River News: Our View

For those of you who belong to the Boomer generation, or maybe just a little younger, you probably remember Robert Palmer and his great song, “Simply Irresistible.”  One line from the chorus goes: “She’s so fine, there’s no tellin’ where the money went.”

In the music video, Palmer was surrounded by beautiful, seductive women, and, seeing that, one began to understand exactly where the money went. And it wasn’t into a savings account.

All of which brings us to Kirk Bangstad, the froggish owner of the Minocqua Brewing Company. The song certainly reminds us of the fake brewer and his lobotomized fan club, whose members give all their dollars to Bangstad’s super PAC, not that they ever remember to ask where the money went.

But the progressive coterie of zombies should care. They should care very much.

Don’t get us wrong. We don’t for a moment think that hordes of glamorous women are following Bangstad around and taking his money, as might have been the case with the impeccably presented Robert Palmer. For one thing, the Sydney Sweeneys of the world are over here on our side. For another, even if they weren’t, we couldn’t fathom a single seductress cooing after the beer-weighted Bangstad.

So we don’t know where the money is going, either, and by money we mean those super PAC dollars.

It turns out that, down around Madison of all places, a TV station has started asking many of the same questions. On Sept. 7, Channel 3000 ran an investigative piece about the Minocqua Brewing Company super PAC, and it didn’t pull any punches. 

Channel 3000 asked the right question right away: What is going on with Bangstad’s super PAC? Specifically, inquiring minds would like to know, after raising more than $2 million, according to the TV report, where’s the money going? Because from all appearances, it isn’t going to political causes.

Well, here’s one answer, as told by former employees at his Madison taproom, who spilled the beans to the Channel 3000 news team. Simply put, they said they were hired to run a bar, not to organize politically. Still, suddenly, they found themselves being paid by the Minocqua Brewing Company super PAC. 

One former employee provided a paycheck with “organizing” in the memo line, even though, by his own account, he never organized so much as a yard sign. So checks were marked “organizing,” though no organizing was done. One former employee reported that donations were placed in a drawer and then disappeared. 

Other ex-employees corroborated the story, and Bangstad, for his part, rationalized it, saying the bar staff doubled as political organizers, taking any donation that would walk through the door, so he split their paychecks between the taproom and the PAC. 

He said he needed to maintain a healthy labor-to-sales ratio. That’s one way to put it.

Translated: To keep his numbers “healthy,” Bangstad shifted costs onto donors who thought they were funding liberal causes. So, in the name of math, or science, or whatever they’re calling it these days, PAC money was siphoned off into bartender wages. That may help him cure his ledger, but it doesn’t live up to the spirit of campaign finance law. 

If all this doesn’t set off alarm bells, you’ve been drinking too much Bernie Brew.

Channel 3000 also interviewed Dan Weiner, an expert on super PACs and director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive group if ever there was one, and he acknowledged that there was a  loophole at the federal level whereby “at least some super PACs that essentially turn into scam PACs where they’re basically raising all this money from donors who think that they’re contributing for purposes of, you know, political advocacy. But then this, a lot of it gets funneled back into whoever is organizing the super PAC.”

Speaking of funneling, Channel 3000 recalled previous reporting by Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) that the Minocqua Brewing Company super PAC paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to two companies called Effervescent Blue and NCPS: “Business record searches found minimal public information about either company beyond post office box addresses.”

So, yeah, there’s no telling where the money went.

As we were watching all this unfold down in liberal TV land, we got a knock on the door from our memory banks.

Ah, yes, we too remember asking questions back in 2023 about what was really going on with the super PAC. As a refresher, Bangstad and his super PAC filed lawsuits against the Waukesha and Fall Creek school districts in 2021, something having to do with not imposing adequate Covid masking mitigation strategies, in other words, a lawsuit related to all the authoritarian nonsense Bangstad is so good at.

Well, Bangstad beat the drum and raised about $50,000, crowing on Facebook about how donors were paying “lawyers, infectious disease experts, and epidemiologists to work around the clock.” He promised that the lawsuits would stop the “anti-masking Trump cult” from running Wisconsin schools.

Then, quietly, it seemed almost in the middle of the night, he dropped both lawsuits. Not after a courtroom showdown, mind you, not after forcing a single change in school policy, but because the CDC shifted its masking guidance. One of his motions to dismiss declared the claims “moot.” 

So poof. The lawsuit was gone.

However, it’s essential to note that the lawsuits were dropped without prejudice, meaning they could have been revived at a later time. The Waukesha school district didn’t oppose having the lawsuit against it dropped, but it wanted it dropped with prejudice so it could not be refiled. That didn’t happen. Indeed, some courts in other jurisdictions refused to dismiss similar cases — or lawsuits challenging mask requirements — precisely because the policies at issue could be reinstated based on changing conditions, and, during Covid, conditions were changing daily.

It begs the question: Why did Bangstad suddenly drop the lawsuit, when the conditions that prompted the lawsuit in the first place could change virtually overnight? That’s exactly why others did not ask for their lawsuits to be dismissed. Did Bangstad keep the money sequestered for that possibility? Did he return the donations? 

Did that money, raised in a frenzy of righteous indignation, pay for the promised legal armies? Or did it simply dissolve into the ether of Bangstad’s political machine, repurposed for whatever he felt like that month? 

These are still good questions for those who gave to support the effort, and they have aged well in light of the new questions being asked in Madison.

Lest anyone think this questioning of the super PAC is all new, let’s remember the GOP’s formal FEC complaint filed back in October 2021. Republicans alleged that the Minocqua Brewing super PAC failed to file required reports for an independent expenditure and unlawfully used corporate funds to provide direct support to federal candidates, among other things. 

While Bangstad purported to send 5 percent of his company profits to the PAC, he failed to report any such transfer, or to disclose these donors in campaign finance reports, the complaint stated.

To be fair, the FEC dismissed the complaint unanimously in July 2022, and so it’s easy to dismiss the whole thing as politically driven. It would be easy to do that, except that once again the same kinds of questions are being raised around the super PAC — now by former employees and by decidedly non-conservative news outlets. WPR and Channel 3000 are not the Republican Party by any stretch.

Oh, and about those 5 percent of profits to the super PAC from the “brewery.” Channel 3000 reported that the super PAC claims to receive 5 percent of brewery profits as a donation. However, Channel 3000 reported that Federal Election Commission records show the brewery had donated less than $10,000 to the PAC and had not made any contributions in more than three years. 

Channel 3000’s reporting didn’t uncover a new Bangstad. It showed the same Bangstad operating the same way — blurring lines between business, politics, and personal branding until donors can’t tell if they’ve funded a progressive cause, a beer shipment, or his latest social media tantrum.

Taken together this conduct forms a pattern of playing fast and loose with the super PAC rules and laws. As the questions raised by former employees and non-conservative news outlets demonstrate, this isn’t about ideology. You can be the bluest progressive, but you still deserve to know whether your donation paid for canvassing literature or for a bar manager’s Friday night shift. 

Accountability and transparency shouldn’t be optional obligations.

Bangstad only likes accountability for other people. Ask him about Effervescent Blue or NCPS — the mysterious companies his PAC has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to — and whether he has an ownership stake in either, and he won’t answer. Get this — he doesn’t answer on “moral” grounds. We’ll pause until you stop laughing.

Instead, in what would be hilarious if it weren’t so sick, he blames Republicans for setting up a system that he is using to help kill the country, as he put it. And when critics raise concerns, he lashes out on social media, sometimes dragging family members into the mud. 

That’s what we call good old-fashioned intimidation, and it’s worth mentioning that the former employees who spoke with Channel 3000 were concerned about potential retaliation.

The bottom line is, it’s time for federal scrutiny.

The Federal Election Commission has already been alerted once and dismissed it. Wisconsin Public Radio has since raised questions. Now Channel 3000 has raised more questions. The Lakeland Times has raised questions. The only entity left to raise questions is the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

You know, the same U.S. Attorney’s Office that has subpoena and prosecutorial power. If anyone in the Trump administration is reading this, it might be a good time to take a look.

Playing the morality card always has the potential to backfire. Bangstad should welcome a federal investigation, for if his books are clean, he has nothing to fear and will come out a winner. If they’re not, the U.S. Attorney will find out. 

Either way, the public deserves the truth. 

The bottom line is, Wisconsin residents deserve to know whether a political super PAC operating in our state is a legitimate advocacy group or just another scam super PAC masquerading as a craft beer enthusiast and using social media bluster.