The three most crucial legislative races in the Green Bay area for both parties follow a trail of money that ends in Madison.

The Press-Gazette compared 607 pages of September expense report data in contested legislative elections to an analysis from earlier in the year and found over $2 million poured into the races for Senate District 30 and Assembly Districts 88 and 89. Put another way, these three races received almost 2½ times more money in just over a month than all the local races got in the eight months before the Aug. 13 primary.

But the candidates don’t have millions of dollars to spend. It’s Wisconsin’s Democratic and Republican parties that are spending the very millions they injected into these three races they believe are the most important to keep an eye on in the state’s northeast and crucial to which party controls the state Legislature.

“Lower costs and better wages start with Republicans keeping control of the state Assembly and Senate,” Wisconsin GOP chair Brian Schimming told the Press-Gazette. He was confident Wisconsin residents would choose “common sense conservatives” in November to that end.

For the state’s Democratic Party, it’s “excited that voters have a real choice on the ballot this November” in the first election to use redrawn maps approved by Gov. Tony Evers that reshaped the boundaries of these three districts, which now make a tight perimeter around Green Bay and its suburbs. The state party’s communications director Joe Oslund told the Press-Gazette that the party is eager to support the Democrats running in these races.

Keeping the 14-year streak of Republican control in the Assembly and Senate versus the opportunity to take that control away translates into the multi-million-dollar game both parties are playing in Green Bay laid bare in financial statements — and yes, graphs — that paint a picture of it all.

Triple, quadruple, sextuple the money

Before the Aug. 13 primary, there was already an emphasis on the races between:

• Senate District 30: Republican Jim Rafter and Democrat Jamie Wall.
• Assembly District 88: Republican Benjamin Franklin and Democrat Christy Welch.
• Assembly District 89: Republican Patrick Buckley and Democrat Ryan Spaude.

Just over two-thirds of the $2.15 million going to local races went to the candidates in those three districts.

After the primary, the proportion skyrocketed to 93.3% of all September finances in greater Green Bay.

The focus on these races stems from the new Senate District 30 boundaries that no longer reach up to Oconto County or down to Denmark. Its limits are now tightly wound around Green Bay and its immediate neighbors and contain Assembly Districts 88 and 89.

A side-by-side comparison of the new borders with the 2020 presidential election results shows just how competitive these districts are. Assembly District 88 has precincts that voted for Donald Trump by 0.8% and Joe Biden by 0.7%. The margins are even closer in Assembly District 89 that has neighborhoods that voted for Joe Biden by six votes and those that voted for Trump by three. And Senate District 30 that holds both Assembly districts includes a precinct that tied, 367 to 367.

The down-ballot fight to tip these margins means these three highlighted districts saw nearly three, four and six times more money in just over a month than they got in rest of the year combined.

Party coffers flowed free

While individual donors gave the majority of the money raised before the primary, Democratic and Republican party political action committees are now the biggest source of candidates’ dollars through in-kind contributions — non-monetary gifts like T-shirts or TV ads paid for the candidate on behalf of another source — or transfers-in, which is money directly wired to a candidate from a PAC or other campaign.

From January until the primary, just over 59% of money in all local races came from individual donors. That ratio inverted after Aug. 13; these in-kind contributions and transfers-in from large PACs took off in September, making up 81.9% of all money flowing into local races since the primary.

Just six PACs contributed over $1.63 million in that timeframe. In other words, nearly all of the PAC money flowing in came from:

• “Republican Party of Wisconsin”
• “Democratic Party of Wisconsin”
• “Committee to Elect a Republican Senate”
• “State Senate Democratic Committee”
• “Rep Assembly Campaign Committee”
• “Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee”

The money from Democratic and Republican PACs came in waves with each party determined not to let the other out-do its performance. Republican donations peaked Sept. 8, followed by Democratic donations Sept. 12, followed by Republicans Sept. 16 and Democrats Sept. 20.

Madison controls spending for Assembly District 88, 89 candidates

As expected with 93.3% of all money going to these three local races, the same three contests accounted for 94.7% of all September spending.

Over $850,000 in expenses goes unaccounted for when only looking at what the local candidates themselves decided to spend on.

That’s because for Assembly District 88 and 89 candidates, their money was largely spent for them by the large PACs based in Madison. It went to the airwaves, mailers and online ads.

Wall and Rafter of Senate District 30, however, got much more money that they could spend as they pleased from the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively; they still spent it on ads that have inundated the online feeds, TV channels and mailboxes of locals.

Franklin, of Assembly District 88, received $229,317.81 in September; nearly all of it was in the form of online advertising and mailers by the Republican Party on Franklin’s behalf that never touched the candidate’s bank account. The other three Assembly district candidates also got a deluge of high monetary value “in-kind” media and ads that need to be accounted for in campaign finance reports but never entered their bank accounts.

Franklin’s opponent, Welch, received $12,350 in direct monetary transfers that she could spend on what she wished; the Democratic Party spent nearly $140,000 on TV and online ads and mailers on her behalf.

Spaude, Welch’s counterpart in Assembly District 89, received $9,750 in “transfers-in” compared with the $107,158.67 spent on TV ads, mailers, and wages to campaign staff by Democratic Party-affiliated PACs. His opponent, Buckley, got $16,350 in direct monies to his account from large PACs versus the $211,198 spent exclusively on mailers and online ads.

Almost all of Wall’s expenses in September — $581,350 worth of spending — went to Great American Media for television ads, far outpacing the $137,155 the Democratic Party spent on mailers, as well as consulting fees and wages for his staff. Rafter countered with $200,080 in his own ads paid for in part by the $352,000 directly wired from Republican-affiliated PACs.

Attention on these three districts by the state parties converted into getting the public’s attention is only expected to intensify with every spending attack and counterattack in the home stretch to Election Day.

More than $2 million injected into 3 Green Bay legislative races 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.