Some Germantown area residents have been receiving eye-catching political mailers urging them to reelect incumbent Eric Brown to the local school board.
One problem – Brown isn’t actually running for reelection.
“DON’T MINNESOTA MY WISCONSIN!” reads the mailer, which features an angry-looking woman wearing a Statue of Liberty T-shirt and denim jacket. She appears to be yelling and pointing her finger next to the warning, “GET OUT AND VOTE! OR THE LIBERAL ACTIVISTS WILL!”
Underneath idyllic rolling green farm fields and a classic red barn with a silo, it reads, “RE-ELECT CONSERVATIVE ERIC BROWN.” The mailers say they were paid for by the 1776 Project PAC, a conservative Virginia-based political action committee heavily funded by another group, Restoration PAC. Restoration is largely funded by Republican mega-donor Richard Uihlein, who owns packaging giant Uline with his wife, Elizabeth.
But Brown filed paperwork in December notifying the Germantown School Board that he didn’t plan to seek reelection.
When asked about the mailers, Brown said someone brought them to his attention “just the other night.”
“It is my understanding groups have a right to support any candidate of their choice,” Brown wrote in a March 20 email to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “That said, you are correct, they may have wanted to check the December filings just as you had.”
When asked by the Journal Sentinel about the mailers, Ryan Girdusky, founder of the 1776 Project PAC, said the group had supported Brown in the past and “there was an internal mistake.”
“We’re suspending all future expenditures for him, and we’ll make sure that it’s remedied on our behalf” to no longer campaign for Brown, Girdusky said.
Molly Bussie, one of the candidates for Seat No. 5, which Brown currently holds, said she received the same mailer.
“This is a nonpartisan race and a nonpartisan role, which is something that I take very seriously. I believe this race should remain focused on our kids, our schools and the future of the district,” she said in an email to a reporter. “Voters deserve accurate information and a thoughtful, local conversation about how to best serve Germantown.”
Richard Yu, the other challenger running for Seat No. 5, also said school boards are nonpartisan positions.
“If it isn’t an error, then it’s unfortunate that outside organizations are deliberately politicizing the school board, creating misinformation and stirring controversy to our people,” he said in an email to a reporter. “The Germantown Community is unified and we won’t fall prey to the attempts to divide and pit us against each other.”
Anne Utech, who’s running for Seat No. 3 this April against that seat’s incumbent, Kimberly Higgenbotham, said she learned about the mailers from someone in her neighborhood who received one and asked her if she knew anything about it.
“He’s not running for re-election, so it’s only going to create voter confusion at the polls if somebody is advocating for this specific candidate to be elected and he’s not even on the ballot,” she said in a phone interview.
However, Utech said her biggest concern is that school board seats are nonpartisan positions, saying it’s supposed to be about the schools, students and making the district better.
“I just don’t appreciate the idea that a mailer like this would cause voters to view the school board as a partisan position because it’s supposed to be about the schools, about our students and about making the district better,” she said.
“Politics – while they are prevalent across all society – aren’t supposed to have a position in the school board. So it’s just concerning that a PAC is going to be dipping their toes in the water, so to speak, and creating confusion among voters in that respect.”
Identical mailers from the 1776 Project PAC have been arriving in other Wisconsin communities, urging residents to vote for conservative candidates who actually are running in their local school board races.
The 1776 Project PAC was launched in 2021 to support candidates who vow to overturn any teaching of critical race theory or use of the 1619 Project, a New York Times Magazine piece with curriculum by the Pulitzer Center about the history of slavery.
The mention of Minnesota likely refers to the winter upheaval in our neighboring state due to a surge in immigration enforcement there by federal authorities that came against the backdrop of a fraud scandal involving federal child care funding.
Two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis as large groups of protesters pushed back against the “Operation Metro Surge” immigration crackdown.
Peter Christianson, a retired lawyer who received one of Brown mailers, raised questions about the donors paying for them and what their motivations are.
“I just think this is a good illustration of what’s wrong with our campaign finance system, that here you’ve got some outfit based in Virginia trying to tell people in a local school district in Wisconsin what to do,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mailer in Germantown school election has one big problem
Reporting by Mary Spicuzza and Alec Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
