Dem gubernatorial candidate Sara Rodriguez blamed her former campaign manager for double-counting donations and failing to record expenses on a report filed six months ago, leaving her with just $200,000 in the bank four weeks from the Aug. 11 primary.

Rodriguez during a news conference yesterday at her campaign headquarters in downtown Madison said her team was still trying to figure out the extent of the irregularities. But a WisPolitics review found she may have overstated her donations over the second half of 2025 by at least $137,500.

Rodriguez Dem rival Joel Brennan called the discrepancies disqualifying, while other gubernatorial campaigns pointed to past missteps by her campaign to suggest she’s not up for the job.

But Rodriguez insisted voters shouldn’t worry about how she’d oversee the state’s more than $111 billion biennial budget after she’d failed to keep tabs on the finances of her $1 million gubernatorial campaign.

“I trusted her to do the job that I had hired her to do, that she had done for her entire career, and I regret placing my trust in that individual,” the lieutenant governor said.

Rodriguez said she didn’t have any details on what may have driven Kara Spencer, the now-fired campaign manager, to double count donations and fail to record donations.

Spencer didn’t immediately respond to inquiries from WisPolitics seeking comment.

Statewide campaigns often work with a compliance firm to help file reports and track finances. But Rodriguez said that responsibility was handed to Spencer alone because she had worked in that area over her entire career.

Rodriguez said she discovered the discrepancy after noticing the $1 million ad buy her campaign announced last week hadn’t hit the airwaves. On Wednesday, she received word that media vendors hadn’t been paid, and her campaign worked through the weekend to figure out the issues. She fired Spencer Sunday.

Rodriguez insisted she had no reason to suspect the numbers in the report filed nearly six months ago included any discrepancies because she received regular updates from Spencer over the period suggesting everything was on track.

She said the decision to announce the $1 million ad buy was made by Spencer based on the information the former campaign manager had shared with Rodriguez on her finances. Rodrigues said she was unsure why Spencer included that number knowing what the campaign actually had.

Rodriguez said she still plans to go up on TV next week, though she didn’t have details of how much she will put into the buy as her campaign continues to work through the discrepancies.

“That’s what I would tell Wisconsinites. You want a leader who’s going to be transparent and who’s going to take accountability when things go wrong,” Rodriguez said. “That’s what I’m here today standing before you doing, taking that accountability.”

State campaigns face a Wednesday deadline to file reports detailing fundraising activity since Jan. 1.

The WisPolitics review found more than $275,000 in donations listed twice for the same amount on the same day from the same donor.

For example, Edina, Minnesota, physician Rober Haselow was listed as giving two $10,000 donations on Dec. 17. Meanwhile, Milwaukee businessman David Lubar was listed as giving two $5,000 donations on Dec. 30.

The possibly double-counted donations ran the gamut in size. While the two $10,000 donations from Haselow were the largest WisPolitics found in the review, a number of small contributors also seemed to be double-counted.

That includes Harry Porter, of Sturgeon Bay, who gave 13 donations totaling $70 in December. The campaign listed another 13 donations from Harry C. Porter from the same address in Sturgeon Bay, also for $70 total.

There were other potential double donations beyond the $275,000 from donors with the same address giving the same amount on the same day.

For example, the campaign listed donations of $5 each from Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway on the same day in August, September, October, November and December.

Each time, one of the donations listed the address for her public office and the other a personal address.

Just looking at December, the final month of the reporting period, Rodriguez’s report listed 701 contributions. Just 15 were from donors who only made one contribution to the campaign that month.

Rival campaigns knocked Rodriguez for the misstep.

Brennan’s campaign asked, “How is this not disqualifying?”

Meanwhile, GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Tom Tiffany posted on X, “Hopefully, @saraforwi won’t handle this the same way she wants to write Wisconsin’s budget: ‘behind a curtain.’ Voters deserve a full explanation of what the “inaccuracies” were and how they happened.”

The dig referenced a comment Rodriguez made earlier this year to a group of local party activists that she’d work out a budget with Dem legislative leaders in private before releasing it publicly.

Dem state Sen. Kelda Roys, of Madison, ticked off other issues Rodriguez has had since launching her campaign a little less than a year ago. That includes suggesting she had a heads-up from Gov. Tony Evers that he was going to announce his retirement before later acknowledging she found out around the same time others did. Along with the statement about writing a budget behind a curtain, Rodriguez said she misspoke when she said in an interview she supported ICE detainers if federal officials have an administrative warrant. She later wrote in a tweet that she only supported arrests if federal officials have a judicial warrant.

“This recurring pattern shows that Rodriguez is unprepared for the rigors of a general election or governing,” Roys said.