An astute reader sent me a meme of that old Bruce Willis movie, The Sixth Sense, you know the one where he spends the entire movie without Bruce – or most viewers – knowing he was already de*ad. Except for one little boy, of course, who says, “de*d people…Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re de*d.” The reader compared this to Sara Rodriguez’s exploding campaign finance scandal, let’s call it “Sara-Gate.” Or maybe “Sara/Kara-Gate”? Any ideas?
Rather than accepting the inevitable, Rodriguez released a barrage of bizarre statements all day today (Thursday) refusing to admit what literally everyone knows. This campaign is over. We’re all the Sixth Sense boy, and she’s Bruce Willis, either completely clueless about her ultimate fate or pretending to be. I think it’s a scam. She needs to stay in the race to get more donor checks because she’s in serious DEBT, including to the STATE (for mileage.)
But it’s not harmless error. She’s burying her party by continuing the cacophony of chaos, which is preventing any candidate who is not Mandela Barnes or Fran Hong from getting traction. And time is running out. She already kneecapped one of the most reasonable candidates, David Crowley, deceiving him out of the race to own the establishment lane. Now she’s kneecapping Kelda Roys and Joel Brennan by keeping the race frozen in place. She’s becoming a campaign Tonya Harding, ruthlessly and unfairly dispatching rivals.
My God! I’ve never seen anything like this! Meanwhile Tom Tiffany is sitting pretty on millions of campaign transfers from the state GOP (which is finally outdoing Dems with this tactic, despite the Democrats’ Epstein island visitor big donor). Tiffany’s strong showing is thanks to the Diane Hendricks and Dick/Liz Uihlein cash wind machine. It’s really helpful that they’re all on the same page this time. Viva no primary.
But it kept unraveling for Sara more and more as the day unfolded. Ever see the television series Homeland? In that show, Carrie, played by Clare Danes, is a bipolar CIA agent. To solve terrorist plots, she is frequently seen puzzling over a wall papered with a disordered maze of clues, odds and ends, a haphazard jumble of documents and disparate information. Only she can see the patterns in them. This came to mind as I tried to follow Sara’s campaign finance report saga today. We’d need Carrie to interpret it. Seriously. Even Democrats can no longer figure out what the hell is going on.
Here’s a recap:
First, of course, the scandal exploded Monday when Sara admitted that her January 2026 campaign finance report was inaccurate. She blamed her fired campaign manager Kara Spencer, who has mysteriously vanished from public view. I’ve tried to find her to no avail. Tough to track down a person with a somewhat recent eviction and she’s almost a datamining ghost. Sara stated that she had no idea how much money she had, but it wasn’t enough for the $1 million ad buy she announced a few days before. Then she stated she probably had $200,000 cash on hand.
Then, last night around midnight, Sara filed her July report right at the deadline. It showed that she had a ghastly $34,000 cash on hand (Tiffany is sitting on almost $3 million.) Even worse, Sara actually has negative $118,000 because she reported $152,000 in unpaid debts – including to a crisis comms flack and… drumroll please, thousands owed to the state of Wisconsin, for mileage. This prompted me to file an open records request to review her use of any state cars for campaign purposes.
Sara’s shockingly paltry cash on hand sparked a round of jokes, memes, and all-around derision, including from utterly baffled Democrats, as Sara then went up on the air (rather than paying her debts), to remind everyone she’s a nurse in a TV ad that no one knows how the hell she’s paying for.
But it gets worse.
Early morning, on Thursday, amateur sleuths noticed that Sara, a Democrat, reported giving money to the Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women. I know these ladies. In fact, I spoke to one of them yesterday at the Waukesha County sheriff’s forum. These are dignified, gracious ladies who host luncheons with people like Ron Johnson, Karoline Leavitt and the guy who writes for the Babylon Bee. I went to the Bee guy’s talk, and it was hilarious, especially when he revealed that the liberal media started fact-checking his parodies.
No way in hell would these ladies accept money from Sara Rodriguez. Which they made clear in an angry press release, which revealed they filed a complaint with the state. Great start to the day! And all this happened before I had time to crack eggs for my omelet.
A go-to social media page to follow is Jessie Opoien’s. She’s a reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which often frustrates me to tears, but Jessie seems fair, especially for someone who used to work at the Cap Times. Conservatives I know who deal with the media a lot think that she is fair. Anyway, she then revealed that Sara’s campaign had released a statement admitting they didn’t really give money to the Republican women. They actually gave it to the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County.
I’m dying of laughter as I write this. What the hell is happening. So now you have a top Democrat candidate for governor, the sitting lieutenant governor no less, falsely reporting to the state that she gave money to Republicans. And she can’t even blame poor Kara anymore, because she’s gone.
That should have been the end of it, but apparently we haven’t reached the end of the movie.
Around lunch time, I was going to go for a walk, but the wildfire smoke was so bad it felt like a wood stove backed up into the world and my yard, so I decided to read Jessie Opoien’s page instead. And lo and behold there was another statement from Sara’s campaign stating that her July 15 report might also be inaccurate.
Reporters like to post lists of how much money each candidate has. Next to Sara’s name, Jessie wrote, “many ?s.”
You can’t make this stuff up. Somewhere in the midst of this scandal, the Shepherd Express posted a gushing endorsement of Rodriguez that was so bizarrely timed, I thought it was a parody. But it wasn’t. A reader then pointed out a $1,650 payment in Sara’s beleaguered reports for online advertising to… the Shepherd Express. I have brilliant readers. I don’t know if they’re connected, just that both happened.
Around dinner time, Jessie Opoien was back at it again. Poor Jessie had to spend her birthday running around the Sara campaign finance corn maze.
“NEW: @saraforwi’s campaign filed an amended report this afternoon that now shows her cash on hand at $643,207, a massive and unexplained swing from the $34,991 reported last night. This appears to be attributed to a change to the opening balance of the account,” she wrote just before 5 p.m.
This sparked a spate of commentary online, with another page, Badger Pundit, calmly explaining why the new report didn’t make sense, either. And then:
“UPDATE: @saraforwi’s campaign says an error occurred during input; the balances on the first report ($34,991 COH) were correct and it will be amended again to reflect that,” wrote Jessie at 6:45.
UPDATE: @saraforwi’s campaign says an error occurred during input; the balances on the first report ($34,991
COH) were correct and it will be amended again to reflect that. https://t.co/rUDvtD8CM0— Jessie Opoien (@jessieopie) July 16, 2026
I’m not poking fun at Jessie here. Her page has become a must-read.
So basically Sara filed a false report in January and then filed a false report in July and then amended it and then amended the amendment. Or something like that.
If you’re confused at this point, don’t worry. I’m not sure even Sara knows what’s going on. Meanwhile, her fellow Democrats became so confused that they all stopped sending out angry press releases. Except for Mandela Barnes, who accused Sara of owing taxpayers thousands of dollars in security costs. I think it’s mileage. But whatever. Good point Mandela. But see the irony.
A Democrat wrote: “wtf. So now we’re going back to $34,000? Send me your bank statement.” And a Republican noted, “So many choices on what to do tonight – continue to monitor X and Facebook for more Rodriguez campaign updates or watch the President address the nation.”
And liberal blogger Dan Shafer was similarly at a loss for words. “Maybe now the Shepherd Express will add another adjective to its endorsement,” he proclaimed.
Please, Sara, don’t send out any more amended reports tonight. I am begging you. I need to take a break from your drama and catch up on the latest episode of Dutton Ranch.
Some guy I’ve never heard of put it best online: “Dude this has to be a skit. Like Rodriguez has to be a paid SNL actor or something.”
