Gagliardi’s opponent, Court Commissioner Heather Iverson, denied knowledge of the attack campaign sponsored by Fair Courts America (FCA), a “dark money” special interest political action committee linked to Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, which dropped nearly $51,000 to support Iverson’s successful campaign. Fair Courts America also sponsored similar 11th hour attack ads in four other local judicial contests in Wisconsin, prevailing in three of the four. In LaCrosse County, Evers appointee Mark Huesmann, a former municipal judge, survived despite attacks that linked him with “radical politicians” who were “soft” on violent crime.
Unlike the other counties, the outside “dark money” campaign was reported in the local news media and District Chief Judge Scott Horne issued a stern statement praising both Huesmann and his opponent, a former judge, but decrying the attack ads as exhibiting “little awareness or understanding of local issues or candidates in favor of generic, dramatic and largely untrue attacks.” “We have been accustomed to such [campaigns] being employed in national and state races,” Horne wrote. “We see now national entities using these same techniques to impact local judicial races and in the process distort the nonpartisan role of judges and mislead the public.”
Fair Courts America spent nearly $8 million in the recent election cycle, almost $2 million of which supporting conservative Dan Kelly’s unsuccessful attempt to regain his seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. As Judge Horne noted, it’s remarkable to see this effort and funding in supposedly nonpartisan and usually nondescript local judicial elections. This troubling trend may now to poised to repeat itself all across the U.S.