Fundraising figures from the final two weeks of the campaign will not be known until the reporting deadline in July.

By Peter Cameron and Hina Suzuki, THE BADGER PROJECT

The trend of increasingly pricey political races in Wisconsin continued in the city of Wausau this spring, as the mayoral campaign there just experienced what is likely the most expensive race in city history.

While defeating incumbent Mayor Katie Rosenberg with 52% of the vote, Councilman Doug Diny also outraised her in direct fundraising by a ratio of more than 2 to 1.

But those fundraising figures come with asterisks. And they don’t include the independent advertising spending from groups outside of the campaigns, including a huge advertising purchase by the Democratic Party, reportedly for more than $190,000, which dwarfed fundraising from both candidates.

Up to March 18, two weeks before the election, Diny had raised more than $95,000, with about $43,000 coming from the state and Marathon County GOP, according to campaign finance records filed with the city. Diny donated over $22,000 to his campaign, with the remainder coming from individual donors, including local Republican Rep. Patrick Snyder. Diny also loaned about $5,000 to himself, at least some of which was used to purchase billboard ads.

Donations in the final two weeks before the election do not have to be reported until the July 15 deadline.

Rosenberg raised about $42,000 in that same time period, the majority from individual donors.

By comparison, Rosenberg said her campaign for mayor in 2020 raised about $20,000-$25,000.

In the 2024 campaign, she received about $4,300 from political action committees, including $1,500 from the Marathon County Democratic Party, $775 from the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council and about $750 each from the PACs of former Lt. Gov and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes as well as Kristin Conway, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for Snyder’s Assembly seat in 2022. Rosenberg did not contribute to her own campaign funds.

State law capped the amount individuals were able to give to the Wausau mayoral candidates at $800, city clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde said.

Diny received the maximum amount from five individual donors: Gerald Whitburn, Kevin Hermening, Connie Riser Schuette, Thomas Schuette and Ruth Schuette.

Rosenberg received near-maximum donations from Ann Sambhara, Paul Moeller, William Hsu, Raj Bhandari, John Miller, Douglas Hosler, Tanya Bjork, Carolyn Mahrol and Jeremy Mahrol.

State law establishes the donation cap to local offices by multiplying the population of the district in which the candidate is running from the most recent Census, in this case the city’s population of 39,994, by $.02.

But due to loopholes in state law, political parties in Wisconsin can receive and distribute unlimited funds to candidates. Candidates can also self-fund their campaigns without limits.

So more than half of Diny’s funds came from two sources: the Republican Party and himself.

Rosenberg said she didn’t match Diny’s self-funding because “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“I’m an elder millennial,” she wrote in an email to The Badger Project. “I graduated college into the Great Recession. I paid off my student loan and my first car loan while I was in office. I then saved enough to be able to cover our family’s bills if I lost my job.”

In an email, Diny argued the large advertising purchase by the Democratic Party flipped the tables on his campaign’s direct fundraising lead.

“We did everything we could to get ahead of it,” he said.

“I personally knocked on thousands of doors in Wausau; Ms. Rosenberg did not,” Diny continued. “She may not have been out-spent, but she was out-worked.”

Independent political messaging groups also tried to influence the race, though the total amount they spent is unclear.

A dark money group called the Wisconsinites for Liberty Fund, which has an address in Pewaukee, sent mailers attacking Rosenberg to residents across the city. The group has spent heavily to support incumbent Republican legislators, especially Speaker Robin Vos, against insurgent challenges from within the GOP, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Due to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and others, independent groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts, but are banned from communicating and coordinating with candidates.

Rosenberg said multiple conservative political action committees “decided to wade into the Wausau mayoral race and lie to my neighbors about me.”

“They blamed me for things that happened when I was in high school,” she said. “The misinformation was at least as damaging as the dollars spent to spread it.”

Mayoral races in Wisconsin are technically nonpartisan, but both political parties backed their preferred candidate with tens of thousands of dollars.

Diny accused Rosenberg of being “a very partisan mayor” who “campaigned on partisan themes.”

“Our guess is that it was their strategy to galvanize the electorate along party lines,” he continued. “Since Wausau is a Democrat-leaning, such a division would have been advantages to the Rosenburg (sic) camp.”

Rosenberg said she would leave the political analysis of the race to the pundits.

“I have learned that focusing on accomplishments isn’t persuasive to voters,” she said. “The psychology of politics these days means that going negative works. I think that sucks. People deserve better political discourse, but if that’s not what moves the needle, then I guess you get what does move the needle.”

Mayors serve four-year terms and earn an annual salary of about $79,000.

The state legislature recently passed a bill that will require campaign finance reports for local offices like mayor be filed with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission. That law will go into effect July 1, 2025. City clerks currently manage campaign finance reports for city races.

DONORS TO DOUG DINY

TOP DONORS TO KATIE ROSENBERG

This story was funded in part by a grant from the BA Esther Greenheck Foundation.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

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