It’s Official: $5 Million Gay Marriage Ban Ballot Battle Most Expensive Ever
Madison - Final financial filings for the groups leading the fight to pass or defeat last November’s referendum to add an amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions to the state’s constitution are in - and it appears to have been the most expensive referendum campaign in Wisconsin history. Fair Wisconsin and Vote Yes For Marriage spent just under $5 million on the ballot issue.
  The largest single donation to either side in the campaign came to ban supporters from the Coalition for America's Families, a Middleton-based  group run by former state Republican party chairman Steve King. The CFAF, which claims to be “a diverse coalition of concerned citizens, businesses, non-profit organizations and other stakeholders,” consistently supports state GOP positions. CFAF delivered its contribution - the largest  ever in a state referendum - to Vote Yes immediately following the final reporting deadline prior to the November 7 ballot, possibly to obscure the partisan motives that had been behind the marriage ballot since its inception.
  “Vote Yes” chair Julaine Appling tried to down play the “hidden” GOP backers’ boost in an interview with Jason Stein of the Wisconsin Journal published February 2. "Funny things happen in campaigns,” Appling said. “You know, in every campaign I know of there are a lot of things that happened at the end. The fact that we got that donation at the end enabled us to do a TV (ad). It was a great boost.” However, Appling failed to explain how she knew she would be able to pay for the ad buys that were made statewide prior to the receipt of the donation.
  Acting Fair Wisconsin Director Josh Freker also down played the late contribution. Freker told the Wisconsin Journal that he doubted the late money to “Vote Yes” was crucial to the campaign because “most voters had a default position favoring the amendment.”
  Fair Wisconsin’s largest contribution appears to have come from Kalamazoo, MI architect Jon Stryker, and was reported prior to the vote. Significant support also came from Milwaukee philanthropist Lynde B. Uihlein, who donated $250,000. Among the celebrities donating to the Fair Wisconsin campaign were Elton John, former Ambassador James Hormel and MoveOn’s billionaire funder George Soros.
  Notable among national and state organizations offering Fair Wisconsin major support were the Wisconsin Education Association Council ($175,000), the Human Rights Campaign ($220,520 including in-kind donations of campaign staff), People For The American Way ($70,000). A $36,000 post-election contribution from the Tammy Baldwin For Congress campaign also appears to have helped balance the “no” campaign’s books.
 Fair Wisconsin ultimately poured $4.3 million into the ballot campaign, dwarfing Vote Yes’ $635,000 spending. Fair Wisconsin ended up spending $5 per vote for the 862,924 “no” tallies in its 59-41% loss, exactly ten times the amount spent by Vote Yes to generate its 1,264,310 votes.
  However, the reported “Vote Yes” money did not include “educational outreach” on the marriage issue by amendment supporters. “Vote Yes” director Appling told the Wisconsin Journal that some of the spending on efforts around the amendment by related groups “was not disclosed to state officials because it didn't involve directly advocating a ‘yes’ vote.”  Among those populating such  “related groups” were every priest in the Roman Catholic diocese required to play without comment Bishop Robert Morlino’s taped comment supporting the amendment at Sunday Masses just prior to the November 7 vote.
  Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, said $5 million was an immense amount to spend on the campaign. “It's pretty safe to say that this was one the likes of which we've never seen before,” McCabe said