Out-of-state mega-donors are bankrolling the Left’s takeover of the high court.
The Left’s nominee for Wisconsin Supreme Court is bankrolled by wealthy donors from California, New York, and Illinois tied to radical “green” and dark money groups, including the founder of ActBlue.
While the race is officially non-partisan, filings report $2.4 million in contributions to Susan Crawford, a liberal judge who defended Planned Parenthood, from out-of-state donors who have funded numerous far-left groups. They also reveal payments to controversial consultants involved in conspiracy theorist Stacey Abrams and her failed 2018 campaign for Georgia governor.
G Strategies—a Democratic consultancy paid nearly $49,000by liberal Justice Jill Karofsky for aiding her 2020 state Supreme Court race—previously advised Abrams’ New Georgia Project to “register hundreds of thousands of new [Democratic] voters.” G Strategies principal Patrick Guarasci was Abrams’ national fundraiser for her 2018 gubernatorial campaign.
Last week, New Georgia Project was fined $300,000 for illegally supporting Abrams’ campaign with $4.2 million undisclosed contributions totaling 16 violations of Georgia state law, including the failure to register as a political committee and file necessary disclosure reports. The group admits it broke the law. Recall that the New Georgia Project came under fire in 2023 after allegations of financial abuse and unethical salary advances against its former executive director, Nsé Ufot.
Another Crawford vendor, Path to Victory, helped fundraise for abortion rights ballot initiatives in Ohio and Montana, the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and the campaigns of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices Jill Karofsky and Janet Protasiewicz—whose election reversed the court’s conservative majority in 2023.
Yet another Crawford consultancy is run by an ex-lobbyist for the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin, Scott Spector, who later headed a partisan group that “recruit[s]. train[s], elect[s], and develop[s] Progressive leaders” for office. Spector—a native New Yorker now living in Madison—also ran Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s 2016 reelection campaign, and the Baldwin campaign paid his firm over $309,000 during her 2024 reelection.
Donor Class
Campaign finance reports have shone a light on Crawford’s major donors, including $1 million—nearly half of her total receipts thus far—from the Wisconsin Democratic Party, 22% of whose gross receipts last year came from California donors.
That’s nearly twice as much as the Wisconsin Democratic Party raised from Wisconsin donors: $19.3 million vs. $10.9 million. In 2024 alone, the state party raised nearly 30% of its total funds—and over 56% for state-level races—from California and Illinois donors, money that now bankrolls the Crawford campaign.
One key Crawford donor, Stacy Schusterman, is a major funder of Democrat groups—contributing $11 million since 2012—owing to the oil fortune earned by her father Charles Schusterman, an Oklahoma entrepreneur who invested in oil fields in Russia, Venezuela, and Canada. The family sold his company, Samson Resources, in 2011 for $7.2 billion, yet reportedly still owns some oil and natural gas assets.
The Schusterman Family Foundation is one of the largest funder of left-wing causes in the nation, bankrolling advocacy groups to “repair the harm caused by a legal system built on [America’s] structural racism,” ensure “transgender and gender-expansive people have freedom and control over their bodies,” and embed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion(DEI) policies in schools.
Stacy and her mother, Lynn, both gifted $20,000 to Crawford’s campaign.
Benjamin Rahn, who gave $10,000 to Crawford, is a California Big Tech executive who’s poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Democrat get-out-the-vote groups as well as the Wisconsin Democratic Party—itself Crawford’s top donor at $1 million contributed thus far.
Rahn, who supported the corrupt Black Lives Matter movement and discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, has blasted Republicans as “corrupt, science-hating, senior-endangering, racist fools” and the GOP as a “threat to democracy.” He also advocated for criminalizing anyone who refused to wear a mask indoors during the COVID pandemic.
But Rahn is most (in)famous for founding the multi-billion-dollar Democrat pass-through group ActBlue in 2004, which fundraised nearly $4 billion for Democrats in 2023–24 alone.
ActBlue is currently under investigation by Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil (R) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R) for potentially funneling Chinese, Russian, or Iranian money into U.S. elections. That follows on a related investigation launched in Oct. 2024 by 19 state attorneys general into ActBlue’s “smurfing” allegations—illegally repackaging bigger contributions to tens of thousands of smaller contributions from individuals who don’t give their consent or permission.
A recent Restoration News analysis of campaign finance records revealed that a high concentration of “smurfs” could potentially swing competitive races—like those in Wisconsinand Pennsylvania last year—towards the Democrat.
(RELATED: Gavin Newsom Puts ActBlue Fundraising Ahead of Wildfire Victims)
Federal contributions from Benjamin Rahn. Source: FEC
Public records also show the Crawford campaign has engaged a left-wing consultancy founded by former ActBlue director Jonathan Zucker, Democracy Engine, which processes credit card donations for Democratic groups.
Matthew and Natalie Bernstein—Georgia donors who gave Crawford $25,000 between them—have routed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrat PACs including the Harris and Biden Victory Funds, Hold the House Victory Fund, and Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund. In 2020, Natalie Bernstein gifted $100,000 to the pro-gun control Brady PAC, its second-largest contributor that year.
The Bernsteins earmarked $25,000 to the partisan group Power the Vote in 2024, which boasts it “ran the Democratic Party’s Voter Protection Program in Georgia” in 2020, “when the state flipped blue for the first time in nearly 30 years.” It’s run by Georgia Democrats, including a former SPLC litigator. In October, Power the Vote’s co-founder was interviewed on the “Freedom Over Fascism” podcast run by Stephanie Wilson, a Democrat political consultant who discusses the “nature of MAGA’s threat to freedom, find[s] avenues to help fight for democracy, and use[s] winning, tested messaging” to elect Democrats.
Weston Milliken, another Crawford donor, is a California donor with close ties to the Left’s premier strategy hub for wealthy elites, the Democracy Alliance, where he serves on the board. The alliance is an “exclusive collective” of millionaires and billionaires who gather each year to coordinate their political spending on “progressive” groups and Democrat races.
Ning Mosberger-Tang, who gave Crawford’s campaign $20,000, is the founder and president of 1.5° Climate Strategies Group, which helps donors funnel grants to radical eco-activists who aim “to keep global warming under 1.5°C” by pushing unreliable energy sources like wind and solar and abolishing “fossil fuels” altogether.
The firm’s membership includes the National Education Association, the extremist anti-energy group 350.org, DNC Climate Council chairman, and the president of the Democracy Alliance.
One notable member is Adam McKay, a documentary filmmaker who’s funded extremist climate groups such as the U.K.-based group Just Stop Oil—whose protesters threw soup on a priceless Van Gogh painting in 2022 and again in Sept. 2024, causing tens of thousands of dollars of damage. Like its name implies, Just Stop Oil demands an immediate abolition of oil and gas and their apocalyptic, total phaseout across Europe in 5 years.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court election happens April 1, 2025, pitting Susan Crawford against former Attorney General Brad Schimel.
League executive director Debra Cronmiller argued that although obtaining a state voting ID doesn’t require a fee, the process of getting one requires people go to the DMV, thereby allegedly creating a barrier to vote. That same logic demands universal vote-by-mail and automatic voter registration, which the league argues Republicans should pass instead if they’re interested in electoral reform. Wisconsin voters should vote on April 1 to enshrine their voter ID law into their state’s constitution to protect it from judicial usurpation. This would protect their state from potential fraud and give voters peace of mind that their elections are secure.