(Headline USA) A Democrat Wisconsin Senate candidate spent nearly $600,000 in taxpayer dollars on private security over the past two years while trying to gain the support of radical defund the police groups.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the presumptive Democrat nominee to challenge Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., paid a private security detail service $587,281 in taxpayer funds between Jan. 7, 2019 and Nov. 6, 2021. He was paying for 8,868 regular hours of police protection, 4,900 hours of overtime protection, and 203 hours of holiday protection, according to records obtained by Fox News.
But during that same time period, Barnes was cozying up to radical leftist groups that support defunding and abolishing law enforcement.
In July 2020, he downplayed the extremism of defund the police groups:
Defunding the police only dreams of being as radical as a Donald Trump pardon.
— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) July 11, 2020
He has also worked closely with the Center for Popular Democracy, a leftist group that has called for defunding the police and “state-sanctioned violence.”
At least five other leftist organizations that support defunding the police have donated to Barnes’s Senate campaign. Barnes has also supported groups that want to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
When a leftist activist offered to send him an “Abolish ICE” T-shirt, for example, Barnes replied on Twitter, “I need that.”
A picture later surfaced of him holding the “Abolish ICE” T-shirt and smiling:
This kind of stuff is why @TheOtherMandela will never be able to beat Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. pic.twitter.com/cDvHzNcfkM
— Matt L. Barron (@MrRural) January 11, 2022
However, Barnes has insisted that he doesn’t support defunding the police or abolishing ICE.
“I am not a part of the Abolish ICE movement because no one slogan can capture all the work we have to do,” Barnes said in a statement.
