MADISON, Wis. – Right-wing activist and state senate candidate Jim Croft attended an out-of-state political training program underwritten by billionaire donors and has gotten over 80% of his campaign cash from just one MAGA billionaire fueled Republican campaign committee.
Croft’s reliance on the ultra-wealthy and involvement with a candidate training program that pushes an extreme right-wing ideology raises serious questions about where his allegiance lies on critical issues for working people, middle class families, and seniors.
“Jim Croft has been trained at a MAGA billionaire funded academy and his campaign is almost entirely funded by billionaires and big money donors,” said A Better Wisconsin Together spokesperson Mike Browne. “There’s no reason to expect he’ll do anything other than the bidding of his benefactors, at the expense of working people.”
Croft is a 2023 graduate of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, a right-wing training academy funded by the likes of the Bradley Foundation and Donor’s Trust, a collaborative of wealthy right-wing funders. In a financial disclosure form he filed, Croft also reported his family received over $1,000 of income in 2025 from the program.
According to reporting on the Leadership Program of the Rockies:
“Every year, LPR enrolls about 65 students and promises “to develop, strengthen, train and equip these emerging leaders to reach new heights in public policy and the political process.”
Sample lessons include some standard libertarian interpretations of foundational documents, such as rejecting the premise “everyone has a right to adequate healthcare” in favor of “no one has a right to the fruits of another person’s labor.” Others include the jingoistic “some cultures are hostile to human life and happiness” as well as the eye-popping assertion that democracy is “mob rule.”
It’s not just the largesse of billionaires that funded Croft’s training, they’re also underwriting his state senate campaign. Recent campaign finance disclosures show that Croft received over 81 percent of his campaign cash from the billionaire-underwritten Committee to Elect a Republican Senate. A handful of wealthy individuals donating over $1,000 and right-wing legislators’ campaign committee contributions account for another 14 percent of Croft’s fundraising take.
