Special interest groups and the candidates spent about $5.4 million on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, mostly on negative radio and television ads, according to a report the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign released April 19. The Madison group, which tracks campaign spending, counted 35 outside groups that spent $4.5 million in the two months before the April 5 election between Justice David Prosser and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Those groups spent an estimated $2.7 million to help Prosser and $1.8 million to help Kloppenburg. The Greater Wisconsin Committee, created in 2004 to support Democratic candidates, spent the most, nearly $1.7 million for Kloppenburg. Four groups backing Prosser spent a combined $2.65 million: Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business group, nearly $1.1 million; Citizens for a Strong America, about $985,000; Club for Growth Wisconsin, about $520,000; and Tea Party Express, about $70,000.

The Democracy Campaign said the estimates for outside groups were conservative because they left out ads on local cable systems not carried by satellite. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, which tracks television advertising in judicial races, counted nearly $3.6 million in special interest TV spending, a record for a Wisconsin judicial race.

The four candidates in the Feb. 15 primary spent a combined $913,238 through March 31, including $406,283 by Prosser and $351,259 by Kloppenburg. Three of the four accepted public financing, which limited their fundraising. The race was the first high court election under a public financing law Wisconsin enacted in 2009, which gave each finalist $300,000 for the general election.

The total fell short of the record $5.96 million spent in 2008 and the $5.8 million spent in 2007, according to the Democracy Campaign. After the Waukesha County clerk reported Brookfield votes that had been left out of the initial count, Prosser led by more than 7,000 votes.

Peter Hardin reported this story for Gavel Grab on April 19, 2011, when the site was a project of Justice at Stake. This account of the same events was written from the public record.

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