MADISON, Wis. — A new report details how recently elected State Rep. Bob Donovan’s used campaign funds to pay for his in-district residence. Following his victory in 2024, Rep. Donovan started paying himself $850 a month with campaign funds for ‘staff lodging’ — without having a campaign staffer at the time. Donovan had to move to run in the 61st Assembly District following new legislative maps, but kept his old house, where his wife still resides. To admit his guilt, Donovan refused to comment on using campaign money for rent, but reimbursed his campaign account for the payments.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Rep. Bob Donovan Was Paying Himself $850 A Month From His Campaign, Until He Got Caught
By: Daniel Bice
Key points below:
- Legislative redistricting meant many different things for state lawmakers last year.
- For state Rep. Bob Donovan — the failed Milwaukee mayoral candidate ― it made for a highly questionable case of subsidized housing.
- In 2022, Donovan, formerly a longtime Milwaukee alderman, was elected to represent the 84th Assembly District for the city of Greenfield after edging out Democratic candidate Lu Ann Bird. At the time, he had homes in both Milwaukee and Greenfield.
- But after the legislative boundary lines were redrawn last year, Donovan announced he would run for the newly formed 61st Assembly District. But Donovan’s Greenfield residence was outside the new district, so he soon got an apartment in the new district while keeping his old place.
- In November, Donovan, 69, narrowly defeated Bird again in an expensive reelection battle. He voted using the address of his new, in-district apartment, while his wife used the old, out-of-district residence to vote.
- A month after his victory, the GOP lawmaker began paying himself $850 a month from his campaign account for “staff lodging” at his old house. In all, he paid himself $5,950 in the seven months after the election, according to campaign reports.
- The item was made even more confusing by the fact that he didn’t even list a campaign staffer during any of that time.
- So who was this supposed staffer living at Donovan’s out-of-district apartment, and why was he paying the money to himself? Donovan had two legislative employees, but both were paid by the state and have their own places in Oconomowoc and Beaver Dam.
- So was Donovan using his campaign account simply to pay off the mortgage for his old, out-of-district house or to cover the rent at his new, in-district apartment?
- Donovan didn’t return calls or emails. We visited both his residences, but no one answered at either.
- But he did do something.
- Last week, he reimbursed his campaign account for $5,100 that it had paid him for the so-called “staff lodging” and refiled a campaign finance report. Interestingly, he apparently forgot to refund his campaign for the $850 his campaign paid him on Dec. 16, 2024.
- “Before he got caught, Bob Donovan was focused on solving his personal housing crisis by using his campaign donors’ dollars to pay for an apartment — all while he ignores this actual crisis facing his constituents,” said Philip Shulman, spokesman for the state Democratic Party.
- So why isn’t Donovan just fessing up to the Journal Sentinel about what is going on?
- Here’s a guess: I wrote a column in 2016 about some of the former south side alderman’s past troubles with the law, including a 1992 citation for disorderly conduct for peeking through a hole in a partition between restroom stalls in a men’s room at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for some 10 minutes. Donovan was in his 30s at the time.
- I also noted that in 2005, Donovan agreed to pay a $2,500 fine and to avoid any involvement with nonprofits for two years as part of a deal in which federal authorities dropped a misdemeanor fraud charge against him.
- He has not talked to me or some others at the Journal Sentinel since then, even though all of that is true. By the way, Donovan was crushed both times he ran for Milwaukee mayor in 2016 and 2022, getting only about 30% of the vote each time.
- But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t listen when we call him, email him and show up at both his Greenfield residences.
- Mike Browne, deputy director of the liberal A Better Wisconsin Together, noted Donovan still doesn’t have everything right. Along with failing to repay the $850 from December, Donovan apparently made the revisions so quickly he didn’t even correct his cash balance after he refunded the money in his July report.
- “It’s clear what’s going on here,” Browne said. “Bob Donovan got caught trying to fix his own affordable housing crisis by tapping his special interest campaign donors to help pay the rent. And instead of answering any of the serious ethical or even legal questions his scam raises, he’s trying to cover his tracks.”
