By Evan Vorpahl

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) has reportedly spent $3.2 million (as of March 13, 2025) through its advocacy arm, the “Issue Mobilization Council” (WMC-IMC), attacking Judge Susan Crawford in her race for the state’s highest court. In February, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Crawford’s opponent, Brad Schimel, was banking on well-resourced special interests groups to buoy his campaign, stating: “I’m hoping that very soon we’re going to start seeing friends like Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Fair Courts America… get on the airwaves and help take some pressure off.” WMC is the state affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

Over the past two decades, WMC has exerted an enormous influence over the Wisconsin Supreme Court, including spending tens of millions in the state’s supreme court races. In 2023, the group spent more than $5.8 million to attack now-Justice Janet Protasiewicz as she ran for a seat on the Court. WMC-IMC also has received funding from the network of Leonard Leo, the architect of the far-right takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court who helms a $1 billion trust he has used to try to turn back Americans’ rights and regress American culture.

What You Should Know About WMC-IMC

What Is WMC-IMC?

• WMC is a 501(c)(6) trade association that receives a large portion of its revenue via member corporations. Its advocacy arm, WMC-IMC, is a 501(c)(4) that can accept unlimited contributions from in- and out-of-state and even foreign corporations, front groups, and wealthy individuals without having to disclose any of those donors’ identities to the public. WMC-IMC then spends those anonymous funds on ads to influence elections, so long as its “advocacy” activities do not constitute more than half of the group’s work per year.
  

WMC Is Closely Linked to National and State Court Capture Operatives

• WMC-IMC revenue was $6.71 million 2023, eclipsing WMC’s revenue of $5.7 million. WMC-IMC’s increased revenue included a $1 million grant from the Concord Fund/JCN, a core group in Leonard Leo’s dark money network. 

• Leo’s network raised nearly $600 million before Biden was elected in 2020 and worked to install the right-wing justices Leo handpicked for Trump to appoint: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. After that court capture efforts, a regressive Chicago billionaire rewarded Leo with a $1.6 billion trust fund to deploy, Marble Freedom Trust. The Senate Judiciary Committee authorized a subpoena for Leo as part of its investigation into his  role organizing luxury gifts of travel for Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, but he refused to cooperate with the Committee.
  
• Leo has also worked to capture state supreme courts and install extremists willing to overturn legal precedents that protect reproductive rights and more, as he has done with the federal judiciary. 

• Leo’s network has fueled ads or outreach targeting the Wisconsin Supreme Court races since as far back as 2007, with the help of right-wing anti-abortion political operative Eric O’Keefe, with whom WMC-IMC is also deeply tied, and the Republican State Leadership Committee, whose biggest funders is a Leo-tied group. As ProPublica reported: “Leonard Leo’s project to reshape [the] US judiciary got its start in Wisconsin,” and a few other states.
  
  • In 2007, the Federalist Society described Wisconsin, with a contested state supreme court seat, as a key opportunity. It launched a media campaign ahead of the judicial election that spring, touting that “The Federalist Society hired a polling firm (The Polling Company, Inc) [Kellyanne Conway’s then firm] to conduct a pre-election survey of Wisconsin citizens… There was extensive coverage of the poll results from many media outlets, including Wisconsin Public Radio, and release of the poll results generated additional media interest in the legal experts being made available by the Federalist Society to comment on the Supreme Court race.” In that 2007 race, WMC spent $2.5 million, and Leo’s in-state ally, the O’Keefe-steered Wisconsin Club for Growth, spent $400,000.
    
• In 2023, WMC’s main lobbying arm received a grant from Charles Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, which has already spent at least $2.5 million in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, sending postcards backing Schimel and attacking Crawford.

WMC Is a Key Player in the Attacks on Wisconsin’s Judiciary

• In 2007, the Leo-tied Wellspring Committee gave $200,000 to WMC’s $2.5 million effort to help elect Annette Ziegler. The following year, WMC spent $1.8 million backing Michael Gableman. 

• In 2009, the Court’s right-wing majority rejected a petition for stricter recusal rules based on the appearance of bias in cases involving outside groups that helped a member of the court win their judicial election. Instead, the court adopted a WMC-written rule that campaign spending, no matter how large, by a party did not itself require recusal. Then, in 2015, Justices Gableman and David Prosser refused prosecutors’ request to recuse from the bipartisan criminal probe of other groups tied to O’Keefe’s allies whose ads helped them win their seats on the court, killing that probe in a 4-2 vote.

• O’Keefe and WMC are very close. For example, during 2012 (when there was no judicial race but a presidential race and other elections), O’Keefe’s Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG) gave WMC $2,984,000. That year, the Leo-tied JCN also gave $281K to the RSLC-tied State Government Leadership Foundation, which then gave $120,000 to WMC and $25,000 to O’Keefe’s Wisconsin Club for Growth.

• O’Keefe’s Wisconsin Club for Growth and the Wisconsin Alliance for Reform (WAR) have worked in tandem to influence Wisconsin Supreme Court races after accepting major contributions from groups in the Leo network. In the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, for example, WMC-IMC ran attack ads identical to those by the WAR, which Concord/JCN heavily funded from 2015 to 2018.
  
• Notably, in 2023, WMC-IMC was the top backer of Dan Kelly’s unsuccessful campaign for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That year, WMC-IMC brought in $6.7 million in revenue, more than any of WMC’s other nonprofit arms for the first time since 2018. 

TLDR: Wisconsin’s business chamber is again targeting the Wisconsin Supreme Court for capture by attacking Judge Susan Crawford’s bid for a seat on that court. WMC-IMC has a track record of funding from anti-abortion operative Leonard Leo’s groups and also a pattern of coordinating with other groups led by in-state anti-abortion operative Eric O’Keefe. 
For additional information about this article, please contact Evan Vorpahl at evan@truenorthresearch.org. True North’s Lisa Graves and Alyssa Bowen contributed to this article.