Democrat State Rep. Priscilla Prado and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin severed ties Tuesday with a registered child sex offender who had been working as Prado’s campaign manager and serving as a party Latino Caucus co-chair, after The Heartland Post discovered chilling new details about his crimes as well as his close ties to Wisconsin Democrats.
The Hispanic News Network first reported Monday that Diego A. Rodriguez, 32, pleaded guilty in Waukesha County in 2015 to a felony count of using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime. Under a plea agreement, three misdemeanor counts of sexual intercourse with a child age 16 or older were dismissed but read into the record at sentencing. He was sentenced to 10 years, split between five years in prison and five years of extended supervision.
He is no longer on supervision but remains on Wisconsin’s sex offender registry through June 3, 2040.
Within minutes Tuesday afternoon of The Heartland Post following up on Hispanic News Network’s initial report and discovering new details about just how deep Rodriguez’s Democrat ties were as well as “The Dan O’Donnell Show” amplifying these findings on radio, Prado and the Democratic Party were forced to cut ties with him.
Rodriguez was 20 years old and working as a church youth leader in Racine in 2015 when he met a 16-year-old boy on the dating app Grindr and had sexual contact with him at both his home and in an alley near a Target store in Waukesha after learning the boy’s age. Waukesha Police arrested him in a sting operation later that year when Rodriguez planned a sexual encounter with a detective posing as a 15-year-old boy.
Rodriguez is a highly connected Democrat who served as Prado’s campaign manager and political consultant in the 9th Assembly District and had canvassed for Democratic nominee Ismael Luna in the neighboring 8th District. He also served as Vice Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s Latino Caucus.
After the Heartland Post exposed the party’s deep connection with Rodriguez, who was on video canvassing for gubernatorial nominee David Crowley the day Crowley won the Democratic primary and was photographed at his victory party that night, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel it had cut ties with Rodriguez.
Democratic Party officials declined to comment any further. Prado, however, released a brief statement.
“The conduct of this individual is completely unacceptable and once this information came to light, I made the immediate decision to terminate him from my campaign,” she said.
“Going forward, I plan to employ a more thorough vetting process and assure my constituents that my focus continues to be on serving the people of the 9th Assembly District and the City of Milwaukee.”
Luna also released a statement cutting ties with Rodriguez and indicating that he himself was a sexual abuse survivor and as such “I would never minimize the harm experienced by survivors.”
It is unclear if Rodriguez remains employed by the far-left Justice Forward Coalition, a group that advocates for former prison inmates.
