By Kate Elizabeth Queram     Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON — Democratic and Republican state senators facing recall elections have received a healthy financial boost from political donors residing outside the Badger State, according to campaign finance documents released Tuesday.

But the influx of out-of-state money is significantly larger for the three Democratic incumbents.

According to the documents, the six Republican incumbents received roughly 7 percent of their collective funding from out-of-state donations.

Altogether, the lawmakers — Sens. Alberta Darling, of River Hills; Dan Kapanke, of La Crosse; Robert Cowles, of Green Bay; Luther Olsen, of Ripon; Randy Hopper, of Fon du Lac and Sheila Harsdorf, of River Falls — raised $2,450,855.

Just 6.9 percent of that money, or $170,168, came from out-of-state donors.

By contrast, 25.4 percent of the money raised by Democrats was donated by people living outside Wisconsin. The three Democratic incumbents — Sens. Robert Wirch, of Pleasant Prairie; Jim Holperin, of Conover and Dave Hansen, of Green Bay — have raised $329,806 collectively.

More than $83,000 of those funds came from outside the borders of America’s Dairyland.

Due to their later election date, Wirch, Holperin and Hansen have until next week to file updated finance reports, so those fundraising numbers are likely to shift drastically, according to the Government Accountability Board, the state’s election agency.

Still, anything other than a negligible amount of out-of-state donations is incredibly unusual in a state-level election, according to experts.

“For state legislative races, there’s usually some small number of out-of-state contributions,” said Sean Parnell, president of the Alexandria, Va.-based Center for Competitive Politics, a nonprofit focused on First Amendment rights, including campaign finance reform. “There are so few recall elections around the country that it’s hard to generalize, but usually they are very local affairs. They are very focused on some particular shortcoming and voter outage, and it’s clear that in Wisconsin, something different is going on.”

Most likely, Parnell said, it’s the national media spotlight that’s been focused on Wisconsin since February, when Gov. Scott Walker first introduced his budget repair bill.

The legislation contained a controversial measure that increased public employees’ contributions to their pension and health-care funds while restricting their collective bargaining rights to wages only, and capping salary increases to the rate of inflation.

Thousands of people descended on the Capitol in February and March to protest the measure as the 14 Democratic state senators fled to Illinois to prevent a vote on the bill, landing Wisconsin in headlines around the country. Senate Republicans eventually passed the measure on March 9 by stripping the bill of its financial provisions and voting on the legislation at a late-night committee hearing.

The legislation stalled in court until June 14, when the state Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling, allowing the bill to be enacted. The law took effect June 29, well after the actions of both parties had set into motion the wheels of recall efforts.

The national media attention from that ongoing fallout and the scarcity of recall elections in general are the two factors that most likely spurred the out-of-state donations for Senate incumbents on both sides of the aisle, Parnell said.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the last recall election in the United States took place in Michigan in 2008.

“As the news media has been saying for several months … everybody seems to be interested in what’s going on in Wisconsin,” Parnell said. “Obviously, the Wisconsin elections are a hot topic that (has) gained a lot of attention nationally, so it’s not terribly surprising to me that there are people out of the state that want to (contribute).”

Donations have rolled in from all 50 states, Canada and Puerto Rico. Not surprising, the highest number of contributions came from Wisconsin — 20,359. Almost a thousand California donors — 968 — sent money to campaigns. From Illinois came 606 donations and from New York, 505.

Gillian Morris, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin said the senators are pleased with the national interest in the elections. It proves that collective bargaining and union rights are issues that resonate with voters everywhere, she said.

“Nationally, people saw the attack on workers’ rights and on people’s right to sit down at the table and have a discussion about their workplace safety requirements,” Morris said. “Obviously, these are issues and values that everyone holds closely, and we understand why they acted out and chose to support the Democrats in this election.”

Jen Harrington, Kapanke’s campaign manager, agreed that the union reform bill resonated with voters nationwide, but noted that out-of-state donations to the six Republican senators prove that non-Wisconsinites also are eager to support the legislators who stayed in the Badger State to pass the measure.

Kapanke led all nine incumbent recall candidates in the amount of money raised from out-of-state donations, drawing $80,110 from a total of 1,107 non-Wisconsin contributions. That’s roughly 11 percent of Kapanke’s total of $729,363, which Harrington said she didn’t find surprising.

“Every time there’s a national story … we get responses from all over the country,” she said. “Frankly, a lot of this is a response due to the outrage over what the Democrats did, in running away and refusing to face the budget issues.”

Campaign representatives for Republicans receiving far fewer out-of-state donations also found reason to be optimistic.

“We would prefer to have people donating from our district,” said Jeff Weigand, campaign manager for Olsen, who received 48 out-of-state donations for a total of $10,239, or 9.5 percent of his total fundraising. “It shows that the people that live in the district have a vested interest in their state senator … it is a good thing to have more people from your district donating than from out of the state.”

But Morris slammed that logic, noting that more than 75 percent of the Democratic incumbents’ money to date has come from Wisconsin residents. The out-of-state money, she said, just underscores the fact that the issues behind the recall elections have drawn national attention.

“Obviously in these state Senate races, we’ve never seen national media attention, but now we are,” she said. “That obviously has an impact on what people are seeing and what people care about.”