Sara Rodriguez, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin who wants to run the state, owes money to the State of Wisconsin, according to her latest campaign finance report.
The report dropped around midnight on July 15, and it shows that Rodriguez doesn’t have anywhere close to the $200,000 cash on hand that she claimed to have at a hastily scheduled press conference a few days ago.
She actually has less than $35,000 cash on hand. But the report also shows that Rodriguez owes more than $152,000, including more than $9,400 for the state of Wisconsin and more than $45,000 to Kimberly Kane’s crisis comms/PR company. It’s not clear what that state debt was for; however, a separate entry in the report indicated that she paid the state a similar amount previously for “mileage,” which begs the question of whether she was campaigning in a state car.
Despite the terrible numbers, Rodriguez begged for donations in a campaign video several hours before the report came out. In that video, she painted herself as the candidate Republicans are most scared of, and she did not disclose to potential donors that her campaign is in the red.
The dismal report comes after Rodriguez fired her campaign manager and admitted to serious inaccuracies in her January report, which she blamed on duplicates and unpaid expenses. She blamed her campaign manager for all of it; the woman has yet to speak out. Rodriguez, a Democrat, is running in the Aug. 11 primary for governor, and she faces four other candidates. The winner runs against Republican Tom Tiffany, who reported raising $8 million this report cycle.
Here are screenshots from her report. Here is where you can look it up in full.
