Leading up to this past spring’s Wausau mayoral election, conservative talk radio host Meg Ellefson of WSAU brought mayoral candidate Doug Diny on her show, and together they blamed incumbent Mayor Katie Rosenberg for high property taxes, raised water rates and a lack of economic development in the city.

“There seems to be a lot of dysfunction that follows this mayor around,” Ellefson said of Rosenberg.

At the end of the segment, Ellefson plugged Diny’s campaign website and encouraged listeners to donate to his campaign or volunteer to knock on doors on his behalf.

The day after Diny defeated Rosenberg in April, Ellefson invited him back to her show to celebrate. In that same broadcast, Ellefson also announced a new focus of her attention: ensuring Donald Trump’s presidential election.

“That’s what we have to do, is take this victory as motivation to win again in November,” Ellefson told a caller.

A powerful force in Wisconsin politics for three decades, conservative talk radio continues to wield significant influence at the state and local level.

For years, radio personalities like Mark Belling and Jay Weber at WISN, Vicki McKenna at WIBA and Charlie Sykes at WTMJ have banged the drum for conservative ideas and Republican politicians. Ellefson and others like Joe Giganti in Green Bay represent a new generation of conservative hosts employing similar methods.

Although less popular than local television and some other forms of media, local radio generally gains strong trust from those who listen, according to Mike Wagner, a University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism and mass communication researcher and professor. In Wisconsin, during the 2016 election, radio stations were airing around 200 hours of conservative talk every day, according to one UW-Madison study.

In 2022, ahead of his re-election to a third term, Sen. Ron Johnson had made hundreds of talk radio appearances — the New York Times reported they tallied more than four full days of listening.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who regularly appears on conservative talk radio shows in the state, told Wisconsin Watch he tunes in daily for as much as a half hour while driving.

“I would say it’s as powerful as it’s ever been,” Vos said of conservative talk radio. 

Liberal radio has struggled to gain a foothold in the state, giving Republicans an advantage over the airwaves. With large audiences and little partisan competition, conservative radio hosts wield significant influence over elections, politicians and more in Wisconsin. 

And those with political interests in the state are keenly aware of their power. Republican politicians, conservative lobbying organizations and even lawyers helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election have turned to conservative radio to advance their political aims.

‘Without Charlie Sykes, I don’t think there would have been a Scott Walker’

Perhaps most famously, Sykes, the former WTMJ host, had a unique relationship with former Gov. Scott Walker and boosted his career through on-air endorsements going back to Walker’s days as a state representative and Milwaukee County executive. Having publicly exited the talk radio sphere in 2016 after refusing to endorse Trump, Sykes now takes responsibility for this role and what came of it.

“As I look back on my career … I’m not trying to make the same mistakes that I made early on. I don’t ever want to be a cheerleader for a politician,” Sykes said. “At that point, your show … becomes advocacy and propaganda, and it becomes more about winning and scoring points than it does about what’s right and what’s true. I really do know how you get sucked into that.” 

Sykes’ WTMJ show was Walker’s primary connection to a statewide audience, according to Lew Friedland, distinguished journalism and mass communication professor emeritus and researcher at UW-Madison.

“Without Charlie Sykes, I don’t think there would have been a Scott Walker,” Friedland said, calling Sykes “one of the top three most important political actors” at the time. 

Walker told Wisconsin Watch that Sykes had a unique listener block at WTMJ, made up of not just traditionally white men, but also stay-at-home moms and non-conservatives tuning in during the morning commute. Sykes had a larger influence because it was more than just conservatives listening, Walker noted.

“Years ago, before the surge of podcasts … this was the place for a lot of conservative candidates or officeholders to get their message out in ways they felt like they couldn’t elsewhere,” Walker said. 

Walker used Sykes’ show as a testing ground for numerous political talking points. Private school vouchers were a key issue that created an avenue to attack the teachers unions and Milwaukee public schools, Friedland noted.

Vos said Walker’s early use of talk radio built his credibility among Republicans.

“The reason that I think Charlie Sykes had such an impact on people is because he was there for three hours a day for decades, so people just thought they knew Charlie Sykes and they trusted him,” Vos said. “That’s why I think Governor Walker had such a huge impact because he had that exposure on Charlie’s show.”

Sykes’ influence among Republicans was widely recognized, in and outside of party circles.

“The Sykes Republicans from southeastern Wisconsin are worried that he will castigate them by calling them RINOs, ‘Republicans in name only.’ So (he makes it) very difficult for Republicans to be independent of the party line on any issue,” Jay Heck, executive director of the nonpartisan group Common Cause in Wisconsin, said in a 2005 speech.

The final testament to Sykes’ influence as a host came during the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Sykes interviewed Trump live on air and hit him with hardball questions about Trump’s disparaging comments about opponent Ted Cruz’s wife. Sykes gave a far more supportive interview to Cruz, who went on to win the Wisconsin primary.

Short-lived bipartisanship during the pandemic 

The pandemic’s 2020 onset prompted a brief period of bipartisanship in which even Republican state lawmakers and conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity-WI supported the COVID-19 relief bill that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers quickly signed into law.

Evers’ deputy chief of staff at the time, Melissa Baldauff, said the bill fell short of what was needed, and it reflected what Republicans had wanted to see in the legislation. But the governor signed it because quick relief was critical.

Nevertheless, WISN’s Belling used his conservative radio program to criticize the relief measures and the Republican lawmakers and groups supporting the bill, accusing them of “selling themselves out” and caving to Evers without fighting harder against stay-at-home restrictions. 

“This level of frustration that I’m trying to communicate to you is real,” Belling told then-Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican, on his show. “And people don’t know who to turn to because on the one hand they know Evers isn’t going to listen to them, but it is extremely apparent to me that conservative think tanks and Republican legislators are not listening.”

According to Baldauff, Republicans in the Legislature were initially willing to let Evers lead on these difficult policy decisions. But she said the narrative started to shift after radio hosts like Belling loudly condemned the pandemic-era restrictions, fomenting Republican opposition to Evers and COVID-19 policies. 

“They feel the heat. They have a host like a Mark Belling talking about it and saying they should do this or they shouldn’t do this, and then lo and behold, a little while later they are taking that position,” Baldauff said. “I think that’s a lot of where the power is in conservative talk radio. Republican politicians know that it can really make or break their career.”

Vos had a different take. He told Wisconsin Watch that conservative radio hosts want to be the voice of what conservatives really think, rather than political influencers. 

“I look at talk radio as being a mirror to what real people think, not being the one that leads real people to say x, y or z,” Vos said. “They are a megaphone for what the average person thinks, rather than being a mouthpiece that people just copy as if they didn’t have a brain.” 

Alec Zimmerman, formerly a top Republican communications strategist for Sen. Johnson and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, said state politicians are aware of what is generally being said on conservative talk radio. 

“You have to be aware of what they’re saying,” Zimmerman said. “I think all conservative electeds are. … That power does come from the audience and the listener that they can reach.”

Fake electors sought to tip off radio hosts

In 2020, Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, two of former President Trump’s attorneys, crafted a plan to overturn the results of the presidential election in Wisconsin and other swing states. The scheme was for 10 Republicans to pose as fake electors and file paperwork falsely stating that Trump had won Wisconsin.

Documents released following a March lawsuit settlement include texts that reveal Chesebro and Troupis planned to use conservative talk radio in Wisconsin to carry out their scheme. 

In November 2020, as a Supreme Court decision loomed regarding Trump’s attempt to invalidate thousands of votes in Wisconsin, Troupis texted Chesebro, suggesting they “tip off” conservative talk radio hosts McKenna, Dan O’Donnell, Belling and Jay Weber, “Mostly to maximize the chance that SCOW (Supreme Court of Wisconsin) justices hear about this quickly and prejudge the case?”

In another message regarding his memo urging the Trump campaign to push back against his loss, Chesebro reminded Troupis to send copies to a number of conservative radio hosts, including McKenna and Belling. 

Less than two weeks after the first text, Troupis joined McKenna on the air to discuss why the lawsuit seeking to invalidate over 200,000 ballots was “the strongest legal challenge in the country,” according to McKenna. The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the challenge 4-3.

Talk radio flexes power in power line debate

In February, the Assembly passed a controversial bill related to transmission line construction via a voice vote that Vos approved, leaving no record of how each representative voted. The legislation, which had failed before, died without a vote from the Senate in March. 

It would have blocked out-of-state competition on long-distance power line projects in Wisconsin, granting owners of in-state transmission lines the right of first refusal to build new projects.

Conservative lobbying groups like AFP-WI, nonpartisan consumer advocacy groups like AARP and free-market conservatives like WISN’s O’Donnell opposed the bill, claiming the lack of competition could drive up utility costs for Wisconsin ratepayers. Supporters, including Wisconsin-based American Transmission Company, said the bill would have protected in-state companies bidding on transmission line projects without raising costs.

LS Power, an out-of-state transmission line company, has lobbied against similar bills in other states, but did not register against it in Wisconsin. Ellen Nowak, a lobbyist for ATC, said in an email to a lawmaker that an LS Power lobbyist told her the reason the New York-based company didn’t register was because it turned to AFP-WI to handle lobbying so as not to look like a “carpetbagger.” The email was first reported by the Wisconsin State Journal.

AFP-WI turned to conservative talk radio to encourage listeners to oppose the otherwise low-profile legislation.

Shortly after the bill was introduced in October last year, Ellefson invited Megan Novak, state director of AFP-WI, to discuss opposition on her show. When Novak returned to Ellefson’s show to repeat her criticism in February, Ellefson noted that she used to work for AFP.

On Feb. 15, the day the Assembly voted on the bill, Jerry Ponio, legislative director of AFP-WI, tagged three prominent conservative radio hosts in a social media post. 

“Why does no one want to put their name behind a bill that eliminates competition and leading to higher utility bills for families and businesses in #Wisconsin?” Ponio posted.

McKenna, one of the tagged hosts, responded that same day, posting: 

“The GOP-controlled WI Assembly passed a bill on a VOICE VOTE with no debate that gives utilities a MONOPOLY in WI. Not because anyone who will pay the rate increases asked for the bill. Not because WI businesses are begging to see their electricity bills skyrocket. No … they did it because utility lobbyists PAID them. To f***k over WI.”

Belling, who winters in Florida and only occasionally appears on his WISN show during that time, devoted his one February appearance to railing against the bill.

In a statement to Wisconsin Watch, Novak said AFP-WI spoke to a variety of additional news outlets to express its position, including WPR, the Wisconsin State Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“AFP-WI’s goal for educating and informing Wisconsinites about the potentially harmful impact of (right of first refusal) was to reach as broad of an audience as we could,” Novak said.

Eric Bott, state director of AFP-WI, and LS Power’s senior vice president Sharon Segner denied the claims made by Nowak, the ATC lobbyist. They didn’t respond to Wisconsin Watch’s request for further comment.

The Wausau mayoral race

In this year’s Wausau mayoral race, Rosenberg lost to Diny even after the Democratic Party of Wisconsin spent $191,000 in advertisements on her behalf, according to WisPolitics. Republicans spent heavily on Diny in the nonpartisan race.

Diny blamed Rosenberg for an increase in water rates following the discovery of PFAS contamination in city wells — a hike Rosenberg called necessary, but which many constituents opposed. Rosenberg said in an interview that issue shaped the race’s outcome more than any other, with Ellefson’s program playing a role.

On her Jan. 8 show, Ellefson read Diny’s campaign message stating that ratepayers should be “outraged” over these “unacceptable” and “unnecessary” water bill increases. She introduced the message saying “please God let him win” and followed that by calling Rosenberg “unfit” to be mayor.

“It did whip people up into frenzy,” Rosenberg said. “It connected this race to a more statewide network.”

In an interview with Wisconsin Watch, Ellefson downplayed her role in the election of Diny, who has been in the news recently for removing the city’s ballot drop box, an action under investigation by the state Department of Justice.

“I perhaps played a tiny little role in helping to get him elected,” Ellefson said. “I would say it was just giving him the opportunity to share his vision of what he wanted to do, and I’ll admit, being very critical of the former mayor.”

Ellefson’s advocacy for Diny, which doesn’t have to be disclosed as a campaign donation, is legal because of the Federal Communications Commission’s 2014 decision to stop enforcing the Zapple Doctrine. The doctrine used to require radio stations to provide another opportunity for the opposing side to come on the air.

The FCC’s decision to ditch the doctrine came after a 2012 complaint made by supporters of Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin. The Barrett supporters claimed they were not being given free airtime on WISN, whereas WTMJ and WISN frequently aired statements supporting Walker, the Republican candidate. 

The FCC decided that while WISN and WTMJ had violated the Zapple Doctrine, it was not enforceable because of its ties to the Fairness Doctrine, which the commission eliminated in 1987.

Looking ahead in an election year 

In April, O’Donnell of WISN interviewed Trump, then the presumed GOP presidential nominee, ahead of his rally in Green Bay. O’Donnell called himself the “officially Trump-endorsed host.” 

Unlike Sykes’ hardball interview of Trump in 2016, O’Donnell, referring to the criminal indictments against Trump, asked how all of this “lawfare” against him has affected him and his family.

“I’m able to talk on shows like yours, which are very important shows. I’m able to talk about it,” Trump told O’Donnell of his criminal trials. “Because if I couldn’t talk about it … nobody would be able to explain that it’s a hoax.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Conservative talk radio continues to be a powerful political tool in Wisconsin 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.

Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Ripon, Wisconsin, Oct. 3, 2024, with Republican former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, right. On Friday, three high-profile Republicans added their names to the list of Harris' Wisconsin Republican supporters. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

The list of Wisconsin Republicans endorsing the Democratic presidential ticket in November has added three high-profile names: Longtime conservative commentator Charlie Sykes, former lawmaker and judge David Deininger and onetime state Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz.

The three went public just before the weekend in a Zoom call with reporters to declare their support for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, and their opposition to the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

“It is a uniquely dangerous moment, and it’s a moment for us to set aside our differences,” said Sykes, explaining why supporting Harris was “not a difficult choice for me” even though he said he’s likely to disagree with many of the policies on her agenda.

“That’s not the point,” he said of those policy differences. “The point is this choice that America has to make — what kind of country we want to be.”

In backing Harris, the three added to the Democratic campaign’s concerted appeal across party and ideological lines to people who view Trump as a distinct, existential threat. All three declared that under Trump the Republican party has evolved far from the party with which they historically have aligned themselves.

“Unless or until the Trump era ends, that party will not regain its footing, and I think defeating him this year is a way to make sure the Republican Party can rebuild and get back to what has always been the party of Lincoln,” Deininger said.

Sykes has opposed Trump since before he first won the Republican nomination for president in 2016. He’s one of the founders of The Bulwark, a digital publication established in 2019 by anti-Trump conservatives.

Schultz left the state Senate midway through Scott Walker’s tenure as Wisconsin governor after voting against two of Walker’s signature pieces of legislation — a bill that stripped public employees of most of their union rights and another loosening mining regulations.

Deininger was among the former judges who served on the Government Accountability Board — a nonpartisan agency that for a few years served as Wisconsin’s elections and ethics watchdog.

After the board investigated Walker’s campaign for coordinating spending with outside groups in the 2012 recall election — at the time a violation of Wisconsin law — Republicans in the Legislature abolished the independent board in 2015 and changed the state’s campaign finance laws to permit coordination.

“When I was on the Government Accountability Board, our primary function was to protect and preserve the integrity of Wisconsin government and our elections,” Deininger said. “That’s the kind of leadership we need at the federal level, and sadly, it’s the opposite of what we saw from Donald Trump.”

Deininger didn’t equivocate in his criticism of the former president.

“Trump has lied repeatedly to the American public about just about everything, but probably the worst of all is his lies about the outcome and integrity of our elections,” he said, recalling that on Jan. 6, 2021, “Trump encouraged a violent mob to attack the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election.”

“The reality is a second Trump term would be far worse and far more dangerous,” he added.

A U.S. Navy veteran, Deininger also asserted that the president has unique responsibility for overseeing national security — and that he was “dismayed at some of the public comments, publicly reported comments, that former President Trump has made about veterans and military service.”

Schultz emphasized his belief in a bipartisan approach to governing and his faith that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, would govern in a bipartisan manner. In contrast, he pointed to the destruction brought by Hurricane Helene to the American Southeast and lies spread by the GOP standard bearers in the storm’s aftermath.

Schultz also drew a contrast between Trump’s evocation of “a dystopian future” and “a candidate seeking the highest office in the land talking about the need to come together, joyfully, working on the problems that all of us face” — Harris.

“I myself want to cast my lot with those folks who are [optimistic about] our future, not who are hung up on some sort of Mad Max scene that they see as a future for our country,” Schultz said.

While echoing some of the same criticisms of Trump, Sykes focused on the party that once served as the political homeland for all three Wisconsin Republicans on the press call.

“I have been surprised and disillusioned by watching how many conservatives have gone along with Donald Trump — his lies, his insults, his kowtowing to dictators, his willingness to violate the law,” Sykes said. “One after another, Republicans have decided that winning or staying in power is more important than standing up for these values that used to be, I think, fundamental.”

He also noted the number of staff and appointees  from Trump’s four years in the White House “who are now saying that he is not fit to be returned to office,” including his former vice president, his former defense secretary and his former national security advisor. “There’s no historical parallel for this,” Sykes said.

Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, and former U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the Janesville Republican who served in Congress for two decades, have both publicly stated Trump should not be reelected but have declined to endorse  Harris.

Sykes professed his respect for them, but also said leaving the presidential line on the ballot empty or writing in a name — George Washington, Edmund Burke or Ronald Reagan — wasn’t a sufficient response, since it won’t prevent Trump from being reelected.

“The only two candidates who have a chance to win this election are Kamala Harris and Donald Trump,” Sykes said. “And by voting for Kamala Harris, I think that we draw the line and say that Donald Trump should never be allowed anywhere near power again.”