Group spending six figures on ads threatening to unseat Vos unless elections chief Wolfe is impeached

MADISON - A new group is spending tens of thousands of dollars on television and radio ads that threaten to unseat Assembly Speaker Robin Vos unless he removes the nonpartisan leader of the state elections agency.

Wisconsin Election Committee, Inc. is running ads on Milwaukee-area TV and radio stations that falsely claim Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe implemented a number of policies decided by the agency's panel of commissioners and should be removed. It threatens to recall Vos or launch a primary challenge if he doesn't move forward articles of impeachment against Wolfe.

Update: Vos advances impeachment articles against elections chief Wolfe in wake of ad pressure campaign

Leading the group is Adam Steen, who unsuccessfully launched a primary challenge against Vos in 2022, and Harry Wait, a Racine County man who was charged last year for fraudulently obtaining absentee ballots for Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason in order to show violations of the law are possible, according to documents filed with the Federal Communication Commission by the group.

Wait leads a Racine County group known as H.O.T. Government, which promotes false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Wait said by email many of the group's supporters are "'Kennedy democrats' who are awakened and realize how the two political parties are actively leading us into 3rd. world status."

"Robin Vos is an obstructionist to our efforts," Wait said, referring to the group's effort to remove Wolfe. He declined to answer how the ads were being funded.

Kevin Scott, a New Berlin-based attorney, filed paperwork on Oct. 5 with the state Department of Financial Institutions to create the group. Scott told the Journal Sentinel he was hired to file the paperwork but had "no substantive involvement" with the group.

Scott assisted former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman with a lawsuit that sought to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay if they did not sit for interviews about the 2020 election. Separately, Scott also represented a man who has sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission over its policies for voting from nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Federal Communications Commission records show the group has spent more than $100,000 on the ads that have run on radio and TV from Oct. 9 through Nov. 7 with the most recent 60-second TV ad buy scheduled to run just this week. The group also purchased a full-page ad in Thursday's Journal Sentinel.

In a statement, Vos said the members of the group running the ads "appear to be uninformed and not following what's actually going on in our state."

"The money could be better spent attacking the real obstacle to election reforms and that's Tony Evers," Vos said in a statement.

In September, Republican Reps. Janel Brandtjen of Menomonee Falls, Scott Allen of Waukesha, Elijah Behnke of Oconto, Ty Bodden of Hilbert and Chuck Wichgers of Muskego, put forward 15 articles of impeachment against Wolfe, falsely claiming she was directly responsible for decisions made by elections commissioners and tying her to debunked election theories.

All 15 impeachment articles contain misleading or false claims about how elections administration works in Wisconsin.

The move to impeach Wolfe came amid a flurry of votes by Senate Republicans to oust Wolfe and a lawsuit filed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul to keep Wolfe in her job.

Wolfe oversees a commission that has been under fire for three years because of false claims put forward by former President Donald Trump to persuade supporters he actually won an election he lost and because of policies commissioners approved during the 2020 presidential election to navigate hurdles presented by the coronavirus pandemic.

President Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by about 21,000 votes in Wisconsin — a result that has been confirmed by two recounts paid by Trump, state audits, a partisan review, a conservative study and multiple lawsuits.

Vos has blocked the impeachment articles and has said publicly he wants to pursue a new administrator for the elections agency through a legislative process that allows a committee to hire for vacant positions. But in legal filings, Vos has claimed the Legislature has no power to make that move.

Meanwhile, a Dane County judge has blocked the Legislature from taking any action to remove Wolfe from her position.

In September, the state Senate in a party-line vote rejected the appointment of Wolfe. Minutes after the vote, Kaul filed a lawsuit asking a judge to block Republican legislative leaders from appointing a new administrator and to declare Wolfe administrator, arguing the Senate did not have the power to oust her. Meanwhile, Wolfe said she would not leave her job until a court told her to do so.

Separately, a week after the Senate vote to fire Wolfe five Republicans in the state Assembly proposed articles to remove Wolfe from office through impeachment, an effort that so far hasn't advanced in the Assembly.

Even though lawmakers voted Wolfe out, she stayed in her job because the vote to fire her isn't being recognized by Wolfe or many Democrats as legitimate, because the Republican-controlled state Senate forced a vote on Wolfe's future even though the bipartisan elections commission charged with hiring her did not put forward a nomination of Wolfe to consider.

When Wolfe's term expired in June, the six members of the commission agreed Wolfe should stay in her job but failed to find consensus on how to respond to an effort by Senate Republicans to oust her.

Ultimately, the commission did not put forward the four votes required by law to reappoint Wolfe, with Democratic commissioners arguing a recent state Supreme Court ruling that allows such officials to stay in their positions beyond the expiration of their terms protects Wolfe's job.

Senate Republicans decided to move forward anyway. LeMahieu contended the 3-0 commission vote that resulted in a failed motion to reappoint Wolfe was actually enough votes to reappoint Wolfe, even though state law says such votes require a majority of commissioners, or four votes.

"They could have voted no. They didn’t vote no. That would have been a tie vote. But it was a unanimous vote," LeMahieu said after a floor session during which Republicans voted to move forward with Wolfe's nomination. "3-0 is a two-thirds vote."

But in an October court filing, LeMahieu's attorneys claimed the opposite — admitting the commission's 3-0 vote on Wolfe "did not effectuate an appointment," that Wolfe is lawfully in her current position as a holdover, and that "the Senate has no power to act on an appointment where there is no pending appointment."

The legislative leaders also said in the filing that the Legislature's Joint Committee on Legislative Organization has "has "no power to appoint an interim administrator while Administrator Wolfe is holding over."

Vos removed himself from the lawsuit, telling reporters he disagreed with that argument. But in a court filing to ask the judge to separate himself from the lawsuit, he acknowledged the argument was correct.

"Whether we like the result or not, a Dane County judge has issued a ruling saying we cannot remove Meagan Wolfe at least until the court issues a final ruling," Vos said in the Thursday statement. "I think she should be replaced, but we now have to wait for the court process to work."

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Wolfe remains a target for those within the Republican Party base that believe former President Donald Trump did not actually lose reelection in 2020 despite no evidence to support the belief.

Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ad campaign threatens to unseat Robin Vos unless Wolfe is impeached