A chaotic primary with five candidates collides with the legacy of social reform.

Five days before the Aug. 13 Wisconsin primary, four of the five candidates in the Democratic primary for a California Assembly seat in northeast Madison made detailed allegations against the fifth candidate, Andrew Hysell, who misappropriated millions of dollars in federal funds while serving as a partner in a firm that ran reading programs for the state of Kansas.

Wisconsin’s 48th congressional district covers the areas north and far east of Madison, around East Towne Mall, and extends northeast to Sun Prairie and southwest Dodge County. The incumbent, Samba Baldeh (D-Madison), is running for Senate, so five Democrats are running in the primary: Bill Connors, Andrew Hysell, Goodwill Obieze, Avery Renk and Rick Rose.

On August 8, Connors, Obieze, Renk and Rose released a joint statement saying, “Each campaign has been inundated with messages from voters concerned about (Hysell).” OK, sure. As a journalist, I would feel much more comfortable publishing the story if they had informed the press well in advance of early voting starting so we had time to thoroughly investigate the allegations rather than shuffling them into the discussion at the last minute.

Hysell has donated to Republicans in Kansas and Wisconsin over the past decade, including to former Kansas Attorney General and current congressional candidate Derek Schmidt. Those who follow Kansas politics know Schmidt as the elite legal expert who believes the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity is a victory for the “rule of law.” And, of course, Schmidt joined a lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election results. Hysell’s $100 donation to Schmidt came in 2021.

Hysell also released a statement on August 8, declaring that his “political contributions have predominantly gone to Democrats.” Campaign finance records compiled by the Campaign Transparency website Open secrets confirm this.

“As I worked for Save the Children, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and the Reading Roadmap, I made contributions to Republicans supporting tobacco control, early literacy, and early childhood programs,” Hysell wrote.

Tone Madison reached out to Hysell’s campaign team but received no response.

The more disturbing allegations involve Reading Roadmap, an after-school literacy program run by Hysell and Wagner LLC, where Hysell was managing partner from 2013 to 2020. In 2013, then-Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, a Republican, awarded Hysell and Wagner a no-bid contract for an average of $9 million a year from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program — what most people think of simply as the federal welfare program. But an audit the state launched under Brownback — which has not been made public — found that the company took $2.3 million in bogus payments in 2014 and 2015.

After Kansas Democratic Governor Laura Kelly took office in 2019, the state’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) claimed that Reading Roadmap:

• The federal salary limits for executives in organizations receiving TANF funds have been exceeded.
• 38 flights for executives were paid for with TANF dollars.
• The 15% ceiling for administrative costs set out in the grant contract was violated.

Hysell fought back, and in response DCF finally released the audits for 2014 and 2015. They stated:

• Receipts were missing for salary and benefit payments valued at over $820,000.
• Non-wage and indirect costs of $870,000 were inadequately documented.
• Payments to subcontractors of USD 988,000 were higher than actual costs.
• $2,260 of the Reading Roadmap funds were spent lobbying state senators.

In 2019, the state of Kansas terminated its contract with Hysell and Wagner. However, Hysell and Wagner filed a motion for a fair hearing, claiming that DCF’s audit was “unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious” and that its findings were “not consistent with applicable legal standards and requirements (and) not supported by substantial evidence.” In 2020, the state signed a settlement with Hysell and Wagner under which the company agreed to withdraw its appeal in exchange for a $100,000 payment.

Hysell told WORT last week that his opponents released the joint statement because “they’re afraid I’ll win.” Hysell graduated from high school in Milwaukee, attended Carroll University in Waukesha and began his career as a legislative aide. Since returning to Wisconsin, Hysell has been involved in Democratic politics. That likely explains his support from unions and Madison-area politicians, including 16th District Sen. Melissa Agard, who is running in a competitive primary for the Dane County Executive seat.

“I think this is basically a last-ditch effort to stop me,” Hysell said.

I wish I could give you a final assessment of Hysell, but I can’t because I’ve never spoken to him. But beyond this one person running for a seat in the House, there’s a bigger story to tell. And that’s the misuse of TANF funds, not necessarily by people like Hysell, but by the states that are supposed to administer them. Contrary to popular belief about welfare, most TANF funds don’t go directly to poor families in the form of cash assistance. Instead, the welfare reform law that President Bill Clinton signed in 1996 gives state-level politicians broad discretion to channel those funds into all sorts of initiatives and pet projects.

Sociologist Matthew Desmond pointed this out in an interview with NPR in 2023 while promoting his book Poverty in Americathat US welfare “is allocated to the poor on paper, but fails to reach them in practice.”

“If you look at (TANF), for every dollar that’s allocated for that program, only about 22 cents in dollars goes to a family,” Desmond told NPR at the time. “(B)ecause that program is paid out through what’s called a block grant, which gives states a lot of discretion in how they use their money, and they’re using that discretion. They’re using welfare money to fund Christian summer camps, anti-abortion centers (and) marriage initiatives.”

And after-school reading programs. Not that there’s anything wrong with an after-school reading program per se. Kansas DCF resumed administering Reading Roadmap in 2020, despite complaints from rural schools that they were being left out. But aside from a few case studies, there’s no evidence that all that money has improved reading scores across the state.

Because we keep trying to use education to solve a problem of poverty. Children learn to read much more effectively when they are well fed and safely housed (as long as they are not taught that “holistic language acquisition” crap). Nine million dollars a year could have made a huge difference in the lives of many children in a small state like Kansas.

This is not an attack on Hysell. If not him, Brownback would have found another program to spend the TANF dollars on. Of all the options Brownback could have chosen, an after-school reading program is far from the worst. Because as a Kansas resident, I can definitely say there’s one thing Brownback hated: helping poor people.