The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has been taking in tens of millions of dollars from out-of-state billionaires like George Soros and Reid Hoffman. The Heartland Post’s Alyssa Whitmore examines how they built their money machine.
With just one day until Wisconsin voters head to the polls on April 7, new campaign finance records reveal how out-of-state billionaire mega donors are flooding the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) with massive, unlimited checks; money that is being used to fuel liberal judicial candidates like Chris Taylor in the high-stakes Supreme Court contest against conservative Court of Appeals Judge Maria Lazar.
Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist, stands as the single largest donor to the DPW, pouring in $15.4 million directly to the state party since 2019. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker ranks second, with roughly $5.9 million in cumulative contributions through early 2026. Together, the two have funneled more than $21 million into Democratic operations here.
Hoffman and Pritzker write big checks directly to the DPW, which then allocates the cash for candidate support, television and digital advertising blitzes, get-out-the-vote operations, and down-ballot efforts. Wisconsin’s 2015 campaign finance law passed by Republican legislators and signed by then-Gov. Scott Walker created this “billionaire loophole” by eliminating caps on donations to political parties. Democrats are now exploiting the very rules Republicans helped write.
In the 2026 Supreme Court race, the pattern is unmistakable. The DPW has used megadonor cash to back liberal efforts in recent cycles, including the 2023 and 2025 races that helped flip the court leftward. This year’s contest pits conservative Maria Lazar against liberal Chris Taylor. While the race is officially nonpartisan, the partisan machine on the left is pouring resources into boosting Taylor’s candidacy. Resources made possible, in part, by the unlimited party conduit funded by Hoffman and Pritzker.
Public records show no direct contributions from these billionaires to individual candidates like Taylor. However, the DPW decides how the money is spent, such as high-profile judicial race candidates and other down-ballot races appearing April 7th.
The Epstein connection adds another layer of controversy. Hoffman’s name appears thousands of times across the massive tranches of Jeffrey Epstein files released by the Department of Justice and other authorities, including a major 2025–2026 document dump. Hoffman has expressed “regret” for the association and has not been charged with any crime, but Republicans have called on the DPW to return his money, arguing it taints the entire donation operation.
Democrats defend the donations as legal and transparent, but the numbers tell a different story: In 2024 alone, the DPW raised nearly $57 million compared to roughly $29 million for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, a massive advantage driven by these out-of-state checks. Hoffman alone gave more than $7.5 million in some cycle reporting, with additional hundreds of thousands tied to Supreme Court races.
Critics, including the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, have described the current system as a “glorified money-laundering operation” enabled by the post-McCutcheon deregulation. While Republicans benefit from large in-state donors such as Diane Hendricks, the scale of Hoffman and Pritzker’s out-of-state intervention in a deep purple battleground state like Wisconsin raises serious questions about who is really calling the shots.
This flood of unlimited party money became possible because of a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling and subsequent changes to Wisconsin law. In McCutcheon v. FEC (April 2, 2014), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal aggregate contribution limits in a 5-4 decision citing First Amendment violations.
Prior to the ruling, individuals were faced with an overall cap (around $123,200 per two-year cycle) on how much they could give in total to all federal candidates, parties, and PACs combined, even if they stayed under the “base limits” for each recipient.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that these aggregate caps unconstitutionally restricted citizens’ First Amendment rights to political speech and association. The Court held that the limits did little to prevent actual quid pro quo corruption while severely limiting donors’ ability to support multiple candidates and causes. Base limits on direct gifts to individual candidates remained intact, but the overall ceiling was removed.
Wisconsin Republicans moved quickly to align state law with the McCutcheon decision. On December 16, 2015, the GOP-controlled Legislature passed (and then-Gov. Scott Walker signed) the 2015 Wisconsin Act 117. The law eliminated Wisconsin’s previous $10,000 annual aggregate cap on an individual’s total political donations. It removed limits on contributions to political parties and legislative campaign committees, doubled some candidate limits, and allowed unlimited transfers from parties to candidates. The changes also permitted greater coordination between parties and candidates.
Republicans at the time framed the bill as a necessary update to bring state rules in line with recent Supreme Court precedents, including Citizens United (2010). Critics now call the result a “billionaire loophole” that lets mega donors effectively pour unlimited money into races through the party conduit.
Democrats are currently exploiting the very system Republicans helped create, using it to gain a massive fundraising advantage particularly in Wisconsin’s high profile contested races. Judge Maria Lazar has campaigned as an independent, impartial jurist focused on following the law and the Constitution, not partisan agendas. Her opponent, Chris Taylor, carries the liberal banner in a race that, while not flipping the current 4-3 liberal majority, would further entrench left-wing control if she prevails.
Wisconsin voters have a clear choice Tuesday, April 7: should the state’s highest court be influenced by wealthy donors from California and Illinois–one of whom is significantly referenced in the Epstein files, while the other is reportedly connected through family ties–or should it be led by a conservative Wisconsin judge dedicated to fairness and the rule of law?
