Wisconsin Gov Primary—Mandela Barnes Took $250,000-plus from Israel Lobby in 2022

Mandela Barnes accepted $251,415 from the Israel Lobby
as the 2022 Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Senate.
Barnes is a candidate for the 2026 Democratic Party
nomination for governor. Election Day is Aug 11.
Barnes' 2022 campaign gifts are tracked by Open Secrets.

Israel Lobby Gifted Barnes Campaign in 2022 Senate Run, Will Doom Electability as Pro-Genocide Blood Money Shows Character Problem

Commentary

Madison, Wisconsin—The campaign for the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin governor is off and running.

Mandela Barnes, whose supporters are dropping dishonest 'electabililty-concern' social media posts about Barnes' opponents, has taken to dead silence when asked about his accepting $251,415 from the Israel Lobby as 2022 Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Senate, (see Open Secrets).

During the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes was gifted substantial pro-Israel money from Zionist donors and conduits.

Barnes explicitly declared in 2022, "It's important that Israel remains a strong ally and a strong partner in the Middle East," in June 2022, just before absentee voting began, as reported in Jewish Insider as Barnes sought to highlight his pro-Zionist commitment.

Barnes told the Jewish Democratic Council of America forum in June 2022 that he opposes the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) that seeks to highlight and stop Israeli human rights atrocities, (Washington Free Beacon).

The Mandela Barnes campaign is a top U.S. Senate candidate recipient of pro-Israel money during the 2022 federal elections.

Barnes has paid lip service to Wisconsin's peace movement, but has run from associations with anti-Genocide groups, (Washington Free Beacon).

But Israel-committed Genocide, Israel-sanctioned rape, torture and massacres of children play less well among the Democrat-voting electorate in 2026, and appears to be determinative in Michigan primaries to be held in early August, signaling a similar campaign dynamic in Wisconsin.

Top candidates for the 2026 Democratic Party nominee for Wisconsin governor include: Mandela Barnes, Francesca Hong, Sara Rodriguez, David Crowley, Kelda Roys and Missy Hughes. See analyses at Bill McCoshen in Dairyland Sentinel.

Barnes campaign was contacted by email asking: 

What is your comment on accepting $251,415 from the Israel Lobby as 2022 Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Senate?

Do you renounce this blood money?

As of Saturday, no comment from Barnes has been received.

Absentee voting for the Wisconsin Aug 11 elections begins June 26.

Memorial Day Weekend—2026

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Fitchburg, Wisconsin—Memorial Day weekend begins today and we honor the fallen, the families, and make sense of sacrifice by keeping faith with revolutionary spirit.

This Summer we mark our 250th anniversary as a country and a promise of eternal hostility toward oppression.

We betray the fallen if we fail to speak out against the demonic beasts among us.

Our country is betraying the service of all by becoming a vassal state of Israel.

Our government has become Israel-first, fighting wars and draining our common treasure for the focus of evil in the world.

Today, right here, now, we must resist the enemies and traitors is our midst.

Israel must die, so humanity can live.

Democrats Need to Learn How to Speak about Liberty

Commentary

Fitchburg, Wisconsin—Wrote a piece eight years ago on voting rights work by city of Madison, Wisconsin, (In These Times).

Imagine a municipality affirmatively advancing the personal liberty of voting, a fundamental Constitutional right. That's what Madison, and other Wisconsin municipalities did.

But I had trouble getting a decent quote from Madison, and had to settle for Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl's statement. "Our goal is for each eligible voter to be able to cast a ballot and have that ballot counted."

Witzel-Behl's statement is bureaucratic, almost defensive, and neither mentions or shows explicit reverence to people's personal liberty to vote. Typical Democrat. No values, no understanding of what voting means as a liberty.

Liberty is ours, and Democrats don't get that.

That's because Witzel-Behl and virtually every Wisconsin Democrat in office do not believe in our foundational liberty of voting in Wisconsin, under Article III, Suffrage, Wisconsin Constitution. Democrats are little more than victims from multi-front attacks on cherished liberties. 

And federally, with a few exceptions, national Democrats are not much better. See Democracy Docket for an example of how to talk about and litigate liberty.

If Democrats want to establish a political culture defending and advocating for Constitutionally guaranteed liberties such as voting rights, they have failed—a dangerous defect when judicial supremacy reigns under a Republican judicial assault against liberty led by Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Civil Rights Movement

Memphis, Tennessee, USA, Civil Rights Marchers with 
"I Am A Man" Signs, 1968—Image Bettmann/CORBIS
Zinn Education Project

The 1950s-60s-70s succeeded culturally, legislatively and in federal court because grassroots Americans and citizen groups presented clear, moral and constitutionally grounded arguments for liberty, equality and the promise of America.

No DEI, no politically correct, scolding semantics, no identity-politics polemics that today seeks to foist and instruct a flight from reason onto the grassroots whose duty is perceived as mindless compliance.

Voting is your liberty, voting is your right. Anybody tries to stop you has to answer to us. That' needs to be the political message. This commitment and political statement is something we rarely get from Democrats.

The current assault on voting ofcourse is a long project of Republicans.

Wisconsin 2008 Voter Obstruction Effort

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and the Republican Party leveled their guns to obstruct voting rights on Wisconsin in 2008, lest too many of the wrong type of voters showed up for Obama.

Trump is attempting to replicate what Van Hollen wanted.

See Van Hollen's and the GOP 2008 efforts at voter suppression in which Van Hollen's ridiculous effort was tossed out of court.

In the 2008 case, (J B Van Hollen vs. Government Accountability Board (GAB) et al) Van Hollen tried to create a new Wisconsin constitutional qualification to vote by fiat: A perfect match of spelling of voters' names in state bureaucracies, after first secretly assuring fellow Republicans he would commence this frivolous legal action at the 2008 Republican National Convention held in Minneapolis, as first reported by WisPolitics in a scoop that includes audio.

Several former judges serving on the state Elections Board would have failed Van Hollen's new constitutional standard proposed in 2008, as this GOP effort drew wide ridicule and defeat in court.

"Nothing in state or federal law requires that there be a data match as a prerequisite for a citizen's right to vote," Judge Maryann Sumi said in dismissing Van Hollen's lawsuit that tried to use the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) as a voter suppression tool.

Today, Trump is attempting his similar anti-voting project by trying to nationalize state-administered elections. Trump is trying to create federal bureaucratic lists of state voters, and appointing his administration as the sole deciders who determine who gets to vote, based on bureaucratic and documentary exact matches of voters' names with mandated new documentation.

Elected Democrats need to comprehend and explain what Trump and Republicans are up to: Creation of anti-voting federal bureaucracies, unconstitutional bureaucracies, and simply speak out in clear terms: Don't fuck with voters.

I have my doubts Democrats' are equipped to stand with voters.

Wisconsin Gov. Evers' Political Grift on Commutations Aped by Media

Commentary

"I hate injustice. I guess that's about the only thing I really do hate."
Ben Shahn, anti-fascist artist, (1898–1969). 

Madison, Wisconsin — It's Easter 2026 and Gov. Tony Evers (D-Wisconsin) days earlier emitted typically deceitful posturing on executive clemency under the Wisconsin Constitution—pardons, (grants of forgiveness restoring civil rights); sentence commutations (roughly, shortening a sentence), and reprieves.

Last week, Evers penned two new April 2026 executive orders pertaining to Wisconsin commutations: Gov. Evers Executive Order #287: Relating to the Creation of the Governor's Commutation Advisory Board; April 3, 2026;   Gov. Evers Executive Order #288: Relating to the Creation of a Juvenile Life Sentence Commutation Process — April 3, 2026, some nine months after Evers' second term expires.

Evers' executive orders are misleading, as what passes for Wisconsin press misreports the legal power of executive orders and advisory boards (no legal power) vis a vis executive clemency in Wisconsin. 

This matters because wrongfully convicted in Wisconsin's corrupt criminal justice system—from Steven Avery, Penny Brummer to Brendan Dassey—are studiously avoided and deflected away by Tony Evers who infamously (at least among some circles) denied Dassey's 2019 pardon petition, falsely claiming an advisory board prohibited Evers from granting a pardon or commutation.

Commutations are only now available and restored after 25 years of not being available, falsely reports Evers' personal scribe, Frank Zefall in the Wisconsin Examiner, See, "Gov. Evers announces commutations will be available in Wisconsin."

My god, what is wrong with Zefall? Do he not research his topic?

Commutations have never in Wisconsin history been unavailable, there is no need to restore commutations as executive clemency which includes commutations remains an unchanged and exclusive Constitutional power of the Wisconsin governor. 

See, for example, Donald Leo Bach's work in the Wisconsin Lawyer, or better yet, read Article V, Section 6 of the Wisconsin Constitution.

Facts and Analysis on Commutation

Evers' predecessor, Gov. Scott Walker, refused to use his power of executive clemency and granted zero criminal sentence commutations, zero pardons and reprieves, in accordance with Walker's political commitments and wishes.

Gov. Tony Evers uses his power of executive clemency, but has granted zero sentence commutations, in accordance with Evers' political commitments protecting a corrupt criminal justice system, and blocking out even comment on wrongful convictions, much less commutations and pardons. 

Wisconsin Democrats do love their corrupt criminal justice system.

Advisory boards do not change Wisconsin governors' Constitutional power, but as in Evers' administration, advisory boards can serve as shields to protect political acts of cowardice and dishonesty on the part of the governor.

Evers has pardoned only those who have served full sentences-plus five years.

On commutations, Evers is aligned with Scott Walker, as both Walker and Evers granted zero commutations. 

Zero commutations differentiates Evers and Walker from Govs. Dreyfus, Earl and Thompson who together commuted 46 sentences between 1979-2001. 

I will never fathom the mania behind Wisconsin Democrats like Evers to posture and mislead.

Why did Evers set up his pardon regime in which applicants must wait years after serving a sentence, while simultaneously also refusing commutations?

Evers is offering political protection to the criminal justice system and law enforcement as he accepts as fact the system's findings, convictions and criminal sentencing. Evers effectively covers up for criminal justice system misconduct.

This, even as he attempts to accrue the political benefits of compassion that attend to an altogether weak and passive pardon and commutation regime that again has no force in law.

Not once has Evers called into question dishonest cops, crooked prosecutors, or intellectually dishonest judges.

Evers could stand up against small-town injustice, police corruption and the likes of Ken Kratz, the disgraced and manifestly unreliable prosecutor of wrongfully convicted Brendan Dassey and Steven Avery, of Making a Murderer, (Netflix, Inc), as well as myriad other cases of injustice.

Tony Evers owes no more fealty to the Wisconsin Judiciary and the criminal justice system than he does to the findings and integrity of the state legislature. 

Again, commutation and pardon advisory boards and guidelines have no more force in law than if Evers consulted Tarot cards or astrology. It's just cover. 

And it takes an obvious misstatement of fact about the governors' unchallenged executive clemency power to cover up Evers' cowardice.

Evers is offering political protection to the criminal justice system as he implicitly accepts as fact the system's findings, convictions and criminal sentencing choosing finality over truth. 

As a member of Brendan Dassey's post-conviction defense team, former U.S. Solicitor General, Seth Waxman, said in Oct 2019 in Madison, "I have never had a case that has troubled me more than this case, that has kept me awake at night, that makes me anxious and sad. And that's because I know that Brendan Dassey is innocent."

Tony Evers does not care, and he lies and misleads to hide this fact.