Established Fact
A June 2021 analysis by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) — based on open-records data from 196 municipalities — calculated CTCL funding per 2016 voter for each of Wisconsin’s ten largest cities. Among the five CTCL-targeted cities, Milwaukee received $13.82 per voter, Green Bay $36.00 per voter, and Racine $53.41 per voter. By contrast, Appleton received $0.51 per voter and Oshkosh received nothing. These figures — which CTCL has not specifically challenged arithmetically, though it disputes the partisan characterization of its grantmaking — demonstrate that funding was allocated in a mathematically disproportionate fashion: Milwaukee received approximately 27 times more per voter than Appleton, and Racine received approximately 105 times more. All five CTCL-targeted cities were among Wisconsin’s largest, and all carried Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Citations
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), “Finger on the Scale: Examining Private Funding of Elections in Wisconsin,” June 2021, authored by Will Flanders, Research Director. Based on open-records requests to 257 Wisconsin municipalities; data received from 196. Table 3: “Spending Per 2016 Voter, Ten Largest Wisconsin Cities.” Available at: https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/WillLawFINGER-ON-THE-SCALE.6.pdf . The accompanying analysis page is at: https://will-law.org/analysis-private-grants-to-wisconsin-municipalities-boosted-turnout-for-joe-biden-in-2020/
WILL, “Finger on the Scale,” Table 3 (exact figures): Milwaukee $13.82/voter (total grant $3,409,500); Madison $8.30/voter ($1,271,788); Green Bay $36.00/voter ($1,600,000); Kenosha $20.94/voter ($862,799); Racine $53.41/voter ($1,699,100). The five cities together received approximately 86% of all CTCL funds in Wisconsin. https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/WillLawFINGER-ON-THE-SCALE.6.pdf.
WILL, “Finger on the Scale,” Table 3 (exact figures): Appleton $0.51/voter (total grant $18,330); Waukesha $1.18/voter ($42,100); Eau Claire $2.01/voter ($71,000); Oshkosh $0.00/voter ($0 — received no CTCL grant); Janesville $6.11/voter ($183,292). https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/WillLawFINGER-ON-THE-SCALE.6.pdf
CTCL has publicly maintained that its grants were distributed on a needs-based, non-partisan basis and has not issued a specific mathematical challenge to WILL’s per-voter arithmetic. CTCL’s own grant lists confirm the total dollar amounts in WILL’s table. The Wisconsin Elections Commission, in a December 2021 bipartisan ruling, rejected a complaint alleging the grants were illegal. See AP News, “Commission rejects claim that grants to cities were illegal” (Dec. 9, 2021): https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-wisconsin-state-elections-elections-85cc0a97331d75a651439f4be658bbc0.
Calculated from WILL Table 3 figures: Milwaukee ($13.82) ÷ Appleton ($0.51) = 27.1-to-1; Racine ($53.41) ÷ Appleton ($0.51) = 104.7-to-1; Green Bay ($36.00) ÷ Appleton ($0.51) = 70.6-to-1; Kenosha ($20.94) ÷ Appleton ($0.51) = 41.1-to-1. Because Oshkosh received $0, no finite ratio can be calculated against it. These ratios are the author’s derivation from WILL’s data; WILL’s report does not itself state these ratios. The OSC Second Interim Report independently reproduces WILL’s table at Appendix 500: https://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/22/brandtjen/media/1552/osc-second-interim-report.pdf.
WILL, “Finger on the Scale,” p. 4: “According to the Amistad Project… CTCL’s 20 largest donations, that come to $76.5 million, all went to cities that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.” The five Wisconsin cities are Milwaukee (Clinton 65.5% in Milwaukee County), Madison (Clinton 70.4% in Dane County), Kenosha (approximately Clinton-carried at city level; county-level result was near-tied), Racine, and Green Bay. 2016 county-level results via Wikipedia. Note: at the county level, Brown County (Green Bay) went to Trump 52.1–41.4% and Racine County went to Trump 49.5–45.2%; city-level precincts within those counties voted more Democratic.