Avalanche of big money headed Feingold's way in Senate rematch
WASHINGTON — Democrat Russ Feingold kicked off his Senate campaign Thursday by taking aim at the big money in politics. There's every sign, however, that big money plans to take aim at him.
Within hours of Feingold's video announcement, The Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that worked to successfully defeat Feingold in 2010, pledged to do so again in 2016 using even more firepower.
The Wisconsin Senate battle "will be a marquee race for us," David McIntosh, the Club's president, told USA TODAY. He called Feingold a "hard-left" Democrat with views that are now "too extreme" for the state.
Ian Prior, a spokesman with GOP-aligned American Crossroads super PAC, said the group's leaders "look forward to making sure Wisconsinites remember exactly why they replaced" Feingold. He did not disclose a budget for the race, but the group, affiliated with Republican strategist Karl Rove, spent more than $31 million in last year's elections.
Feingold, arguably best known in Washington for helping to craft a sweeping 2002 campaign-finance overhaul, is trying to reclaim his old Senate seat in a new era of unlimited campaign spending. Driven by court decisions that have eased contribution limits, independent spending in midterm congressional elections topped $787 million last year, more than double the $310.8 million in 2010, the year Feingold lost.
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In that election, Feingold resisted outside help and lost by nearly 5 points.
"Across Wisconsin, people tell me all the time: Our politics in Washington are broken, and multi-millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations are calling all the shots," Feingold said in an email to supporters Thursday.
"Wisconsinites are tired of it," he said, "but no one says they want to throw in the towel. And I don't either."
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quickly made it clear Thursday it has no intention of sitting on the sidelines in what promises to be one of the most important Senate battles of 2016.
"We're 100% behind Russ, and we're going to do whatever it takes to help him win," committee spokesman Justin Barasky told USA TODAY.
"It could be entirely out of his control," said David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said of any Feingold effort to rein in the money in the contest. "He can't legally keep people from spending on his behalf."
The Wisconsin contest is crucial to Democrats' hope of retaking the U.S. Senate in 2016, and immediately became one of the most competitive of the election cycle with Feingold's entry. A leading independent handicapper, The Cook Political Report, shifted the contest into the "toss up" category Thursday.
Canon and Feingold's allies say there are strong signs for the former three-term senator in his rematch with first-term Sen. Ron Johnson, including an April poll by Marquette University that showed Feingold up 16 percentage points over Johnson.
While Wisconsin voters have installed Republican Gov. Scott Walker as the state's chief executive, the state has backed Democratic presidential candidates since 1988. Democratic turnout for the 2016 White House battle could boost Feingold.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which raised nearly $1.2 million for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's 2012 election, quickly encouraged its 1 million members to back Feingold.
"It's not just the super PAC era," said the group's co-founder Adam Green told USA TODAY. "It's the economic populist's era."
"It's a perfect moment for someone like Russ Feingold to run," Green said, citing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's increasingly populist stances on the campaign trail and Senate Democrats' resistance this week to President Obama's trade agenda.
In tweet a Thursday morning, Warren herself declared that she was "happy, excited, thrilled & all-around ecstatic" about Feingold's Senate bid.
Feingold's campaign aides did not immediately respond to interview requests, but there are some signs of financial help: As of 5 p.m. Thursday, Feingold had collected more than $263,000 online through ActBlue, which funnels contributions to liberal candidates.
Contributing: Susan Davis