The price tag for the 8th SD has already surpassed $10.2 million, topping the previous state record set in the Milwaukee-area district when it was the site of a recall election 13 years ago, a WisPolitics review shows.
And the tab will likely be even higher once final spending reports are filed with the state in early January.
The race between Dem attorney Jodi Habush Sinykin and GOP state Sen. Duey Stroebel isn’t the only one producing eye-popping numbers in the 2024 campaign. Two other state Senate races have already topped $6 million, while five Assembly contests have crossed the $5 million threshold.
In all, WisPolitics has tracked $27.2 million in five state Senate races and $54.9 million in 13 Assembly campaigns.
The money race is a confluence of the new maps that gave Dems a path to the majority and the interest megadonors have taken in shaping the legislative contests.
In the state Senate races, the money race has largely favored Dems.
The WisPolitics review found Habush Sinykin and the groups backing her have put more than $8 million into the race. Meanwhile, Stroebel, R-Saukville, and those supporting him have dropped almost $2.2 million.
The effort has been fueled, in part, by a GOP rewrite of campaign finance laws in 2015. The rewrite didn’t impose any restrictions on the size of donations that legislative campaign committees can receive and allowed them to make unlimited transfers to candidates.
The previous spending record for a legislative race was nearly $10 million in 2011 as former GOP state Sen. Alberta Darling beat back a recall attempt, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Darling had a window during that campaign in which she was able to accept unlimited donations, as allowed under state law. Still, she and Dem Sandy Pasch spent just more than $2 million in that race, with the outside groups accounting for the rest, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Outside of recall elections, the most expensive legislative race the WDC had tracked was the $5.1 million spent on the 18th SD in 2016, the first election cycle under the rewrite of campaign finance laws. Republican Dan Feyen and Dem Mark Harris combined to spend $1.1 million in that Oshkosh-area campaign.
This year, the candidates are driving much of the record spending in the 8th, a suburban Milwaukee seat that longtime GOP redistricting consultant Joe Handrick rates a highly competitive seat. Habush Sinykin has raised $5.2 million through reports filed by Wednesday, while Stroebel has pulled in nearly $1.5 million.
The State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee has accounted for nearly $4 million of what Habush Sinykin has raised since the start of the year, while the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate has transferred $930,000 to Stroebel’s campaign.
In the Assembly, Dems are putting in more than Republicans in all but one of the top races — the 96th AD race between Rep. Loren Oldenburg, R-Viroqua, and La Crosse Dem Tara Johnson.
Meanwhile, the race with the biggest price tag so far is the 21st AD in suburban Milwaukee, where the candidates and groups have dropped more than $6.4 million. Handrick rates the seat with a 53% Dem lean.
To pull together the spending totals, WisPolitics included: fundraising totals candidates reported on their preelection finance filings and late contribution reports; independent expenditures reported to the state between June 1 and Wednesday; and spending tracked by AdImpact.
WisPolitics used the candidates’ fundraising totals rather than what they’d listed for expenses on the reports in anticipation much of that would be spent over the final weeks of the race.
The tally doesn’t include spending that groups did on issues ads through the mail, for example, which aren’t reported to the state and are difficult to track. That’s another factor that will likely push the final tab in each race higher than what WisPolitics has tracked so far.
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