Coalition for America’s Families: $900,000, RPW Criticisms 0

MILWAUKEE — Less than a month after a blustery press release complaining about an advertising purchase by the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the Republican Party of Wisconsin is strangely silent now that the reliably inaccurate Coalition for American’s Families has reserved almost $900,000 for television ads on Eau Claire, La Crosse and Green Bay television.

“The Coalition for America’s Families has put down nearly $900,000 dollars to help Republicans,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. “Now, the same Republican Party of Wisconsin that thundered about ‘special interest spending’ has shut up faster than you can say ‘what a huge bunch of hypocrites.’”

So far, Coalition for America’s Families television spending intentions for this fall includes:

Eau Claire/La Crosse: $725,000
Green Bay: $150,000
Total: $875,000

Coalition for American’s Families is headed by Steve King, a former Republican Party Chair who served as a security man for Richard Nixon’s corrupt Committee to Reelect the President committee. He was indentified as manhandling Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell’s wife Martha in an effort to keep her from speaking to media about Watergate, according to Martha Mitchell’s biography.

The group was forced to change a sleazy and inaccurate advertisement against former Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler earlier this year. An independent watchdog organization, the Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee denounced a Coalition advertisement against Butler for making “false statements that add nothing to the understanding of the issues in the campaign.”

According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Coalition for America’s Families spent half a million dollars targeting Butler, the state’s first African-American Justice. In 2006, the Coalition spent over $1 million supporting the anti-gay constitutional amendment and assisting Republicans JB Van Hollen and Mark Green.

Controversial Sheboygan conservative sugar daddy Terry Kohler was named as giving the Coalition a “six-figure donation” for 2006. Kohler is notorious for his attacking Gov. Tony Earl for appointing “queers” to his administration and for saying it would be a mistake to give blacks the right to vote in South Africa.