Over the past few decades, the billionaire Wisconsin businesswoman Diane Hendricks has given tens of millions to Republican candidates and organizations in state and out to help the party win elections.

But in March, the 79-year-old Beloit billionaire outdid even herself, making her largest recorded political donation to date. Hendricks cut a check for $25 million to MAGA Inc., a political action committee supporting President Donald Trump and his interests that started taking donations in 2024. The Federal Elections Commission documents Hendricks’ campaign finance history back to 1992.

In 2024, Hendricks gave the predecessor PAC to MAGA Inc. a $10 million donation, her second-largest recorded contribution, according to the FEC.

Hendricks’ $25 million donation came just weeks after the Trump administration sent her to Italy as a member of the U.S. government’s 10-person Olympic delegation, which attended the closing ceremonies in February. Other members of the delegation included Ryan Suter, who played hockey for the University of Wisconsin and won medals at the 2010 and 2014 Olympics.

Hendricks’ largest recorded political donations

Donating to the super PAC can buy you access to the president, according to reporting from The New York Times. Eric Schiermeyer, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, donated $1 million to the super PAC and then had a private dinner to discuss cryptocurrency with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida. A mother seeking a pardon for her son also donated, according to The New York Times.

In May, Miriam Adelson, the widow of Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Anderson, made a $25 million donation to MAGA Inc., tying Hendricks for the largest individual donation ever to the newish PAC, according to mandatory reporting to the FEC.

Forbes magazine says Hendricks is the richest self-made woman in the U.S., estimating her net worth at more than $20 billion. With her late husband, she founded ABC Supply Inc., which is headquartered in Beloit and sells roofing and other building materials.

MAGA Inc. has $382 million in its coffers, according to FEC data. Money has poured into the super PAC even though Trump can no longer run for office. It got 96% of its funds from donors giving $1 million or more, the Brennan Center for Justice reported.

Foris DAX, a cryptocurrency company, has given a total of $35 million to the super PAC across multiple donations between 2025 and 2026, according to the FEC. Securing American Greatness, Inc., a political entity that doesn’t have to disclose its donors, gave MAGA Inc. about $14 million last summer. Billionaire Jeff Yass, a Trump ally with ownership in TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, gave MAGA Inc. $15 million last year. Trump had previously advocated for banning TikTok in the U.S. but later reversed his stance.

Top donors to MAGA Inc.

Though there are limits on how much people can give directly to a federal candidate, individuals and corporate donors can give unlimited amounts to super PACs. These campaign finance organizations are barred by law from coordinating directly with a candidate or campaign but can spend unlimited amounts supporting and attacking candidates, often through advertisements. The existence of super PACs was made possible by the 2010 Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ruled that groups independent of campaigns aren’t limited in how much they can raise and spend.

Hendricks regularly donates the legal maximum directly to Republican candidates, but individual donors are limited by federal law in how much they can give, which is $7,000 per candidate in this election cycle.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project, an independent, reader-supported news nonprofit in Wisconsin. It is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colón has an early fundraising advantage over Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette in the 2027 state Supreme Court race, campaign finance reports filed this week show. 

Colón, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge who has been on the District 1 Court of Appeals since 2023, raised more than $250,000 in the first reporting period of the race. That total includes a $30,000 personal loan to his campaign and a $20,000 in-kind contribution in which he was given the email list of Judge Chris Taylor’s winning Supreme Court race from this year’s election. Taylor has also endorsed Colón. 

Colón’s top donors include a $20,000 contribution from Mark Thomsen, a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

“I am truly honored to see the excitement and support that our campaign is generating across this state,” Colón said in a statement from his campaign. “We are building the grassroots momentum needed to win next spring and I could not be more grateful to the nearly 600 people who chipped in what they could to move our campaign forward.”

Brunette, the former Clark County District Attorney, raised $145,000 in the first reporting period. Her top donors include $20,000 from Patrick Guarasci, a political consultant who worked on the campaign of Justice Janet Protasiewicz, and Milwaukee-area philanthropist Deborah Kern. 

Both candidates were elected to their prior partisan positions as Democrats. They’re vying to replace conservative current Justice Annette Ziegler, who is retiring. A conservative candidate has not yet entered the race. A Colón or Brunette victory in next spring’s Supreme Court election would give liberals a 6-1 majority on the Court.

Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, one of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary for governor, fired her campaign manager over the weekend due to mismanagement of financial reports. She told reporters Monday that her campaign will continue, calling it a “bump in the road,” although the error means she has hundreds of thousands of dollars less than she thought.

On Sunday at 9:30 p.m., the Rodriguez campaign released a statement saying that the candidate had fired her campaign manager, Kara Spencer, “after discovering serious mismanagement and inaccuracies in campaign finance filings she prepared.”

Rodriguez said at the press conference at her campaign office in Madison that she became aware something was wrong when a statewide ad did not start to run on TV last Tuesday. The campaign had put out press release announcing it was making a $1 million ad buy. 

Rodriguez said she became concerned and started asking questions when the ad did not run. She said that on Wednesday she was notified by her media team of an unpaid invoice. 

“I was given excuses by my campaign manager that did not make sense. By Thursday afternoon, I saw that the total cash was far lower than I had expected,” she said, adding that she wouldn’t be able to give a specific number because her books were still being reconciled.

Rodriguez said she brought in a team of political communications, legal and compliance experts to analyze her reports. They found “double counting of contributions that inflated how much money we had raised” and “a significant failure to report certain expenses that had been paid.” 

According to Wisconsin’s campaign finance website, Rodriguez’s January report was submitted at 2:13 a.m. — after the Jan. 15 deadline. It was then amended at 3:23 a.m. and then again at 5:01 a.m.

Rodiguez’s final campaign finance report uploaded that evening included a number of duplicate payments. According to a review of the campaign finance reports by WisPolitics, there are  at least $275,000 in duplicate donations.

In January, Rodriguez reported raising $618,284.

Rodriguez said her campaign manager had worked with her for several years and in compliance for her whole career.

“As we are trying to make sure we have a lean campaign, it made sense for her to do the compliance report since that was her expertise, and that was one thing I had full trust in,” Rodriguez said, adding that Spencer had given her reports on a regular basis about the finances and everything looked fine until last week. 

“I cannot tell you what was in her mind about why she did what she did. I will tell you that when you work with somebody for as long as I have, it was an enormous shock that this happened,” Rodriguez said. “It took me a little while to believe that these reports were erroneous, but once I was able to look within the system to look within the bank accounts, to look at the reports that were filed, it was clear that these were egregiously in error, and that she needed to be let go.” 

Rodriguez said she had had a conversation with Spencer, but did not provide details on her reaction. She said Spencer’s termination notice was addressed by a lawyer.

“I am hurt, angry and deeply disappointed by someone I trusted to run my campaign,” Rodriguez said, adding it was a breach of her trust as well as her supporters’ trust. 

Rodriguez argued that her press conference and willingness to answer questions was a show of her commitment to accountability and transparency, which makes her a good candidate for governor.

In recent weeks, momentum appeared to be building behind Rodriguez’s campaign after she finished first in a straw poll conducted at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin Convention. Last week, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the race and endorsed her, as did  former Wisconsin Economic Development CEO Missy Hughes, who dropped out and endorsed her in June.

“I think we still have that momentum. I think we’re still moving forward. This is a bump in the road for the campaign, but we are going to be as honest and transparent as we can be,” Rodriguez said at the press conference inside her Madison, Wisconsin, campaign headquarters Monday. “That is why I am standing here in front of all of you in front of all of these cameras in front of all of these microphones and telling you when I see something that is an error.” 

Rodriguez said the analysis of the report is still underway, but they are working to see whether there are any additional discrepancies. Her campaign has also contacted the Wisconsin Ethics Commission, which administers and enforces Wisconsin law pertaining to ethics and lobbying, to report the discrepancies and make a plan to correct the mistakes. 

The firing and revelation about her January report comes just ahead of the next campaign finance report deadline on July 15. 

Rodriguez said she will report having about $200,000 cash-on-hand and that she has raised nearly $1 million over the course of the campaign. She said she plans to continue her campaign and that her ad will go up on TV next week. During the press conference, Rodriguez surrounded herself with supporters holding signs and cheering.

“I know who gets hurt when people like me decide it’s not worth the fight. I intend to put my heart and soul into this race over the next month, and until November, every single day of it. There are people who get knocked down, and don’t get back up. I’m not one of them,” Rodriguez said. 

Democratic opponents critical

The rest of the Democratic primary candidates in the race were highly critical of Rodriguez Monday afternoon. Joel Brennan, a former head of the Wisconsin Department of Administration, was one of the first to speak out, saying in a statement ahead of the press conference that she needed to answer several questions to be transparent with Wisconsinites. 

“How is this not disqualifying?” Brennan asked.

Brennan told the Wisconsin Examiner in a phone interview Monday afternoon that the issue is one of competence and accountability and the “buck stops” with the candidate when it comes to campaign finance. 

“We are ultimately accountable for everything that’s got our name on it, and there is nothing more important in that than managing the resources we have because those resources come from voters in the state of Wisconsin, they come from family, they come from close friends, they come from networks, they come from allies and advocates and people who we need to represent,” Brennan said. “If you can’t manage several hundred thousand in a campaign account, how are you going to be able to demonstrate to people that they should trust a $110 billion budget for the state of Wisconsin?”

Brennan questioned why Rodriguez did not have the infrastructure to ensure there were checks in her finances. He said that he knows on a “day-to-day” basis how much money there is in his campaign.

Brennan said Rodriguez did not provide direct answers to key questions, but instead provided “some self congratulations for standing up in front of a bank of cameras” to address problems that were “created under her watch” and she was “expecting to be congratulated for doing that — like that somehow is courageous.”

Brennan stopped short of calling for Rodriguez to end her campaign, saying he doesn’t make that decision for anyone. However, he said Democrats should be spending time talking about issues that matter to people.

“If we are spending our time talking about missed deadlines when it comes to campaign, being unable to track down hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions, we will never get to the point where we can talk about Donald Trump, about Rep. Tom Tiffany, about the harm they’ve done to Wisconsin, and what we’re going to do for people to make their lives better in our state,” Brennan said. “The stakes are high when it comes to healthcare that people can’t afford. The stakes are high related to utility costs that are out of control and housing challenges that people face, whether they’re renters or homeowners, and where we are in public education.”

The firing is not the first controversy to disrupt Rodriguez’s campaign for governor. She also faced criticism from her opponents for saying she would negotiate the state’s budget “behind closed curtains” and recently for taking corporate PAC money from WE Energies after voting for a Republican-authored tax break for the company. 

Jalen Knuteson, spokesperson for state Sen. Kelda Roys’ campaign, highlighted those instances in a statement, saying that the “public is getting far too familiar with hearing Sara Rodriguez apologize.” 

“This recurring pattern shows that Rodriguez is unprepared for the rigors of a general election or governing,” Roys said. 

Darby O’Connor, spokesperson for former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, said in a statement that Rodriguez “only noticed hundreds of thousands of dollars missing when she didn’t see her face on TV.” 

“This level of gross mismanagement of finances and staff is unheard of in professional politics,” Barnes said.

State Rep. Francesca Hong said she was “staying focused on our campaign,” but that her campaign has “shown we’re a campaign focused on transparency and accountability.”

“Especially with the next finance reports coming out this week, I think it’s vital that everyone running for this position is creating a standard of trust, honesty and accountability,” she added.

The gubernatorial primary is scheduled for Aug. 11 — less than a month away. The winner will face U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the presumptive Republican nominee, in November.

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Have you thought your concerns are being ignored by your elected leaders? You hire them with your vote, but they seem to be largely unresponsive to your needs. Your perception is not wrong, as determined by two Supreme Court decisions: Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010. These cases opened the door to equating money as free speech.

Former Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, recognized this as a problem when $500 million was spent on campaign financing. In 2002 they sponsored bipartisan legislation to limit campaign financing, and it passed Congress. Then this legislation was attacked by special interests, and the Supreme Court ruled against the McCain-Feingold bill. The total spent on federal and state elections in 2024 surpassed $20 billion, according to OpenSecrets. Our legislators are spending a good share of their time dialing for dollars versus communicating with their constituents. The massive amount of money has filtered down into our local nonpartisan elections through outside interests.

Now legislators are not able to set campaign finance guardrails until the Supreme Court decision is corrected. This is done through an amendment to the Constitution. A grassroots effort is requesting that amendment. Already 180 Wisconsin municipalities have sent a resolution to their state representatives requesting an amendment. This includes Green Bay and Brown County; both passed with overwhelming majorities. Twenty-five states have already called for an amendment by sending a resolution to their congressional representatives. 

Let’s see Wisconsin become the next state to demand our state representatives call for a resolution and return our government to representation by the people for the people. 

Judy Nagel is a De Pere resident and a volunteer with American Promise.

Guest opinion: Are your elected officials listening? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear from members of the public this week on a request to require judges to recuse themselves if past donations to or support of their judicial campaign could affect their impartiality in a case.

But it appears unlikely changes to the court’s recusal rules will happen right away. 

In letters to the court over the last month, some legal organizations and research groups have argued that the justices should reject the proposal, including the five retired circuit court judges from Dane, Milwaukee and Monroe counties who proposed the changes in the first place. 

Instead, the former judges, representatives of Law Forward, the Wisconsin Association for Justice and directors of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggest the Wisconsin Supreme Court should establish an advisory committee to study what process would work best in Wisconsin. 

The groups said the proposed rule changes before the court on Thursday stem from valid concerns about an impartial judiciary, but could have unintended consequences, such as chilling speech of attorneys who want to participate in elections. 

“Having solid judicial recusal standards is very important, and so it seems that the best way to move forward is to pull together a variety of different perspectives to come up with the best solution,” said Rachel Snyder, policy counsel for Law Forward. “More brain power and more thoughtful consideration … could produce a better workable recusal standard that meets the goals of ensuring confidence in the judiciary and ensuring that conflicts are addressed when they need to be, without going too far in the other direction, and chilling speech that we wouldn’t want chilled or opening the door to recusal being something that can then be weaponized.” 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to hold an open conference following the public comment period Thursday morning at the Capitol in Madison to decide next steps, a spokesperson said. The high court could vote on the proposal, decide to form an advisory committee or make other related decisions, the spokesperson said. 

Opting for further study would keep the current rules in place ahead of the next state Supreme Court election in 2027. Two candidates already launched campaigns for the April election after Justice Annette Ziegler in March said she would not seek another term on the bench. 

Snyder said it’s understandable some people want changes sooner rather than later, but expediency should not supersede reaching the best policy. In the meantime, judges can still voluntarily recuse themselves, she said. 

“If we’re going to do it, we should try to get it right to the best of our ability,” Snyder said. 

Former Dane County Judge Richard Niess, one of the retired judges who petitioned for the change, said the group had not considered a study committee as a possibility, but thought it was a “terrific” suggestion. To balance concerns about timing for a study, Niess said his colleagues asked the justices to put a deadline on when an advisory committee would share any recommendations. 

“We were delighted to receive the responses that we did, all of them, because it was precisely the type of discussion that we want to have, and we want to have it in public, so that whatever is decided upon by the Supreme Court, the public will know what the reasoning is,” Niess said. 

Current rules written by business lobby

The debate is part of a decades-long battle over what to do about increasing spending in Wisconsin’s nonpartisan, but increasingly political state Supreme Court races. 

“Broadly the question of recusal is important because it gets to the sort of core feature of our judiciary, which is the right to a fair and impartial tribunal,” said Derek Clinger, senior counsel and director of partnerships for the State Democracy Research Initiative, who has studied judicial recusals in and outside of Wisconsin. “That kind of independence and fairness is what gives the courts legitimacy, and so just the fact that the court is considering this shows that they’re taking this issue quite seriously.” 

It’s also significant that the court is debating recusal rules given the history of the issue in Wisconsin over the last 15 years, Clinger said. 

The rules were crafted after record spending in the 2007 and 2008 Wisconsin Supreme Court elections led to conservative control of the court. State Supreme Court election spending has exploded since then as liberals gained control. The 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race drew $144.5 million in spending, topping Wisconsin’s 2023 race as the most expensive high court election in U.S. history. 

The former conservative-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2010 adopted the existing rules drafted by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association. The rules state judges do not have to recuse from a case because a party or an attorney donated to their political campaigns. WMC did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about whether the rules should change.  

The conservative-majority court in 2017 also rejected a petition from 54 retired judges who sought tighter recusal rules. 

Nearly a decade later, the five former circuit court judges submitted their petition in January and were granted a hearing in early April. In a memo tied to their petition, the former judges noted that since the 2010 rules were adopted, “the amount of money contributed to Supreme Court elections, and even to some of the state circuit court elections, has exploded.” 

“It is not a stretch to conclude some cause and effect relationship,” they wrote.

Niess said he recalled ongoing debates around recusals with Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and Justice Susan Crawford while they were all on the Dane County Circuit Court. 

“We were just kind of shaking our heads about how did we get to this point,” Niess recalled. “And since … these two individuals have joined as justices, it seemed the perfect time for us to just serve up a petition to get a discussion going.” 

At a WisPolitics event in October, Karofsky committed to holding a public hearing about establishing a recusal rule for the court. 

“We need to bring people into the Supreme Court hearing room and we need to hear about what kind of rule and what kind of parameters on a rule people think that we should have,” Karofsky said at the time.

Wisconsin Supreme Court revisits recusal rules amid debate over money and impartiality is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.