National Democrats and their allied dark-money organizations have spent more than $5 million targeting the Republican Steil for defeat. Steil, of Janesville, represents Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District and is facing Democrat Mitchell Berman this November. The district covers Racine and Kenosha counties and parts of Walworth, Rock and Milwaukee counties — from Janesville to Kenosha, up to Franklin and over to Mukwonago.
The Democrats’ latest attempt to take out Congressman Steil started back in 2025. Opportunity Wisconsin, a Democrat dark-money front, spent nearly $1.7 million attacking Steil since last year, including a $613,000 media buy launched this March (AdImpact data from Wispolitics).
The Washington Examiner reported earlier this year that Opportunity Wisconsin operates as an alias for The North Fund. The Examiner calls The North Fund “a Washington-based Democratic-aligned dark-money nonprofit with tens of millions of dollars in assets from undisclosed donors.” Opportunity Wisconsin, by operating under the North Fund and not as its own entity, “makes it impossible to track who is funding the group and its expensive ad buys.”
The North Fund was previously part of a network of nonprofit organizations linked to the now-defunct consulting firm Arabella Advisors. After Arabella Advisors folded, a public benefit corporation called Sunflower Services took over much of its operations, primarily providing “back office services,” according to a spokesperson.
The Washington Examiner
Arabella’s nonprofit organizations had attracted criticism over the years for operating what some deemed as “front” groups, organizations that claimed to represent people from a given location or identity group when, in reality, they were just a new name slapped on an established dark money group.
This massive surge in outside political spending coincides with Steil’s work as chairman of the House Administration Committee to stop the illegal fundraising racket Democrats have used in recent elections and his work to end corruption in Congress.
Steil’s Stop Insider Trading Act passed the House in July on a bipartisan 232-198 vote. The legislation would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from purchasing individual stocks and would require advance public notice of sales. It failed to advance in the Senate on Sept. 30 after a 53-47 cloture vote in which every Democrat voted against it. Steil argues that members of Congress should not personally profit from nonpublic information available to them because of their official positions. Under previous Democratic House leadership, no comparable ban on congressional insider trading reached the floor for a vote.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is, of course, the nation’s most notorious insider trader. Her investing success was so shocking that a cottage industry has taken hold, tracking her trading and making her investment moves public for everyone to see through the X account, Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker.
Despite Steil’s unprecedented efforts to end this Congressional corruption, The Heartland Post has documented how Berman is lying to voters in the 1st Congressional District about his Stop Insider Trading Act.
As chairman of the House Administration Committee, Steil launched an investigation in 2023 that continues to this day into ActBlue, the Democrats’ online fundraising platform. ActBlue has given Democrats a critically valuable financial advantage in recent elections, but vulnerabilities in their system have raised questions about fraudulent and potentially foreign donations, which are illegal under U.S. law. Despite Steil and Republicans’ efforts to force changes to stop illegal campaign finance fraud, ActBlue has made excuses about its fraud-prevention safeguards and tried to evade congressional scrutiny. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones recently invoked the Fifth Amendment over 20 times in a hearing entitled “Preventing Fraudulent Donations” before Steil’s House Administration Committee.
Steil efforts to keep Foreign Governments and Special Interests out of our elections didn’t stop with his efforts to reform ActBlue. Steil also introduced the Preventing Foreign Interference in American Elections Act, which would close loopholes that allow foreign nationals to fund certain election-related activities through nonprofits, including voter registration drives, get-out-the-vote efforts, and election administration.
According to a recent report put out by the watchdog group Americans for Public Trust, $2.65 billion dollars of foreign money has flooded “into U.S. advocacy groups and supposed nonprofits that influence American politics and public policy” since 2020.
In addition to the $1.7 million that dark money group Opportunity Wisconsin has aimed at Steil, Democrat Berman and national Democrats have also committed another $3.4 million on campaign commercials down the stretch of the current election cycle.
The $3.4 million total includes $2.7 million from the House Majority PAC and an almost $300,000 joint buy by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Berman campaign.
Despite Berman’s misleading pledge that he does not take corporate donations, Berman’s partner in his campaign commercial buy, the DCCC, does take corporate donations. The Heartland Post documented Berman’s lies here.
The $5.1 million total in dark and national money targeted at Steil, of course, does not include potential illegal foreign donations because ActBlue does not prevent foreign donations, and many Democrat nonprofits in the U.S. are happy to take money from China, the Middle East, and other suspect sources but hide from Americans when foreigners are trying to influence our elections.
The Heartland Post will update this investigation as necessary.
