After our reporting, The Heartland Post, as well as the Hispanic News Network, exposed Diego A. Rodriguez as a registered child sex offender embedded in Wisconsin Democratic politics; the paper trail got worse. It wasn’t only a campaign manager’s job and a party title; he’d also donated to candidates.
Wisconsin Ethics Commission filings list Diego Rodriguez on 86 campaign transactions. On May 28, 2026, one of those checks went to Clancy for Assembly, the campaign of Milwaukee socialist Rep. Ryan Clancy, for $100.
Clancy was one of six Assembly Democrats who voted no on Assembly Bill 677, the bill that created a felony crime of grooming a child for sexual activity. The measure passed 93-6 on Jan. 13, 2026, and became law. The other no votes came from Reps. Francesca Hong, Angelito Tenorio, Christian Phelps, Angelina Cruz, and Darrin Madison. Republicans and most Democrats voted yes.
That is the pairing the party would rather not explain. A man on the sex offender registry until June 3, 2040, wrote a check to a lawmaker who refused to make grooming a standalone felony.
Rodriguez pleaded guilty in Waukesha County in 2015 to using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime. Three misdemeanor counts of sexual intercourse with a child 16 or older were dismissed under a plea deal but read into the record. In April 2016, he was sentenced to five years in prison and five years of extended supervision. He has been on Wisconsin’s sex offender registry since January 2016. Heartland Post reporting, following Hispanic News Network, laid out the rest: he was a church youth leader in Racine when he used Grindr to pursue teenage boys, had sexual contact with a 16-year-old, and was arrested in a sting after arranging to meet a detective posing as a 15-year-old.
He got out. Then the Democratic Party put him back to work.
Until this week, he was campaign manager and political consultant for Milwaukee Rep. Priscilla Prado and vice chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s Latino Caucus. He canvassed for Ismael Luna in the 8th Assembly District and was photographed working for gubernatorial nominee David Crowley on primary night. Prado fired him after the reporting. The state party dumped the caucus title. Neither explained how a 25-year registrant cleared their vetting.
The donation file shows Rodriguez gave to Ismael Luna for Assembly ($100 on June 14 and $150 on May 19), Friends of Lawanda Chambers ($100), Friends of David Liners ($50), Karen for Assembly ($35), Friends of Amy Zimmerman ($50), Dina Nina For Wisconsin ($56), Kevin Reilly for Assembly, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin ($25), and repeated small contributions to the Milwaukee County and Waukesha County Democratic parties.
Rep. Amanda Nedweski authored Assembly Bill 677 to criminalize sexual grooming of a child after the Kenosha case of teacher Christian Enwright, who could be charged only with misdemeanors despite a long pattern of sexually inappropriate contact with a 14-year-old student. The bill defined grooming as a course of conduct intended to condition, seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child for sexual exploitation and made it a Class G felony, with higher penalties when the offender holds a position of trust. Voters can decide why a convicted computer-facilitated child-sex offender is in their donor records.
Prado, to her credit, voted yes on AB 677 on the floor. Then she hired the registrant to run her re-election but claimed it was a vetting failure on her part. Now other candidates like Robyn Vining have to rethink their praise of a pedophile.
Wisconsin Democrats spent Tuesday claiming they acted the moment they knew. Yet they still took his money, and he was still on various payrolls, running for office, chairing a party caucus, while on the registry. One of those donations landed with the socialist who voted against calling grooming a crime.
