Bradley Foundation board member Cleta Mitchell bemoans college voting in private meeting with top GOP donors
Bill Glauber
A board member of the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation recently told top Republican donors that conservatives need to curtail college voting, singling out Wisconsin among four other states.
Cleta Mitchell made the comments during an April 15 presentation at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Nashville, according to a report appearing in The Washington Post.
Mitchell is a longtime GOP attorney who helped former President Donald Trump in his effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. Days after she participated in a phone call with Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, she resigned her partnership with Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner. She now runs an organization called the Election Integrity Network.
The Bradley Foundation supports conservative causes across the country as well as initiatives in Milwaukee. In a 2020 filing the group showed $1 billion in assets.
Asked about the The Post report on Mitchell, the organization said: “The Foundation respects the privacy of its directors and does not comment on their personal or professional activities. We look to our directors for leadership and counsel on issues that are specific to Bradley.”
The Post said it reviewed a copy of Mitchell's recent presentation that focused on limiting "voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters." The GOP has not formally endorsed the plan but a spokesman told the Post that the party was "thankful for leaders like Cleta Mitchell who do important work for the Republican ecosystem."
The Post reported that Mitchell focused on campus voting in Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Virginia.
In a separate audio posted on Twitter by liberal activist Lauren Windsor, Mitchell is heard discussing college voting.
“What are these college campus locations?” she asked, according to the audio. “What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.”
Mitchell said 'Wisconsin is a big problem'
According to the audio, Mitchell also directly referred to Wisconsin, where large turnout on college campuses helped power liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz to a large victory over conservative former Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly.
Mitchell said: "Wisconsin is a big problem because of the first day, because of the polling locations on college campuses. There are 501c3's (nonprofits). Their goal for the Supreme Court race was to turn out 240,000 college students in that Supreme Court race. And we don't have anything like that and we need to figure out how to do that and combat that."
One example of the effectiveness of getting students to the polls was in Eau Claire, where the highest turnout came from Ward 20, which serves a number of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire dorms.
Nearly 900 votes were cast there compared to the 150 in the 2019 state Supreme Court race. Protasiewicz got 87% of the vote in the recent spring election.
Progressive groups also had organizers on the ground at college campuses and also spent around $1 million on the effort.
Longtime Democratic operative Mike Tate led one such effort, Project 72 Wisconsin, which organized on 15 campuses.
"The polling places that some colleges have on their college campuses have been there for decades," Tate said, adding that a large number of student voters are rejecting Republican values.
"It's unfortunate that the Republican Party has been reduced to this. They have no issues that resonate with people in Gen Z."
Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said Mitchell's comments "illustrate a full-court press by the GOP to stomp out voter freedoms, from campus voting to same-day voter registration."
He added the franchise is more secure after the recent court race but said "protecting and expanding voting rights will require constant organizing and vigilance."