Wisconsin's Democratic primary for governor is four weeks away, and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez's campaign is scrambling after she fired her campaign manager over allegations of "serious mismanagement and inaccuracies."
Rodriguez says she became aware of a problem on Tuesday, July 7, after learning her TV ads were not running. The following day, Wednesday, July 8, she learned a media invoice had not been paid. By Thursday afternoon, July 9, Rodriguez said she discovered her campaign account had "hundreds of thousands of dollars less than I thought."
Rodriguez fired her campaign manager after discovering alleged serious mismanagement and inaccuracies in campaign finance filings.
Watch: A look at the days prior to shake up within Sara Rodriguez's campaign for Governor
"This is a bump in the road for the campaign, but we are going to be as honest and transparent as we can be. When I see something that is an error. I make sure that it gets fixed, and I am taking full accountability for what's happening before and moving forward," Rodriguez said.
The firing came days after Rodriguez's campaign announced what it called a $1 million TV buy. In a campaign commercial, Rodriguez had touted her background as a nurse.
"I'm Sara Rodriguez. As a nurse, you listen and fight for people. That's exactly what I'll do as governor," Rodriguez said in the campaign spot.
On Thursday morning, July 10 — three days before the news of the firing became public —TMJ4'S Charles Benson asked Rodriguez about the ad buy.
"So we are putting in a buy for -- commercials to go up on television," Rodriguez said.
At that point, by her own account, she had already learned the day before that the media invoice had not been paid.
When asked how much money she had raised ahead of the July 15 deadline to report financial numbers, Rodriguez declined to give a figure.
"You know, you're going to see that when everybody else sees the financial numbers," Rodriguez said.
Later that same morning, when pressed again, Rodriguez said:
"You're going to see that. I think that's going to be something that you're going to have a whole lot of stories about, so it's all good."
It would be later that day and over the weekend that she learned the financial numbers were off. Rodriguez now alleges the problem was with her campaign manager.
"I trusted her to do the job that I had hired her to do. That she had done for her entire career. And I regret placing my trust in that individual," Rodriguez said.
As of now, the Rodriguez campaign does not appear to have made any TV or commercial ad buys as the race enters its final four weeks.
This story was reported on-air by Charles Benson and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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