Taylor outspends Lazar 15-1 in court race

Liberal Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor and those backing her have outspent conservative rival Maria Lazar and her allies 15-to-1 on ads and turnout efforts as of Wednesday, according to a WisPolitics review.

Taylor is the biggest spender at nearly $3.3 million on ads, according to AdImpact. Adding in independent expenditure reports filed with the state, she and her allies have dropped more than $5.6 million on the race.

Lazar, meanwhile, has received little help from outside groups so far. In addition to the $312,000 in spots tracked by AdImpact, Restoration of America PAC has reported a $40,000 digital buy on her behalf, and the Dane County GOP told WisPolitics it spent $22,000 on a radio and digital buy supporting her for $373,775 in outlays so far.

Those totals don’t include what the Taylor and Lazar campaigns have spent beyond ads; both campaigns face a deadline Monday to detail their spending ahead of the April 7 election.

The combined spending of nearly $6 million is well off the pace of $115 million that WisPolitics tracked in the 2025 campaign. That total doesn’t include the $27 million that one of Elon Musk’s PACs spent on “petition incentives” as it offered Wisconsin voters $100 to register their opposition to judicial activists and share their contact information. That was seen as an effort to identify conservative voters to target for turnout efforts in the Supreme Court race.

WisPolitics compiled the totals using data from AdImpact, filings with the state Ethics Commission detailing independent expenditures and commitments from other groups in the race.

The latest filings include another $109,375 to A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund’s buy backing Taylor. That spending pushed the group’s investment in the race to $348,264.

Separately, AdImpact has tracked about $1.1 million in digital ads from A Better Wisconsin Together Inc., the group’s issue advocacy arm. The combined effort makes it the biggest outside spender in the race.

A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund last week shared with WisPolitics several digital spots, including one in which the narrator says when Donald Trump “attacks our rights, Chris Taylor stands up for Wisconsin families.”