State Sen. Kelda Roys is making the case that she is best positioned to unify the Democratic Party after the discovery of financial reporting errors upended Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez’s campaign on Sunday.
Roys has been polling significantly behind Rodriguez and the race’s other two front-runnners, state Rep. Francesca Hong and former Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes.
But on July 12, Rodriguez announced the firing of her campaign manager after discovering her campaign was hundreds of thousands of dollars short of the fundraising numbers she had previously reported. A Journal Sentinel analysis found that her campaign manager had a history of financial problems.
“I do think that the dynamics have shifted markedly in this race,” Roys said. “We’ve always known that this was going to be a very late breaking primary.”
At a campaign stop on Wednesday, Roys made the case that she is best positioned to appeal to Democrats across the spectrum, as well as disaffected Trump voters. But she said her campaign had not been in direct conversation with former candidates David Crowley and Missy Hughes, both of whom dropped out of the race and endorsed Rodriguez.
The race, Roys said, is still “completely wide open and up in the air.”
Asked about her July campaign finance numbers, Roys admitted that her two ad buys had reduced her war chest, but promised that her numbers would be accurate.
“I can assure you that the numbers that I put out in my campaign finance report and file with the state will be accurate and that voters can trust the numbers that I put in,” Roys said.
Roys declined to call for Rodriguez to drop out, but said the reporting errors in Rodriguez’ financial filings had been obvious to her in January.
“I can tell you that when I looked at those finance reports in January, it didn’t take me but five minutes to immediately say, ‘Hey, there’s something wrong here. There’s so many duplicates. What’s going on?'” Roys said.
Roys said that she found it hard to imagine being in Rodriguez’s position and not knowing about the reporting errors.
“I cannot imagine having no financial procedures in place where you could end up with such a massive discrepancy and not be looking at the bank balance and reconciling that with the numbers that you’re getting,” Roys said. “It is simply unimaginable that you would have no idea that you were basically inflating your fundraising numbers in representations that were being made to donors.”
A Rodriguez campaign official told the Journal Sentinel that Rodriguez had “almost weekly meetings with the manager to receive an update on the campaign’s finances.”
The official said based on Rodriguez’s “perception of fundraising and campaign expenses,” she believed the campaign was financially sound.
Because they had worked together for several years, Rodriguez said during a July 13 news conference, she had “full trust” in her campaign manager to handle the finance reports.
Roys tours health center, touts her ‘Keldacare’ proposal
Roys spoke to the media after touring the Outreach Community Health Center on Milwaukee’s north side on July 15. She called for the state to expand its healthcare plan for state employees like herself. She wants the state to open its healthcare plan to all employers and residents at cost, a proposal she dubbed “Keldacare.”
As she campaigns across the state, Roys said she has been hearing from Wisconsities concerned about rising healthcare costs. An expanded state program would reduce the costs to providers of caring for patients without insurance, lowering premiums and helping struggling healthcare providers stay afloat, she argued.
On July 14, Roys’ campaign released a TV ad for the Milwaukee media market focused on healthcare.
“We are making those investments because we believe that this is the moment when people are going to start paying attention,” Roys said.
In the ad, Roys accuses Republicans of cutting critical healthcare programs that saved lives. “It’s like they’re trying to kill us,” she says.
A Twitter account associated with presumptive Republican nominee Tom Tiffany’s campaign criticized the ad shortly after it was released, accusing Roys of “escalating the rhetoric.”
Asked to respond, Roys told voters to “look at the data.” She pointed to lives that she argues would have been saved if the state had expanded Badger Care and the deaths of women denied abortion care after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
“There is a very, very real cost, not just financial, but human, when we deny people access to healthcare,” Roys said.
Roys said she had heard the rhetoric of “it’s almost like they’re trying to kill us” from patients and doctors across Wisconsin.
Roys said her healthcare plan and her plan to boost public education by ending the state’s school voucher program set her apart from her fellow Democrats. She also pointed to her experience in the state Legislature.
“I’m also the candidate that has a more than two decades-long track record of actually passing laws in the toughest of political environments, and really delivering progressive change for people,” Roys said.
Roys said Barnes had a significant advantage in name recognition from his failed Senate run, but that her polling shows Democrats want a different standard bearer in November.
“We need a candidate at the top of the ticket who will not only beat Tom Tiffany, but help us deliver a Democratic Assembly and Senate. And most importantly, we need somebody who’s actually capable of doing the job of governing,” Roys said.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Roys makes her case after reporting errors upend Rodriguez campaign
Reporting by Zachary Suri, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Zachary Suri, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
