A group billing itself as the Wisconsin Elections Committee is up with a new TV ad that threatens to oust Assembly Speaker Robin Vos unless he allows the impeachment process against the state’s top elections official to proceed.
A spokesperson for the group of “concerned” citizens from Racine County and the surrounding area said it was recently formed. It has budgeted $100,000 for TV, radio and newspaper ads a week until Vos takes action or is replaced, the spokesperson said.
A document posted at the FCC’s website shows the group placed $80,000 in TV ads on four broadcast stations in Milwaukee between Oct. 30 and Nov. 7. The spokesperson said the group is also running a full-page ads in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that includes the same threat as what’s in the TV spot.
In the 60-second TV ad, a woman says there’s a year until the 2024 election and the results could either steer the state and country in “the direction of improvement” or push it “further along the concerning path we are currently on.” The woman narrating the ad says she’s worried about the fairness and security of the elections if Meagan Wolfe “remains in charge of them.”
The spot then accuses Wolfe of allowing the use of drop boxes and ballot harvesting, as well as permitting “the Zuckerbucks influence money” and refusing to “clean up our voter rolls.”
Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell’s survey of local election officials showed drop boxes had been used by them since at least the 1980s — well before Wolfe became the Elections Commission administrator in 2018 — and the state Supreme Court’s ruling barring their use wasn’t issued until the summer of 2022. Meanwhile, state and federal courts ruled ahead of the 2020 election that there was no ban on the use of private money to cover election costs.
Five Assembly Republicans introduced an impeachment resolution against Wolfe in September, but it hasn’t moved in the chamber.
The ad says Vos is standing in the way of impeaching Wolfe and the speaker “needs to hear from us, the voters.” The narrator urges viewers to call Vos and “let him know he needs to listen to the Assembly and allow for the impeachment process to happen, or he will be replaced, whether through recall process or a primary challenger.”
See the TV ad here.
See the newspaper ad here.
