By Milwaukee Courier Staff
Reporting continues to emerge showing deep financial ties between Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Dan Kelly’s and extreme right-wing special interest groups that have long advanced Republican causes in court.
Kelly already had long-established ties to the far-right fringe through his legal work for the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a right-wing special interest group that has been aggressive in bringing lawsuits on behalf of large corporations and wealthy people. In his time on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 2016 through 2018, Kelly ruled repeatedly in favor of these same special interest groups.
But as the Wisconsin Examiner first reported last week, financial disclosure records filed by Kelly reveal that since leaving the Supreme Court in 2020, Dan Kelly has worked almost exclusively for the Republican Party and far-right special interest groups.
Kelly was paid nearly $120,000 from the state Republican Party and Republican National Committee for work on so-called “election integrity issues,” which included advising the GOP on their efforts to thwart democracy and overturn the results of the 2020 election by appointing fake presidential electors.
Kelly’s other clients included the Bradley Foundation, a right-wing nonprofit group which in turn funds the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
Among Kelly’s other clients was the Liberty Justice Center, an Illinois-based right-wing special interest group. Notably, the Liberty Justice Center has done legal work on behalf of Fair Courts America, a super PAC funded almost exclusively by billionaire GOP donor Dick Uihlein, which is now propping up Kelly’s campaign with millions of dollars in independent expenditures.
Dan Kelly’s deep ties to right-wing special interests presents a clear choice in Wisconsin’s April 4 Supreme Court election.
