arbitrary deportation quotas, ICE sends detainers even for people who have never been convicted of a crime and have only minor charges pending in Wisconsin courts. 

Voces has been fighting at the local level since the first Trump administration for local law enforcement to refuse to collaborate with ICE unless there is a judicial warrant for someone, meaning that person is being sought in connection with a serious crime. As a result of Voces’ efforts, that is now the standard in Milwaukee County. The state Supreme Court case is an effort to establish the same standard statewide.

Neumann-Ortiz said she’s grateful the Supreme Court justices recognized the urgency of the issue in agreeing to take the case on an expedited basis, “given the current level of abuse that we’re seeing happen, and which will only escalate.”

And, she added, “We certainly very much anticipate Milwaukee being one of the cities that will be targeted for militarized occupation with these aggressive sweeps.”

Whether or not Wisconsin communities can protect people from the kind of violence we’ve been seeing in other states depends on the courageous actions of state and local officials, advocates and informed community members. It begins with recognizing that the Trump administration’s actions are wrong and then standing up.

At the press conference, a reporter asked about ICE’s assertion that the agency doesn’t have room for everyone in its detention facilities and therefore needs space in county jails. Muth responded: “Detain fewer people.”

Neumann-Ortiz added some clarifying context. “They are profiling people, they are just grabbing people without any probable cause. So it’s a very racist program that is using violence against people and is trying to hijack, through bribery and through threats, local law enforcement to be part of this mass deportation machinery,” she said. 

“We’re seeing, at the local level, community come together,” she added, “to reject these efforts to undermine local law enforcement — which is supposed to play a public safety role — into just this arm of deportation driven by xenophobia and racism. And which is making a lot of money for the for-profit prison industry.”

This year, communities across the state have pushed back on 287g partnership agreements between local law enforcement and ICE that turn sheriff’s departments into an arm of the federal immigration agency. Palmyra, Ozaukee and Kenosha counties rejected ICE’s offers of money to transform their sheriffs into agents of federal immigration enforcement.

The Kenosha sheriff’s office made its decision not to participate after the ACLU and Voces had already named it in the Supreme Court lawsuit, along with Walworth, Brown, Sauk and Marathon counties. Palmyra also reversed a decision to accept a large payment from ICE to participate, responding to public outrage.

“Resistance is happening, it’s successful, it’s building community,” Neumann-Ortiz said. “But we do need state protections to uphold our rights.”

The U.S. Capitol on the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, just hours before a federal government shutdown. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is over and all we got was the near-cancellation of food assistance just in time for Thanksgiving and a looming explosion in health care costs.

None of the problems that led to the shutdown have been resolved. Instead, a handful of Democrats abandoned their fight to force Congress to address the health care crisis in exchange for rolling back some of the damage the Trump administration did during the shutdown itself. Federal workers are getting their jobs back — for now — and flight cancellations will end just in time for the holiday travel season. Otherwise, we’re pretty much back where we started. 

Democrats are fuming and Republicans are gloating over the end of this game of chicken, in which the party that showed it doesn’t care at all about the pain and suffering of its own constituents is the apparent winner. Stay tuned to see how long the glow of victory lasts as members of Congress go home to face the voters. 

During the fruitless shutdown battle, a couple of politicians from Wisconsin who are not facing election anytime soon showed real leadership. Their focus on serving the needs of real people, not political posturing, was a breath of fresh air, and a model of the kind of public service we badly need.

Gov. Tony Evers deserves a lot of credit for acting quickly to pay out food assistance funds to nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites last Friday as soon as a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to release the money, which it had been withholding for a week. Evers acted in the nick of time. The Trump administration appealed the decision and, on the strength of an emergency ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, demanded that Wisconsin and other states that had paid out the benefits overnight claw them back. Evers issued a terse response: “No.” 

Thanks to his leadership, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites, including 270,000 kids, were spared from going hungry because of the Trump administration’s capricious cruelty. With the shutdown over, the battle over food assistance has ended and the USDA has said full nutrition benefits will begin flowing to states again within 24 hours of the shutdown’s end. But as Evers said when he seized the moment and released the funds, “It never should’ve come to this.” The feds had the money to prevent kids from going hungry all along. Trump made a deliberate decision to cut off aid, and then to demand that states pay only partial benefits, on the theory that doing so would punish Democrats for refusing to reopen the government on Trump’s terms. 

Evers deserves a lot of credit for his decisive action to protect Wisconsinites from harm.

Another Wisconsin politician who has been working overtime to stave off disaster for residents is U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. 

Baldwin has spent her entire career working to expand health care access, including writing the provision of the Affordable Care Act that allows children to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they reach the age of 26. She has a reputation for doggedly working across the aisle and, during the shutdown, she never gave up trying to get Senate Republicans to agree to extend ACA tax credits. 

This week, when eight Senate Democrats joined the Republicans on a resolution to reopen the government that didn’t include any language about the coming spike in health care costs, Baldwin forced a Senate vote on an amendment to extend the ACA credits for one more year. Many Senate Republicans had told her they knew the expiration of those credits would drive health care costs through the roof in their states.  

In her floor speech introducing her amendment, Baldwin said: 

“My Republican colleagues are refusing to act to stop health care premiums from doubling for over 20 million Americans. I just can’t stand by without a fight.”

Even as people across the country express shock and dismay, “Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have simply refused to address the biggest increase in American premiums they’ll likely ever experience,” Baldwin said.  

“I’m getting calls daily from Wisconsinites begging me to stay in this fight,” she added. She told her Senate colleagues about a couple from Door County who told her their premiums are going up by over $550 per month because of the failure to extend the ACA tax credits. “Everything is already too expensive. So where are they supposed to find 6,500 extra dollars in their budget?” she asked. 

Another couple from Butternut, Wisconsin, told her their premiums are going from $400 per month to more than $5,000 per month — “that’s $55,000 more a year,” she said. “As they wrote to me, ‘health care tax breaks are not just numbers on paper. They are a lifeline that allows us to sleep at night knowing that we won’t lose everything if one of us gets sick.’” 

Baldwin was back in the state Wednesday where, as Erik Gunn reports, she is holding a series of town hall meetings with people affected by rising health care costs. She is holding out hope that some of her Republican colleagues will come around on the issue. She refused to answer questions about whether she thinks Sen. Chuck Schumer should be ousted from his position as Minority Leader because of the end of the shutdown fight. 

Characteristically, she is keeping her head down and working to build bipartisan support — as she did, successfully, when she persuaded enough Republicans to join her to pass the Respect for Marriage Act protecting same-sex and interracial couples — instead of using it to score political points.

As we move past the shutdown power struggle and into the real fight over people’s lives, we need more of that kind of leadership.