Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance-Republican Party Connections

An investigation by One Wisconsin Now reveals that the board of directors and the key staff of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WISTAX) have connections to the Republican Party, while having virtually no connections to any other political party.

One Wisconsin Now conducted extensive biographical research on the board of directors and key staff that have served with WISTAX since 2000. The scope of the investigation was narrowed to individuals that have served with WISTAX within the last ten years, given the limited publicly available, reliable resources on which this analysis relies.

Analysis by One Wisconsin Now shows consistent and undeniable connections between the board of directors of WISTAX and the Republican Party.

One Wisconsin Now also conducted extensive political contribution research and analysis on each of members of the board of directors that have served with WISTAX since 1994. While the purview of the biographical investigation was limited by access to publicly available, reliable resources, the scope of the investigation into political contributions stretches back over fifteen years owing to public records archived by the Federal Elections Commission, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Analysis by One Wisconsin Now shows that by virtually every measure, WISTAX board members contribute overwhelmingly to Republican and conservative candidates and organizations.

Todd A. Berry
President, WISTAX
Berry was a longtime member of the now-defunct New Republican Conference, a group of fiscally conservative but self-described “social liberals” that included former Republican Governor Scott McCallum and former Republican State Senator Mary Panzer. Berry was the assistant secretary of the Department of Revenue under former Republican Governor Lee Dreyfus. He served on the Executive Committee of the Jefferson County Republican Party from 1985 to 1993, leaving his official position with the GOP just before becoming president of WISTAX. His wife, Margaret Lewis, was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly as a Republican and served from 1985 to 1989. She was the chair of the Jefferson County Republican Committee from 1991 to 1993.

Carol Ward Knox
Chair, WISTAX
Knox has served in various roles for a number of Republican candidates including campaign treasurer for Assistant District Attorney Peter Tempelis, campaign manager for Attorney General Don Hanaway and press secretary for U.S. Rep. Robert Kasten. She was appointed to the Wisconsin Agricultural Board by Republican Governor Lee Dreyfus in 1981 and served until 1993. Her husband, Randall, was elected to the Wisconsin Assembly as a Republican and served from 1979 to 1981. He was vice-chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin for 16 years and served as the Chair of the Jefferson County Republican Party. Knox household campaign contributions are exclusively Republican and conservative and total more than $150,000. (David Ward, brother to Carol and another former Jefferson County Republican Party chair, served as a Republican member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from 1993 to 2007.)

Mark D. Bugher
Director, WISTAX
Bugher has served in several capacities under Republicans: he was district director for Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Gunderson in the 1980s and he was appointed by Republican Governor Tommy Thompson to Secretary of the Department of Revenue from 1988 to 1996 and Secretary of the Department of Administration from 1996 to 1999.

Mark A. Cullen
Director, WISTAX
Cullen is the current Finance Chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Cullen household campaign contributions to Republican and non-conservative campaigns total $154,865 -- including $35,000 to the Republican Party of Wisconsin and the Republican National Committee. Republican and conservative contributions comprise 98 percent of his overall giving.

Randall J. Radtke
Primary speaker, School Lecture Service, WISTAX
Radtke is a former Jefferson County Republican Party chair (as late as 1994) elected to the State Assembly from 1979 to 1993. He has served as a Republican Assembly Campaign Committee chair and Assistant Assembly Minority Leader. (David Ward won Radtkeʼs Assembly seat after he decided to not seek re-election in 1992.)

Jo Egelhoff
Former Development Director, WISTAX
Egelhoff is a member of the Executive Committee of the Outagamie Republican Party and a failed 2008 Republican candidate for the Wisconsin State Assembly. She claims to have conducted “extensive work on policy issues in her time with the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.”¹ Fellow Outagamie Republican Party member and former Wisconsin Treasury Secretary Jack Voight endorsed Egelhoff, writing “Egelhoff will represent us with an agenda of less government spending and taxation” and touted her record as “three-year director of education and development at Wisconsin Taxpayer's Alliance.”² She maintains a conservative blog and website at FoxPolitics.net.

Robert J. O'Toole
Former Director, WISTAX
OʼToole is one of the five directors of WISTAX—including Fitzsimonds, Kuester, Orr, and Zore—since 2000 that has also served on the board of directors of both WMC and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI). His prominent role in Republican politics is revealed in an article from the Capital Times:

Just how important [2000ʼs] legislative races are to WMC was spelled out in a Sept. 11 fund-raising letter written by A.O. Smith Corp. Chairman Robert O'Toole, fund-raising chairman of the Issues Mobilization Council, WMC's fund-raising arm.

''Big questions confront us,'' he wrote. “Will the Assembly remain in the hands of a business friendly (Republican) majority? Will the Senate expand its (Democratic) majority allied with big unions and trial lawyers? Will the business community be able to keep our issues -- lower taxes, workplace safety, tort reform, regulation relief, etc., on the front burner at the Capitol?

“ʻWill Wisconsin taxes remain in the top 10 in the nation? Will we stand up for business issues today, or ask ourselves in the next legislative session, ʻWhy is this happening to business?ʼ” ³

John B. Torinus, Jr.
Former Director, WISTAX
Torinus served as a press aide to future Republican U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and was a Congressional fellow with Republican Vice President Richard Cheney in 1968.

From the West Bend Daily News:

There's at least one county resident who couldn't be happier with Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush's selection for a running mate... John Torinus, chief executive officer, chairman of the board and owner of West Bend's Serigraph Inc., came to know Dick Cheney in the late 1960s and the two became friends. Torinus actually wishes things were reversed. “Let me just put it this way. I wish he were the guy running for president.”⁴

San W. Orr
Former Director, WISTAX
Orr is a prominent Republican operative and fundraiser. Notably, he was on the steering committee of conservative Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice Patrick Crooks, a fundraiser for the campaigns of former Republican Governor Tommy Thompson and John McCain for President (2008), and the State Finance Chair for the Bush-Cheney ʻ04 ticket. Overall, Orrʼs $391,000 in political contributions have gone almost entirely to Republicans and conservatives (99.7 percent), in addition to $72,000 going to Club for Growth, a conservative group that recruits right wing candidates to challenge moderate Republicans in GOP primaries. Orr is on the board of directors of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation—the stateʼs largest private foundation that funds numerous conservative organizations, including WPRI, of which Orr was also a director.

Dennis J. Kuester
Former Director, WISTAX
Kuester household political contributions total more than $100,000 to Republican and conservative candidates and frequently go to the Republican Party of Wisconsin and national Republican Party entities. Kuester is another WISTAX board member who also sat on the boards of the Bradley Foundation and WPRI. (His daughter, Kerri, chaired the Wisconsin Republican Young Professionals and was part of the Wisconsin Republican Party delegation in 2004. His son, Jonathan, contributed $10,000 to Republican Scott Walkerʼs 2010 gubernatorial campaign -- the maximum amount an individual can make to a gubernatorial candidate. This contribution is not included in the analysis below.)

Political Contributions

Analysis by One Wisconsin Now shows that by every measure, WISTAX board members contribute overwhelmingly more to Republican and conservative candidates and organizations than to any other party or ideological group.

Members of the board of directors were broken down into three basic sets: all board members that have served since 1994, current board members, and the board membership of a given year. The 33 individuals that have comprised the WISTAX board of directors since 1994 have collectively contributed $1,290,302 to Republican and non-partisan conservative campaigns and $101,600 to Democratic and liberal non-partisan campaigns. Republican and conservative contributions account for 92.7 percent of all contributions, while Democratic and liberal contributions account for just 7.3 percent. Twenty-three board members have made over 80 percent of their contributions to Republicans and conservatives. Only five have made more than 50 percent to Democrats and liberals.

The current WISTAX board of directors has contributed $357,988 to Republican and conservative campaigns and just $27,775 to Democratic and liberal campaigns. Republican and conservative contributions account for 92.8 percent of all current board contributions, while Democratic and liberal contributions account for just 7.2 percent.

Analyses of political contributions made by the board of directors in each given year show similar trends. Looking at all contributions made by the board of directors membership of a given year, Republicans and conservatives account for over 90 percent of dollars given by the board each year since 1994. Excluding contributions that would not have been given yet by the board membership of a given year, Republicans and conservatives still accounted for over 80 percent of dollars contributed in each year since 1994.

The assertion that the WISTAX board gives heavily to Democratic Governor Jim Doyle appears less persuading when contributions to Gov. Doyle’s two prior gubernatorial opponents--Scott McCallum and Mark Green--and Wisconsinʼs former Republican governor, Tommy Thompson are considered. In the 2002 race, over 90 percent of WISTAX board contributions went to McCallum and just 10 percent to Doyle; in the 2006 race 80 percent of WISTAX board contributions went to Green and 20 percent went to Doyle. WISTAX board contributions to Thompson over ten years as a gubernatorial candidate and governor totaled nearly $97,000, while contributions to Doyle over the same amount of time as a candidate and governor totaled $31,000. By virtually every measure, the WISTAX board contributes more to the Republican.

* Data include contributions from board members and board members’ spouses. Analysis of partisan contributions excludes three contributions totaling $1,450 to two independent candidates, which accounts for less than one-third of one-percent of all other contributions.

PDF version of this WISTAX Watch report

Endnotes

¹ J.E. Espino. “Egelhoff captures GOP nomination.” Appleton Post-Crescent. September 10, 2008.

² Jack Voight. Letter to the Editor. Appleton Post-Crescent. October 10, 2008.

³ David Callender. “Corporate Wisconsin Sets Election Push.” Capital Times. October 17, 2000.

⁴ West Bend Daily News. July 26, 2000.