Leah Vukmir

Leah Vukmir, R-Brookfield, poses with businessmen in front of the luxurious department store Von Mauer at The Corners of Brookfield. 

Photo: Facebook

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Leah Vukmir (VOOK-meer) says she raised nearly $250,000 in the first three weeks after she officially got in the 2018 U.S. Senate race.

Vukmir is a far-right evangelical Christian with strong ties to dark-money groups. She’s running against Kevin Nicholson to secure a spot on the Republican ticket against incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin next year.

Nicholson has not yet reported his totals for the third quarter of this year, nor has Baldwin.

Vukmir, who sits on the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee, has deep-pocketed supporters who are helping her campaign by giving money to super PACs that don't have contribution limits candidates must abide by.

Last week, the Koch-brothers’ group Americans for Prosperity announced a $1.4 million television ad buy in Wisconsin targeting Baldwin.

The ads are slated to run for three weeks on cable and local networks. The ads urge Baldwin and the other Democratic incumbents to support the Republican-sponsored tax overhaul effort unveiled last week in Congress.

The ad accuses Baldwin of “standing in the way of a simple, fair tax system.”

Charges filed

The liberal group One Wisconsin Now has asked the Wisconsin Ethics Commission to investigate Vukmir for possible violations in raising campaign money.

OWN objects to Vukmir’s naming the chair of the scandal-plagued Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation to her Senate campaign finance committee.

“Leah Vukmir, with her position on the Joint Finance Committee and in the State Senate majority, has influence over the operations of WEDC and the ability to help or hurt the organization,” said OWN executive director Scot Ross. “Naming the head of the WEDC board, a state government entity she helps oversee, to the campaign finance team raising money to fuel her political ambitions isn’t just in bad taste, it may very well be in violation of the law.”

Anti-gay

Vukmir has a history of anti-gay rhetoric and collusion with Wisconsin Family Action, the state’s leading opponent of same-sex marriage and reproductive freedom.

In 2010, a year which saw a spate of headline-grabbing suicides by LGBT teens who’d been bullied, Vukmir conspired with WFA to derail the Legislature’s attempt to add anti-bullying language to a school security bill. Julaine Appling, who heads WFA, fiercely opposed the change, because it sought to protect all students from persecution, including LGBT students.

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