THE



VOICE
FORUM

 

A Report by Lisa Graves and Evan Vorpahl



 


RESEARCH

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), a 501(c)(3), and the Independent Women’s Voice
(IWV), its (c)(4), claim to have played a pivotal role in the 2016 election of Donald Trump by
targeting independent women in Wisconsin. IWF/V is positioned to play a significant role
there, and elsewhere, in 2020.
IWF and IWV have jointly spent millions in recent years to influence the outcome of federal
and state elections. Wisconsin is a key state where they have focused their resources.
Due to gaps in reporting requirements and changes in the law, the activities of IWF/V are
not well known to outsiders. What Heather Higgins—IWF/V’s strategic leader and lead
fundraiser—tells potential donors and allies, however, is that IWF/V’s activities have often
been decisive in elections, including in Wisconsin in 2016 specifically.
IWF/V’s specialty is using its “independent” brand name to target people who register as
“independent” voters, particularly women. Its primary tactic is to use its (c)(3) to reach out
to targets in a state with relatively detailed messaging about a particular issue, repeatedly
and in multiple formats, and then layer in its (c)(4) activity to connect electoral candidates
to that issue right before the election.
IWF/V has devised a process of using quizzes shortly before an election to convey distorted
information to voters, without tying it to a political party or a candidate (or a request for
money), until the election is imminent.
The quizzes it produces to influence elections have focused on IWF/V’s claims and
disinformation about the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Supreme Court, paid leave, climate
policy, and immigration.
It is difficult to assess independently the actual effectiveness of IWF/V’s efforts to influence
the outcome of the presidential and U.S. Senate races in Wisconsin in 2016, but a
“confidential” document obtained by True North Research provides one professor’s
assessment of IWF/V’s success.
That evaluation, procured by IWF/V, takes the position that IWF/V was exceptionally
successful in Wisconsin in moving independent voters to support Donald Trump and Ron
Johnson, in 2016, by double-digit percentages.
This special report from the new Wisconsin-based national watchdog True North Research
examines IWF/V’s astounding claims of success in Wisconsin in 2016 and in other elections,
as IWF/V plots its strategy to influence election outcomes in the upcoming 2020 races.
Lisa Graves
Lisa Graves is the Executive Director of True North Research and a Senior Fellow at Republic Report. She previously led
the Center for Media and Democracy, was the Chief Counsel for Nominations on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and
a Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. She’s been a frequent guest on MSNBC and in
documentary films. She directs two new research websites: KochDocs.org and IndependentWomensForum.org.

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Background for Assessing IWF/V’s Claims
It Played a Pivotal Role for Donald Trump
and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin in 2016
The popular vote in Wisconsin in 2016
was more than 1.4M for Donald Trump
and 1.38M for Hillary Clinton, a difference
of 22,748 votes—and a margin of less
than 1% of the total votes cast. (Third
party candidates received more than
188K votes cast, or 6.3%, including the
31K cast for the Green Party.)

noted: “In Wisconsin alone, Americans for
Prosperity staff, equipped with state-ofthe-art voter contact technology, made
1.5 million phone calls and knocked on
nearly 30,000 doors…. Koch groups spent
$4.3 million in Wisconsin, eclipsing the $3
million spent by the Clinton campaign,
with television ads that sought to
simultaneously tear down Democrat Russ
Feingold and Clinton, a pattern repeated
in other crucial swing states.”

Voting rights expert Ari Berman credited
Priorities USA’s assessment that the 2016
turnout in the state was suppressed by
approximately 200K votes. A narrower
analysis concluded that the votes of at
least 16K Americans in two of the most
populous Wisconsin counties were

That’s all part of the publicly known story
about the 2016 election in Wisconsin.
Here’s the part that is less well known:
IWF/V, whose electoral influence
operations are helmed by GOP strategist
and donor Heather Higgins, claims to
have played a pivotal role in Wisconsin

IWV’s Claim: Without its “educational messaging, both Trump and
Johnson would otherwise have lost WI by over 100,000 votes each.”
suppressed by Voter ID restrictions the
GOP adopted after Obama’s win in 2008.
The turnout in Wisconsin in 2016 was the
lowest it has been since 2000.
Further complicating the assessment of
who to credit with aiding Trump’s victory
in the state is the documented targeting
of Wisconsin and Michigan by Russian
troll farms working to help Trump.
Additionally, late in the campaign Brad
Parscale, who was then Trump’s digital
political guru, re-allocated key resources
for his planned ad buys on social media
away from targeting Virginia and Ohio to
targeting Wisconsin and Michigan.

Also, there’s the Charles Koch factor, as
investigative reporter Lee Fang recently

through how she targeted independent
women here. Although IWF/V is known in
some DC circles as the group that got its
start defending Clarence Thomas against
evidence of sexual harassment and as
opponents of equal pay, it has stealthily
been playing a below-the-radar role in
elections, with an impact it claims has
been decisive.
Who Did IWF/V Target in Wisconsin in
2016 and What Was Its Claimed Effect?
Here is a snapshot of IWV’s “success
story” about the role it says it played in
delivering Wisconsin for Trump in 2016:

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received an estimated 215,840 fewer
votes in Wisconsin and similar numbers
apply to Sen. Ron Johnson. Without IWV's
educational messaging, both Trump and
Johnson would otherwise have lost WI by
over 100,000 votes each.”
If IWV’s boast were accurate, that is an
enormous effect. Even if it were
overstated tenfold, it is still a substantial
enough effect that its absence could have
changed the results in a presidential race
that was split by only about 22K votes.

IWV added: “In Wisconsin, all registered
independents and Republican-leaning
women—save a randomly selected
40,000 from this population, which
served as a control group— received
multiple choice and ‘true or false’ quizzes,
consisting of questions on the Affordable
Care Act and the Supreme Court. These
were delivered via postcards, phone calls,
or digital outreach during the final weeks
of the 2016 election.
“There were 3,619,996 registered voters
in Wisconsin. IWV had a target universe
of 880,980 households, or approximately
1.54 million registered voters.
“Calculations indicate that Trump
received 1.28 million votes from this
target population. If the quiz messaging
had not occurred, Prof. Daron Shaw of
U.T. Austin calculates Trump would have
Other polling data is also publicly findable, in addition
to a partial archive of polling from 2010-2014. IWV
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IWF has also claimed: “In a world where a
+2pt move is considered a big deal, IWV
ideas and tactics regularly get moves of
+6 points to +14 points and more. Indeed
in WI in '16, we moved Trump +28pts,
and Sen. Johnson +31 pts. Those exposed
to quiz information preferred Ron
Johnson over Russ Feingold by 52 points
compared to a 21-point margin within the
control group. IWV looks for high ROI
opportunities where we can have a
decisive impact on policy and political
outcomes.”
What Did IWF/V Actually Do During the
Election in Wisconsin in 2016?
A memo obtained by True North Research
about IWF/V’s activities in Wisconsin in
the last presidential election, reveals
details about its activities in the state.1
According to that material, eleven days
before the election, IWF began its
program of “quiz calls” and other
outreach targeting almost all of the
state’s independent and GOP-leaning
women, without mentioning electoral
sometimes issues press releases about its polling results.

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candidates or political parties.
Starting on October 29 and then every
two days for a week, IWF targeted
Wisconsin voters with quizzes about the
effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on
their lives and other Americans.
Halfway through that week, IWF layered
in two mailings about the ACA to these
880K households in Wisconsin.
On the seventh day, IWV hit those
households with a postcard tying the fight
over the U.S. Supreme Court to the
election. Two days later—which was then
three days before the election—IWF
layered in another set of quiz calls about
the ACA. Then two days later—on
election eve—IWV hit Wisconsin voters
with a quiz about the ACA, tying it to the
election the next day.
IWF/V also describes these efforts as
including digital outreach, but no trace of
digital ads purchased in this timeframe on
these issues can be found in Facebook’s
ad transparency database or other
common databases for digital ads.
How Effective Was the IWF/V Campaign
Targeting Independent Women in
Wisconsin?
According to the assessment
commissioned by IWF/V—prepared by
University of Texas professor Daron Shaw
who operates Shaw & Company
Research—IWF/V’s quizzes and outreach
were pivotal. He found:
“[E]ven relatively modest quiz messaging
can have an impact on people, especially
with respect to their knowledge of issue
and policy arguments. However, to
persuade people about the salience of

the issue, or to move broader attitudes
on the issue, it seems that multiple
‘touches’ and different modes of
outreach are necessary, as we saw in the
Wisconsin test.”
He drew two other conclusions of note
about how the IWF/V quizzes and issue
education created double-digit moves in
voting preference or the favorability of a
candidate, in his view.
First, he found that the Wisconsin quizzes
on the ACA and the Supreme Court had a
greater effect in motivating women to
vote for Trump: “In Wisconsin, our
models tell us that exposure to the [quiz
call + mailing] treatment made men 11
points more likely to support Trump over
Clinton; the same exposure made women
17 points more likely to support Trump.”
Second, he found that the quizzes made
independents almost 16% more likely to
vote for Trump (and almost 18% more
likely to vote for his ticket’s down-ballot
candidate, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson).
Shaw’s assessment also benefited from
being able to compare the results of the
quizzes in Wisconsin to two other states
that had larger media markets or more
intensive campaigning, New York and
Pennsylvania, respectively. Shaw’s
opinion was that IWF/V was less
successful in those markets because they
had more “noise” and so it was harder to
breakthrough with voters using the quiz
method in the last few weeks before the
election. He recommended that in noisier
markets IWF/V’s tactic could be more
effective earlier in the cycle, such as in
August, for example.
What Was the Content of the IWF/V

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Campaign to Independent Women?
Although the quizzes and mailers were
not attached to the Shaw report, IWF/V
does have a series of quizzes available on
its websites and these are likely similar to
the quizzes that were used, perhaps in
shorter form, for its outreach in
Wisconsin in 2016 on repealing the ACA.
Here are additional links to a more
detailed guide and video primers IWF/V
created. IWF/V also created a Tumblr site
called “a bridge to better” before the
2016 election attacking the ACA. That site
continues to add new content designed
to advance Trump’s claims about the
ACA.
IWF/V had previously created related
sites in its multi-year attack on the ACA,
such as: brokenACApromises.org to
gather stories on rate hikes,
mycancellation.com for people to take a
photo to share of any insurance
cancellations, and savingourhealth.org,
which featured people dressed in hospital
scrubs making prepared statements
against the ACA.
In 2016, IWV also launched a campaign
with the group “American Majority”
called the “repeal pledge.” It was touted
by the Wall Street Journal as modeled on
the Grover Norquist/Koch tax pledge.
After the election, IWV congratulated 68
legislative candidates who had signed the
pledge and won their races in the 2016
election, including Senator Ron Johnson.
In 2015, IWF/V’s Higgins also told CPAC’s
audience that women were more
affected by the ACA because they see
their doctors more often, and so if a
woman’s employer or a state exchange
limited the physicians available in its

network under the ACA then that harmed
women more. Elsewhere, Higgins was
described as leading the national “Repeal
and Reform Coalition” on the ACA.
IWV’s Wisconsin outreach also included
contact with voters about the U.S.
Supreme Court. Here are the quizzes
IWF/V created to defend Senator Mitch
McConnell’s blocking of the confirmation
of President Obama’s nominee, Judge
Merrick Garland, to the U.S. Supreme
Court and to oppose Democratic claims
about the importance of balance on the
Court. IWV also includes a module on the
ACA in its court quizzes.
In Wisconsin and elsewhere, a (c)(4)
group called Majority Forward, which was
tied to a Super PAC called Senate Majority
PAC, spent substantial sums on digital and
TV ads calling on Ron Johnson and other
senators to “do your job” and to stop
obstructing a vote on Judge Garland’s
nomination to replace Justice Antonin
Scalia. Unlike the IWF/V outreach, that
Democratically-aligned ad blitz did not tie
the Court to any public policy issues for
voters. The Majority Forward TV ads did
not discuss the way people’s rights were
at stake in the vote, but information since
then helps underscore what was at stake.
IWF/V has also developed quizzes on paid
leave and family leave under its so-called
“workplace reform” project, which also
includes material attacking equal pay,
opposing raising the minimum wage, and
more. It also has a quiz in its energy policy
materials critical of the Clean Power Plan,
which tried to mitigate climate change.
Notably, IWV’s most recent quiz focuses
on immigration. That content has been
amplified in IWF/V outreach in recent

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months that pushes scare-tactic messages
equating immigrants with the spread of
infectious disease, as an indirect way to
help urge women to support Trump’s
controversial immigration policies.
How Much Did IWF/V’s Wisconsin
Election Program in 2016 Cost?
IWF/V has provided no public figures for
how much it spent on its program in
Wisconsin in 2016, and a review of
potential sources for that information has
not gleaned any new data. However, tax
filings from IWF/V show that the groups
combined to spend more than $3.7M on
“active engagement” of citizens across
the states—including nearly half a million
IWV spent on polling.
IWF’s 2016 tax filings show it spent $4.3M
in 2016 on what it described a single
program objective: “Engage more
individuals in the civic process.” It
reported spending $2.5M on what it
called “Active engagement/market
evaluation.” IWF also told the IRS it spent
only $34K on what it listed as “direct
mail” separate from that engagement,
although that may be referring to
fundraising mailings. It also claimed it
spent nothing on grassroots lobbying to
influence public opinion and reported no
direct lobbying either. It also indicated it
had no contractors paid $100K or more.
For IWV, Higgins raised $5.1M that year,
which was five times more than in 2015.
She told the IRS that IWV spent only
$2.7M in 2016, leaving it a substantial
reserve to help in the 2017 fights that
were to come. IWV also reported it had a
single program: “Engage more individuals
in legislative advocacy.” However, IWV
told the IRS it spent no money on

grassroots lobbying or direct lobbying. It
did disclose spending $698K on “[a]ctive
engagement” and $478K on polling. It
also noted spending more than $12K on
527-type expenditures, but that there are
no responsive records detailing that in
the IRS database.
IWV was also required to disclose three
contractors it paid more than $100K in
2016. The largest recipient was New Troy
Strategies in Alexandria, VA, which
received more than $561K for “mailing
and communications services.” It was
created by Mary Cheney, a daughter of
Dick and Lynne Cheney.
IWV paid another group called the Victory
Media Group (VMG) $155K for
communications. There is no disclosure of
which states VMG worked on with IWV
during the 2016 election.
IWV’s third contractor in the 2016 race
was a family-owned firm called Ashdown
Forest, the firm Higgins pays herself
through, which received her
compensation of $308,500, which
included a bonus of $165K.
Other Ways to Gauge How Much IWF/V
Spent on Its 2016 Wisconsin Program
There are three other significant data
sources that may shed some light on how
much IWF/V may have spent on its twoweek program in Wisconsin in 2016,
though they were in different markets
and of different durations. First, there’s
the total amount IWF/V announced it
spent on the 2018 mid-terms. Second,
there is a more detailed case study from
its spending in South Carolina. And, third,
there are other spending disclosures it
made that may also provide some

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illumination. Also, IWV spending on
“independent expenditures” has been
disclosed in some races.
IWV Spending on the 2018 Mid-Term
Elections
IWV’s role, if any, in Wisconsin in 2018 is
unknown, but it did issue this release on
November 7 of that year:
“With a combined $1.8M in spending,
IWF focused on policy education and IWV
focused on persuasion in 21 states where
there were deeply contested midterm
races. Using mailers, phone calls, and text
messages, IWF educated misinformed
constituents about the real healthcare
positions advanced by the GOP, and not
those propagated by the left. IWV in turn
linked candidates with those healthcare
positions, ultimately leaving the choice of
who to support up to voters.
“Our message testing materials, which
countered the left’s claims and addressed
misperceptions about healthcare, preexisting conditions, and ‘Medicare-forAll,’ significantly improved policy
understanding and, without any mention
of any candidate or party, as a corollary,
moved non-conservative GOP females +9
points in tests on the ballot test.”
IWV did not reveal the list of those 21
target states, and it only issued solo
releases involving the races where its
efforts prevailed. That is, if IWF/V played
any role in trying to aid state Sen. Leah
Vukmir in her unsuccessful challenge
against U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin,
there is no evidence of that. Perhaps
IWF/V excluded it because polling did not
show it to be “deeply contested,” i.e.
winnable. In other cycles, IWV has touted

its role in snatching victory from the jaws
of defeat, as with the next example.
IWV Spending in the 2014 Special
Election in South Carolina
After the 2014 mid-terms, VMG won
three political consulting awards, called
“Pollies,” for its work for IWV under the
category called “automatic push-button
interactive,” which is part of the annual
awards the political consulting industry
reserves for voter outreach that is
described as about “candidates by
phone.” IWV crowed about its activities
as sweeping that category with wins for
three interactive campaigns, called
“Taxpayer Funding and Obamacare,”
“Spending and Debt,” and “Labor Love.”
Those awards to VMC and another firm
IWV hired called “Antietam
Communications” were in support of
Mark Sanford’s win in 2014 over Elizabeth
Colbert Busch in the South Carolina
special election. Higgins described IWV’s
role in Sanford’s win as decisive,
asserting:
“IWV takes pride in working to create
factual messages, using non-traditional
delivery methods, and winning races that
others believe are hopeless. Through
innovative, non-advocacy interactive
calls, we made voters aware of relevant
facts on issues they care about, like
ObamaCare repeal, and why turning out
to vote is so important.”
Higgins told the National Review she was
especially concerned that if Busch had
won in 2014 it would have been a moral
victory for “liberals” like Stephen Colbert.
In spite of Sanford’s controversial history,
such as his notorious extramarital affair

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while he was Governor, IWV threw-in to
help him win over a well-regarded
woman running for Congress. Here’s how
IWV described its tactics and its impact:

in IWV’s engagement in a South Carolina
special election versus IWF/V’s role in the
general election in Wisconsin in 2016, but
that example provides some useful data.

“Before going on air, IWV spent four days
communicating … with 10,000 likely
voters in Republican and independent
households. IWV’s subsequent survey
showed that, among IWV’s targets,
Colbert Busch’s favorable/unfavorable
rating slid to 40 percent favorable, 39
unfavorable, versus 44/36 among a
control group…

Other Disclosed IWV Independent
Expenditures, including in 2012

“Among IWV’s control group, Sanford
lagged Colbert Busch 45 percent to her
48. But voters who learned that Sanford
signed IWV’s Obamacare-repeal pledge—
and that Colbert-Busch refused to do so—
preferred Sanford 63 percent to 30. This
36-point pro-Sanford swing gave IWV its
chief issue….

Those expenditures were for ads
targeting women in key states, calling on
them to break-up with their “boyfriend,”
Obama, for supposedly letting them
down. IWV also created ads called guilty,
spending, talk America, stolen dreams,
gas prices, gas, and American Dream. (It
has made no such attack ads on Trump.)

In 2011-2012, IWV reported spending
more than $989K on independent
expenditures (IE) federally.
This includes more than $150K it reported
to the FEC that it spent against the reelection of President Barack Obama.

“Obamacare’s dangers and the joys of its
repeal then appeared in both TV
commercials that IWV aired as well as
one of two newspaper ads, a live phone
call, and one of three non-advocacy ‘quiz
calls’ in which voters tested their
knowledge about facts relevant to the
candidates’ positions.”
For this 2014 campaign, “IWV spent
about $250,000 in the last week of the
campaign. Of that, $160,000 went to
broadcast and cable television and print
advertising, and live GOTV calls.
Additionally–taking special care with
South Carolina’s rather restrictive laws on
auto-dialed phone calls–we
supplemented that with innovative, nonadvocacy, factual, interactive quiz calls….”
It is difficult to compare apples to apples

IWV boasted that its boyfriend series of
videos were part of a $7.1M ad buy it
touted as “the largest single all-digital
advocacy online video buy in history,”
which was coordinated by a group calling
itself “Let Freedom Ring.”
IWV also spent a substantial amount of its
efforts on messaging calling for the repeal

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of the ACA, which included but was not
limited to numerous videos on health
care issues. It also includes some of the
ACA repeal material noted in the earlier
discussion above, which was modified for
the 2016 election. IWV also ran a political
ad contest to attack the ACA and call for
the repeal of “ObamaCare.” In addition,
IWF spent substantial efforts on its site, in
its publications, and in its outreach to the
media and on social media about its
criticisms of the ACA and the need to
repeal that signature program of
President Obama, though those
expenditures were not “independent
expenditures.”
In 2015, IWF/V’s Heather Higgins also
extolled the effect of IWV’s efforts in
2012—even though Obama won—
showing the chart above at CPAC. That
chart includes IWF/V’s annotation of a 23point gain based on its messaging.
In 2012, IWV also spent more than $250K
using its “independent” brand to aid GOP
Senate candidates who were called out as
being part of the “war on women,” even
while IWF spokespeople were on TV
shows claiming there was no war on
women. Here are three examples:
•

•

It spent $67,242 to aid Missouri
U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin
with calls and independent voter
outreach in November 2012, after
Akin claimed on August 19, 2012,
that rape victims couldn’t get
pregnant because “if it’s legitimate
rape, the female body has ways to
try to shut that whole thing
down.”
It spent $176,991 on a “Romney
wants Mourdock” ad after Indiana

U.S. Senate candidate Richard
Mourdock asserted that when a
woman is raped, she carries a “gift
from God’ and that such a
pregnancy ‘is something that God
intended to happen.”
•

Joe Walsh, a GOP Rep. from
Illinois, claimed in the 2012 race
against Tammy Duckworth that
abortions to save a mother’s life
are never medically necessary.
Two weeks later, [IWV] spent more
than $5,000 on calls and outreach
to independent voters in his
district.

It is also worth noting that most of the
publicly disclosed major donors of IWV’s
independent expenditure efforts are
men. However, IWV has not made public
disclosures of any independent
expenditure spending or donors in recent
years. The known disclosures come from
early races, such as when IWV backed
Scott Brown over Elizabeth Warren.
IWV’s Other Election-Focused Activities
in Wisconsin: the 2012 Recall Vote on
Scott Walker
Unlike for the federal races discussed
above, the amount IWV spent in
Wisconsin to aid Governor Scott Walker
during the efforts to recall him is not
known and has not been disclosed.
However, IWV has publicly boasted about
playing a crucial role in that recall vote.
Here’s how IWV described its activities:
“IWV’s research showed that the core
belief among Independents who opposed
Gov. Walker’s reforms was that public
employees are underpaid and are making
a sacrifice to hold those jobs.

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“Through our educational program, we
changed this foundational belief into an
understanding that unionized public
employees are overcompensated relative
to the private sector.

utilized interactive phone calls, postcards
with questionnaires, and targeted online
advertising. Walker won the recall
election, though his Democrat opponent,
Tom Barrett, secured the women’s vote.”

“Changing this belief changed behavior:
support for Scott Walker increased by +31
points among 10,000 likely voters who
received our message over a comparable
control group, even though we made no
reference to Walker, his reforms, or the
recall.”

Months before IWV launched this
campaign, Higgins wrote a piece for
Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller outlet about
the need to aid Walker to prevent a recall
election of the governor and to pivot in
the rhetoric being used about his
controversial effort to undermine public
employee unions in the state. She said
IWV had retained Kellyanne Conway’s
firm, the Polling Company, to conduct a
survey of 400 frequent voters “to assess if
the traditional red-state messaging being
used was backfiring with critical
independents in traditionally blue-state
Wisconsin” and test other messages.
Here is an excerpt from Higgins analysis
of Conway’s survey:

Higgins used the chart above in her
speech at CPAC in 2015 where she
boasted of IWV’s role in the recall.
Elsewhere, IWV described how it helped
thwart efforts to recall Governor Walker
this way:
“[W]hile Walker’s campaign and outside
groups focused on the money that he was
saving the state, yielding a five-point
spread over his opponent, independents
to whom IWV did an education campaign
about the unfairness of public sector
compensation, which never mentioned
Walker, his reforms, or the recall, then
favored Walker by 36 points.
“IWV targeted voters in three ways: it

“An astonishing 95% of the survey
respondents described themselves as
paying close attention to the issue, 71%
saying “very” closely. Respondents
strongly identified with one or the other
side of the budget conflict, and this
identification fell along ideological lines.
Independents now largely lock arms with
the union members and protestors…
“Gov. Walker is now viewed unfavorably
by a 53% majority, and with vehemence…
The real winner? Government employee
unions in Wisconsin, scoring 55%
favorable and only 40% unfavorable. The
numbers about recalling legislators
should also worry Republicans…
“We tested whether three proWalker/anti-union ads that ran in

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Wisconsin reinforced this polarization.
These ads focused more on personalities
and political sides than on facts and
issues…
“Our research revealed that Wisconsin
voters lacked important, basic facts about
the current situation, such as the five-fold
disparity in health care contributions
between Wisconsin state employees and
the national average…
“Wisconsin voters revealed basic
misunderstandings on numerous issues,
including how much government union
members and taxpayers have been
contributing to union pensions, what the
fiscal situation in Wisconsin is… Building
an understanding of these fundamental
policy issues is key to building support for
reform…
“The current instinct in Republican and
conservative circles is to use partisan,
sledgehammer ads and talk to the
converted. This is a limited strategy
overall, but in an until-recently blue state
like Wisconsin, it’s no way to win. There is
still a chance to turn this debate around
— the question is: Will Republican
supporters be willing to use a new
playbook?”
Based on that research, IWV then created
a website called “isthatreallyfair.org.” It
also created a quiz that it deployed as
part of its efforts to prevent Walker from
being successfully recalled.
As noted above, the amount IWV spent in
Wisconsin around the recall is not
IWV was previously registered in Wisconsin as an
“independent expenditure committee” but reported no
income and no expenditures for the five years it was
registered (2011-2016). The Federal Election
Commission also has no data on independent
2

known.2
It’s also notable that Higgins, herself an
heir to the Richardson pharmaceutical
empire (which is famous for Vicks
VapoRub and infamous for distributing
thalidomide), has deep ties to billionaire
funders, like Charles Koch and
Wisconsin’s Diane Hendricks, a major
donor to IWF and Republican candidates.
IWV and IWF lauded Hendricks, the
owner of the Hendricks Holding Company
(HHC), as its 2017 “Outstanding Woman
in Business.” Then-outgoing Speaker of
the House Paul Ryan (R-Janesville)
introduced Hendricks, whom Ryan
credited with launching his political
career to go to Congress back in 1997.
HHC, which owns the billion-dollar
roofing firm ABC Supply and more than a
dozen other companies, was listed as one
of the top three donors of that gala and
2018’s gala, according to materials
obtained by True North Research.
At the 2017 gala, which was also funded
by the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity
Foundation, IWV/F also honored Conway,
as its “Woman of Valor.”
Conway, the first woman to run a
successful presidential campaign—who
has been widely criticized for her
shocking assertions and for the Trumpian
neologism “alternative facts”—is IWV’s
former pollster and a long-time IWF
board member. She is on leave from the
groups while she is at the White House.
Another Consideration regarding
expenditures in federal races by IWV in the 2015-2016,
2017-2018, or 2019-2020 cycles, so far.

 13

IWF/V’s “Independent Branding”
IWF/V specifically targets potential voters
who are women who identify as
independent. It then uses its branding
with the word “independent” to push
polls in the form of quizzes and more.
The “independent” brand name of IWF/V
likely confuses many women who receive
their communications and outreach into
believing the groups are actually
independent, although they are not.
Just last year, IWV advertised for a
Director of Engagement, with this pitch:
“Do you identify yourself as a
conservative but hate the way
conservatives message? We have the job
for you.”
IWF’s marketing also deemphasizes its
right-wing bent, as with its recent tagline
is “all issues are women’s issues.”
The President of IWF’s board and IWV’s
CEO, Heather Higgins, has told major
donors that “[b]eing branded as neutral,
but actually having people who know
know that you’re actually conservative
puts us in a unique position.” Higgins also
told CPAC’s audience “IWV’s mission is to
expand our base.”
Much of IWF/V’s recent ad content
features stock images of racially diverse
younger women and mothers looking
strong, happy, and independent.
IWF/V has also recently unveiled an
expansive social media campaign touting
its efforts to “champion” women, by
highlighting women it argues “champion
women” too.
IWF also been working to lift up former

Governor Nikki Haley to become the first
woman president of the U.S. With the
recent rumors of Vice President Pence
being on the outs with the White House,
it is not outside the realm of possibility
that Trump could swap in Haley, his
former UN Ambassador, at or before the
2020 RNC convention in North Carolina—
as showmanship and to shore up his
standing with women voters. This
potential may increase if his chances of
re-election weaken or if Democrats
nominate a woman for president.
Conclusion
Whether IWF/V’s boasts about its pivotal
role in Wisconsin in 2016 and other
elections are fully accurate, it is clear that
IWF/V is investing substantial sums in
voter outreach in Wisconsin and other
states. In 2020, it will likely continue if not
expand its focus on moving women who
identify as “independent” toward GOP
candidates, no matter how extreme or
unfit those candidates may actually.
That is part of IWF/V’s role in the rightwing infrastructure, to be a distaff and
provide a woman’s face to give cover to
policies and politicians that in reality
undermine women’s opportunities and
future.
Its role in federal and state elections has
largely escaped scrutiny, despite its
claims to have played a decisive role in
Wisconsin since 2012 and more. This
special report is designed to shed light on
its claims and its tactics so that genuinely
independent women and men can be
more informed about this stealth group.
Learn more at independentwomensforum.org.