Bill Lueders

One neat thing about MapLight.org Wisconsin, a website launched earlier this year (followed shortly thereafter by this column), is that it lets users spot trends in the financing of state political campaigns. You can find, for instance, that political donations to state legislators by the people who work for them are up, way up. State legislative aides gave $47,514 to legislative campaigns in the 2009-2010 election cycle that culminated last year, according to MapLight. That’s twice the $23,675 total in 2005-06, the previous high since at least 1993-94. To find this data, go to the MapLight.org Wisconsin home page and…

Much attention is paid, and rightly so, to the enormous amounts of cash poured into political campaigns as contributions to candidates and through third-party groups that, in the estimation of state Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, have “hijacked” campaigns and made candidates “almost irrelevant.”  Massive amounts of money and effort are also invested by groups seeking to influence legislation through lobbying. In the 2009-10 legislative session, state lobby groups reported spending a total of $65.4 million, according to data released Thursday (Aug. 11) by the state Government Accountability Board. Reports for the first six months of 2011 from the state’s…

As anyone with a television has probably figured out by now, Wisconsin’s recall elections are in full swing. The millions of dollars flowing into these contests, much from special interest groups, are being transformed into 30- and 60-second commercials, most of them negative. Negative messages have been a feature of political campaigns since Oorg challenged Grok: “His fault fire die.” But the ads in the current recall elections are extraordinary for several reasons. First, the sheer volume. David Canon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor, says there’s no doubt that combined candidate and third-party spending in the state’s nine…

Robin Vos is a smart, likable guy who happens to hold one of the state’s most powerful positions — co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee. The Republican Assemblyman from Rochester has vast license to shape the state’s priorities, as when his committee made dozens of tweaks to the recently passed biennial budget. Some say it’s also a position that makes Vos especially susceptible to special interests seeking to influence the process through campaign contributions. But Vos insists that’s not happening. “With limited exceptions, people do not give me money and ask me for things in return,” Vos says. “I’ve never…

Lily Eskelsen, a union leader who lives and works in Washington, D.C., cares deeply about the recall election challenge being waged in Wisconsin by Democrat Shelly Moore. You might even say she’s invested in it. Eskelsen, the vice president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, in early May gave $500 to help elect Moore, a high school English teacher in Ellsworth. Three other NEA officials have also given money to Moore, who is seeking to unseat state Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls. Wisconsin’s recall elections, spurred by the turmoil over changes that undercut public employee unions,…

It’s still several weeks before the general elections, with big bucks yet to flow, but already Wisconsin’s recall-o-rama is awash in campaign cash — and at least one record will surely fall. From Jan. 1, 2009 to June 30, 2011, recall target state Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, raised $1.04 million, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. State Sen. Dan Kapanke, R-La Crosse, also facing a recall challenge, raised $738,226 during the same period. Both candidates have spent more than $600,000 already. The spending record for a state Senate candidate in Wisconsin is $722,333, set in 2008 by Milwaukee Democrat Sheldon Wasserman. He…

Everyone seems to get it. When people hear I’ve left my job of 25 years to head up an investigative reporting project on money and politics, they say it sounds like a ripe topic for journalistic inquiry. These two terms – money and politics – go together in people’s minds like burgers and fries. It’s generally assumed that money drives politics, to the detriment of our democracy. As a newspaper reporter and news editor at Madison’s weekly newspaper Isthmus this past quarter century, I’ve written a fair amount about state politics, including the scandals over aggressive fund-raising and improper use…

News of a physical altercation between two state Supreme Court justices has, ironically, brought the people of Wisconsin together. Everyone, it seems, agrees there is something terribly wrong with our state Supreme Court. “There are some real troubles that I think are very serious in terms of the relationship and conduct of the Supreme Court,” Gov. Scott Walker told Wisconsin Public Radio, which together with the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism broke the story. “In a free society, there’s got to be confidence in the judiciary, and certainly the fact that there’s that kind of tension there I don’t think is healthy…