MADISON, Wis. — Right-wing Judge Maria Lazar’s bizarre campaign for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court continues with the filing of a campaign finance report detailing who she has raised money from and how she has spent it through December 31 2025. According to A Better Wisconsin Together Deputy Director Mike Browne, the report is rife with contradictions and conflicts undermining public statements from Lazar and her paid campaign consultants.
“Maria Lazar has established beyond any reasonable doubt she is willing to say one thing while doing another,” commented Browne. “Her latest claims about her campaign are completely contradicted by what her campaign has actually reported doing.”
For example, in addition to the irony of Lazar’s paid campaign consultant being quoted as saying theirs will not be a consultant driven campaign, over 73% of Lazar’s campaign expenditures to date have gone to pay political consulting firms.
And far from showing grassroots support, Lazar’s campaign war chest is being filled by wealthy donors, including a maximum individual contribution from Wisconsin’s wealthiest person, right-wing billionaire Diane Hendricks. In all, just nine large individual donors account for 60% of the funds raised by Lazar’s supreme court campaign through the end of 2025 and over 85% of her total take came from contributions of $1,000 or more.
Among the notable high-dollar donors supporting extremist Lazar’s campaign are:
- $20,000 maximum individual contribution from right-wing billionaire and Wisconsin’s richest person, Diane Hendricks;
- $20,000 maximum individual contribution from Tim Schmidt, a founder of a pro-concealed weapons group;
- $20,000 maximum individual contribution from insurance industry executive Gerald Couri;
- $10,000 from California banker and failed right-wing U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde;
- $10,000 each from right-wing Republican donors Terrence Wall, Fred Young, and Patrick English; and
- $1,000 from the leader of the right-wing mega funder Bradley Foundation, Richard Graber.
Lazar also snagged campaign cash from Billie Johnson, the plaintiff in a 2021 state legislative redistricting lawsuit. Johnson was represented by the aggressively right-wing litigation group the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL). The ruling in that case by the then-conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court locked in the egregious Republican gerrymander of the state Assembly and Senate first enacted in 2011, and defended in court by none other than Maria Lazar herself, among other attorneys for Republicans.
