Activists spent $1.3 million this year on failed recall efforts against Robin Vos

Conservative activists in southeastern Wisconsin spent more than $1 million on efforts to recall Assembly Speaker Robin Vos from office this year.

The great majority of the money came from a single donor in Arkansas and the bulk was spent paying people to collect recall signatures in the failed efforts. 

Campaign finance reports filed over a month late by the Recall Vos Committee, launched in January, and Racine Recall Committee, launched in May, show organizers raised just over $1.3 million dollars between January and July on both efforts. 

Nearly 90 percent of that total — all but $137,000 — came from a single donor from Little Rock, Arkansas, named John Bailey. The finance reports describe Bailey as a philanthropist and show he made a series of donations of between $60,000 and $250,000. All other contributors donated between $50 and $200. 

Organizers behind the recall campaigns spent just shy of $1.3 million, the bulk of which went to pay people collecting recall signatures in and around Vos’ Wisconsin Assembly District. Recall organizer Matt Snorek of Racine County received around $20,000 for collecting signatures. 

Reached by phone, Snorek suggested WPR send questions to the Racine Recall Committee’s email so the group and its attorney could respond. The email wasn’t immediately returned Friday afternoon. 

A spokesperson for Vos didn’t respond to WPR’s request for comment on the finance reports. Vos told WisPolitics the documents show “this wasn’t a grassroots, volunteer, local effort.”

“It was an out-of-state paid endeavor and in many ways, it looks like these people were making money off the effort,” Vos said.

Snorek and other recall supporters have said they’re angry with Vos for criticizing Republican former President Donald Trump and for blocking the impeachment of Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolf. They’ve also claimed that Vos is connected to a “Chinese Communist Party affiliated entity.” 

In the end, the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s bipartisan board ruled that organizers in both campaigns failed to collect enough valid signatures to trigger a recall election.

The Racine Committee sued over the latest rejection, but their case was dismissed by a Dane County Circuit Court judge in July. Organizers attempted to appeal the case directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but on Tuesday justices rejected the request.