Programming note: John Pudner is the national guest of Fox News Radio on Wednesday (April 10) from 6 am to 10 am CT.
CORRECTION: Leaving Mass of the Annual Feast of the Annunciation Monday, I said hello to a former conservative elected official who asked how I thought US Senate Candidate Kyle Corrigan was doing since I had referenced him in my Sunday email. The only problem I realized is I had actually typed the name of the speaker before Corrigan, "Alex Dallman," who is still running for his Assembly seat. The former elected official had read past my typo because he knew who I was talking about when I referenced the 6-foot-6 US Senate candidate who like me has investigated ActBlue.
Many of you have told me after I flip names in conversation, "That's ok John, we knew who you were REALLY talking about and didn't want to stop you," but sorry this typo went out. So for the purposes of correcting that error:
WI Rep. Alex Dallman is not running for US Senate, he is still running for the Assembly seat after the nasty gerrymandering from the other side - and you can find his info here. My first reference to him in yesterday's email was correct, I just typed his name again when transitioning to noting Corrigan's speech.
Kyle Corrigan is the speaker I was referencing who announced he is running for US Senate here.
I have modified yesterday's email below and apologize to both, but am glad that while we do not endorse candidates as a 501c4, we only have nice things to say about both:
Modified and Corrected Sunday email sent at 10 am ET Sunday:
First a programming note - in four hours (3 pm ET, 2 pm CT) turn on ABC to watch Caitlin Clark’s last college basketball game featuring her Iowa team that I recently ranked 17th best (but facing 6th best South Carolina) of my all-time teams in this blog, The photo above of Chloe Marotta is from my related CBS 247Sports story.
I told everyone that all the men’s and women’s Final Four games would be blowouts EXCEPT Clark’s Iowa vs UConn Friday, and that is what happened with Iowa surviving by a point while setting the new viewership record of 14 million viewers just a few days after setting the record with 12 million viewers. And yes, the final foul call was absolutely correct even though I was rooting for the UConn women.
But onto the more important news …
After a great week that included meetings with conservative leaders open to hearing my explanation of why Final 5 and some limits on political money make sense - with the backdrop of the annual Home Educators convention in the Dells - I was on Wisconsin Public Radio and then gave a speech at a packed Lincoln Day meeting that is more notable for someone else’s speech.
Saturday I appreciated GOP Chair Tom Wastart telling a packed VFW of Republicans from the three counties of Marquette, Green Lake and Waupaca that my speech would be one of the two most important they would hear Saturday - but it was actually an earlier speech from a US Senate candidate that caught my attention.
Other speakers included Congressman Glenn Grothman, Representative Alex Dallman, conservative podcast host Ed Delgado and Jefferson Davis, who runs the Election Integrity for Wisconsin Ad-Hoc Committee.
However, the bigger-than-life presentation was by US Senate candidate Kyle Corrigan, who like me played a good bit of basketball and would have had a few inches height on me at taller than 6-foot-6, has lost more weight than me in shedding an incredible 250 pounds the last few years, and dedicated an incredible amount of time to researching concerns about ActBlue.
While my team oversaw the initial research unveiled by Fox News in 2020 showing that almost half of ActBlue donors were listed as unemployed, it was Corrigan the investigator who visited many homes of donors and concluded that many claimed they had not given hundreds of donations via ActBlue that show up on finance reports.
Any critic who claims that anyone who supports ANY limits on money in politics is not really conservative will have a hard time explaining the time Corrigan and I have put into researching ActBlue and concluding this was some kind of long game to secretly help Democrats. And don't get me wrong, I will always encourage people to play by the rules as they exist until they are changed - but we just aren't winning a bidding war with Soros.
However, until Saturday I never expected any of Corrigan's views to line-up with any left-of-center reformers, and yet toward the end of his speech going through how reforms needed to be implemented, he threw a curve ball.
He told the audience the big mistake conservatives made in recent years was the decision to take all limits off campaign donations (yes, Citizens United which I wrote against as well).
I also had the former head of one of the top few conservative organizations who always defended Citizens United admit to me last year that I had been the only one who saw the problems coming from Citizens United years before anyone else on the right. In the Hill I wrote, I'm a conservative against Citizens United.
This is not a quasi-endorsement of Corrigan over Eric Hovde, who I’ve considered a friend in recent years and was the only person I ever met with who immediately understood what I was telling him about ActBlue in our first meeting years ago because he had bought Chinese banks and in reviewing their books saw exactly how it could be done.
However, if Kyle Corrigan is going to finish visiting the homes of ActBlue donors and then tell a group that Citizens United is a problem - then conservatives need to take that argument seriously. While he never mentioned Final Five, I also believe conservatives need to look at reforms like Final Five based on the merits of the process - not dismiss it because someone on the left backs it.