Sara Rodriguez dropped out of the Wisconsin governor's race on Friday after her campaign found far less cash than she thought. She said the problem would keep distracting the campaign, the primary, and Wisconsin.
Four days earlier, she fired her campaign manager after discovering the campaign had hundreds of thousands dollars less cash than expected. Rodriguez said contributions had been double counted and expenses undercounted, and unpaid invoices kept campaign ads scheduled for last week from airing.
Rodriguez on Friday
Rodriguez said, "As we have continued to dig into our financial reports, it has become clear that there are issues that would be an ongoing distraction -- not just for this campaign, but for the primary and for Wisconsin. This race is too important to Wisconsin to let that happen". Her exit leaves four candidates in The Democratic primary.
The remaining candidates are Mandela Barnes, Joel Brennan, Francesca Hong, and Kelda Roys. Rodriguez's departure removes one candidate from a field that had already narrowed around the Aug. 11 primary.
Aug. 11 primary field
The winner of the Aug. 11 primary will face Tom Tiffany. Tony Evers is not running for re-election after serving two terms, which leaves the governor's race open and puts the primary winner into the general-election race against the presumptive Republican nominee.
The campaign finance problem was not limited to a bookkeeping error on paper. Ads were supposed to run last week, but they did not air because invoices had not been paid, and Rodriguez said the reports showed contributions had been counted twice while expenses were left too low.
For voters, the immediate change is that the Democratic primary now has four candidates instead of five. For the race, the practical question is how large the cash shortfall was in exact dollar terms, since Rodriguez described it only as hundreds of thousands dollars less than she believed the campaign had.
