In May, Nation­al Review report­ed that Charles and David Koch, the bil­lion­aires famous for fund­ing right-wing politi­cians and caus­es, were rethink­ing their spend­ing. Dis­ap­point­ed with the pay­offs, irked by Don­ald Trump and con­cerned about the pub­lic-rela­tions hits they’d tak­en, the broth­ers decid­ed to reduce their spend­ing on fed­er­al elections.

"The Wisconsin scandal might signal a coming deluge of corruption in state and local politics—or a moment when the tide began turning against it.

One upshot has been more Koch mon­ey going to state polit­i­cal cam­paigns, which get lit­tle nation­al media scruti­ny but have out­sized impact. ​“For a rel­a­tive pit­tance — less than $100,000 — cor­po­ra­tions and oth­ers can use dark mon­ey to shape the out­come of a low-lev­el race in which they have a direct stake,” as the authors of a recent essay in The New York Times wrote. ​“Dark mon­ey” refers to con­tri­bu­tions to non­prof­it ​“social wel­fare” advo­ca­cy groups rather than polit­i­cal cam­paigns. State laws vary, but in Wis­con­sin, such con­tri­bu­tions can remain anonymous.

The authors of the essay, Chisun Lee and Lawrence Nor­den of the Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice, note that the lev­el of dark mon­ey in pol­i­tics has spiked over the past decade. A Bren­nan Cen­ter project that tracked polit­i­cal spend­ing in six states found that, ​“on aver­age, 38 times more dark mon­ey was spent in these states in 2014 than in 2006.”

We rarely see how dark mon­ey shapes our pol­i­tics, since it works behind the scenes and out of sight. But an extra­or­di­nary spec­ta­cle that has played out in Wis­con­sin over the past few years offers a dis­turb­ing glimpse.

Scott Walk­er, the state’s gov­er­nor, has pur­sued an aggres­sive­ly right-wing agen­da that has been fund­ed, in large part, by dark mon­ey. We know this by way of an inves­ti­ga­tion into Walker’s fundrais­ing — a ​“John Doe” probe, mean­ing that it was con­duct­ed out­side of the pub­lic spot­light, with the court records remain­ing sealed, which Wis­con­sin law pro­vides for in some circumstances.

In 2015, the Wis­con­sin Supreme Court halt­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion. Pros­e­cu­tors had been piec­ing togeth­er a case against Walk­er, argu­ing that his ties to con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal groups broke cam­paign-finance laws. The court, with a right-wing major­i­ty, vot­ed 4 – 2 to shut it down because, it said, Walker’s coor­di­na­tion with the groups was ​“issues advo­ca­cy” rather than polit­i­cal cam­paign­ing. The for­mer is per­mit­ted under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v. FEC rul­ing. The lat­ter isn’t.

In mid-Sep­tem­ber, The Guardian pub­lished leaked files from the halt­ed inves­ti­ga­tion, which revealed that ​“issues advo­ca­cy” in Wis­con­sin is just anoth­er name for polit­i­cal cam­paign­ing. As The Guardian not­ed, ​“the files open a win­dow on a world that is very rarely glimpsed by the pub­lic, in which mil­lions of dol­lars are secret­ly donat­ed by major cor­po­ra­tions and super-wealthy indi­vid­u­als to third-par­ty groups in an attempt to sway elections.”

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the Wis­con­sin Supreme Court’s 2015 rul­ing that shut down the Walk­er inves­ti­ga­tion. That closed the court­room phase of the scan­dal. Now it moves to the court of pub­lic opin­ion, where Walk­er will like­ly fare less well. As the Bren­nan Cen­ter authors note in their New York Times piece: Polling last year ​“showed three-quar­ters of self-iden­ti­fied Repub­li­cans and an equal per­cent­age of Democ­rats sup­port­ed more dis­clo­sure by out­side spenders.”

Giv­en the recent, big-donor shift toward state-lev­el pol­i­tics — and Wisconsin’s cen­tral­i­ty to broad­er polit­i­cal con­tests over unions, high­er edu­ca­tion and much more — it’s worth div­ing into the Walk­er scan­dal, which has been big news in Wis­con­sin but has got­ten too lit­tle nation­al attention.

Laments about Cit­i­zens Unit­ed often focus on its influ­ence on pres­i­den­tial and Con­gres­sion­al races. But Wis­con­sin is a cau­tion­ary tale: The per­ni­cious effects are tak­ing deep root and fos­ter­ing cul­tures of cor­rup­tion at all lev­els of government.

The play­ers and payoffs

After push­ing through a law that weak­ened pub­lic-sec­tor unions in 2011, Walk­er need­ed allies on the state’s Supreme Court. Its jus­tices are cho­sen through elections.

The Wis­con­sin Club for Growth (WCFG) is a tax-exempt ​“social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tion, and it was the pri­ma­ry tool that Walk­er used to make sure he had allies in the state leg­is­la­ture and on the Supreme Court.

Walk­er raised mon­ey from wealthy donors, but rather than writ­ing checks to Walker’s cam­paign, which were sub­ject to spend­ing lim­its, the donors often gave to the WCFG, which then cre­at­ed ads that sup­port­ed the cam­paigns of Walker’s polit­i­cal allies. It also chan­neled mon­ey to oth­er non­prof­its that did the same.

In 2011, the Wis­con­sin Supreme Court elec­tion became a proxy bat­tle over Walk­er, with David Pross­er, a right-wing judge, fac­ing JoAnne Klop­pen­burg, a can­di­date friend­ly to unions.

Wis­con­sin Club for Growth spent more than $400,000 sup­port­ing Pross­er, who even­tu­al­ly won the race by a few thou­sand votes. In an email to GOP oper­a­tive Karl Rove, Walk­er explained that the group’s help had been crit­i­cal to push­ing through his agen­da in Wis­con­sin. Specif­i­cal­ly, it was ​“key to retain­ing Jus­tice Prosser.”

WCFG spent about $9 mil­lion the fol­low­ing year, dur­ing Walker’s recall race, on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. A Walk­er aide coor­di­nat­ed the work of the Walk­er team with the WCFG and oth­er right-wing groups in the Pross­er and Walk­er recall races, and in sev­er­al oth­er races for the state leg­is­la­ture in 2012.

As the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy (CMD) not­ed, ​“Gov­er­nor Walk­er and his cam­paign staff coor­di­nat­ed on more than $30 mil­lion in express advo­ca­cy expen­di­tures — from solic­it­ing huge cor­po­rate and per­son­al checks down to where and when polit­i­cal ads would be placed.”

The stakes

For all its twists and turns, the mon­ey trail in this scan­dal is easy to fol­low. Walk­er raised funds from wealthy donors, who gave anony­mous­ly to an ​“advo­ca­cy group” that is a well-known Walk­er ally, which spent the mon­ey on ads to help elect politi­cians and jus­tices who helped Walk­er push through con­ser­v­a­tive poli­cies, which in turn ben­e­fit­ed those donors.

One con­crete exam­ple: The doc­u­ments leaked to The Guardian showed that the own­er of a lead man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny gave a total of $750,000 to WCFG between April 2011 and Jan­u­ary 2012. Around the same time, the GOP-con­trolled state leg­is­la­ture passed laws that shield­ed lead man­u­fac­tur­ers, retroac­tive­ly, from lia­bil­i­ty for their product.

There’s noth­ing sub­tle about the quid pro quo, in oth­er words. It’s a straight­for­ward case of buy­ing pow­er, ​“jus­tice” and politicians.

And it’s all legal, accord­ing to the Wis­con­sin Supreme Court.

In 2010, when U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy wrote the majority’s opin­ion in the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed case, he argued that the trans­paren­cy made pos­si­ble by dig­i­tal cul­ture can­cels out the threat posed by cash flood­ing into the polit­i­cal sys­tem. If the peo­ple know which cor­po­ra­tions and peo­ple give mon­ey, after all, they will judge the argu­ments accordingly.

Kennedy’s ratio­nale, utopi­an at best, dis­solves in the heat of actu­al polit­i­cal bat­tle. The Wis­con­sin case points toward a real­i­ty in which there is no bar­ri­er between advo­ca­cy groups and polit­i­cal cam­paigns — that is, between anony­mous donors and elect­ed leaders.

The stakes are high. The essen­tial ques­tion is: How much pow­er and influ­ence will dark mon­ey buy? The Wis­con­sin scan­dal might sig­nal a com­ing del­uge of cor­rup­tion in state and local pol­i­tics — or a moment when the tide began turn­ing against it. Either out­come seems pos­si­ble. Only one is com­pat­i­ble with democracy.