Camp Randall Stadium, in the heart of downtown Madison, Wisconsin, was already filling with red-donned masses on the morning of September 19 as UW-Madison prepared to host Eastern Michigan. CFACT Collegians and staff got there first.
Nearly a dozen CFACT-affiliated personnel were on the ground, including National Director Nate Myers, National Field Coordinator Emma Arns, Grassroots Coordinator Saundra Little, and students hailing from Platteville, Wisconsin, to Carbondale, Illinois. Their job was straightforward: put a flyer in as many hands as the swelling game-day crowd would take.
One side of the handout was a 2026 Wisconsin Badgers football schedule and scorecard, the kind of keepsake a fan will actually pocket. That’s the hook. The other side carried the argument. Under the headline “Green New Deal? A Bad Deal for WI,” the flyer called on the state to “Exit the U.S. Climate Alliance Now,” citing an estimated $111 billion investment for Wisconsin’s net-zero transition — about $23,400 per Wisconsin adult. Across the bottom it read, “Wisconsin families deserve an affordable tomorrow.” That’s the reel.
Wind turbines in the United States kill hundreds of thousands of birds and more than a million bats every single year, without a peep from most so-called wildlife advocacy groups.
The group moved 3,000 flyers in just four hours.
Game-goers were receptive, some even stopped to chat and ask questions. Students and staff encountered virtually no pushback — save one ornery college student who, after reading the flyer, angrily “kicked them off” the front drive of his apartment directly across from the stadium where the team had temporarily placed their belongings. The team politely, though perhaps passive-aggressively, obliged by shifting their bags and backpacks several feet to the sidewalk and curb, still in front of the same apartment and much to the student’s chagrin.
That was the day’s only relocation.
Wisconsin solar farms put out only about 17% of the power they are advertised to make; they have never topped 20%, and while wind has managed about 28%, Point Beach nuclear plant runs above 90%.
“Camp Randall was packed, and people took the cards like hotcakes,” Myers said. “A football schedule gets the flyer into someone’s hand. The other side is what the Big Green lobby would rather they never see: Wisconsin cannot afford a Green New Deal, and it should get out of the U.S. Climate Alliance. Green energy mandates do not give families a bargain. They give them a more expensive, less reliable grid and cost tens of thousands of dollars per adult in equivalent local investment. If state leadership is serious about a stronger Wisconsin, it starts by rejecting those mandates full stop.”
The Madison football game was just the opening volley, not the last. An additional 10,000 flyers were divided among the Wisconsin students to keep circulating on their own campuses throughout the academic year.
Most of the world’s solar panels are made in China — about 80% or more of the supply chain, per the IEA — in factories with environmental rules that are weak on paper and even weaker in practice.
After a successful morning, CFACT staff treated the hungry crew to a well-earned meal at a local Culver’s. Fried food and fun times were shared amongst friends.
Fans came for football. Thousands left with a scorecard — and a reminder that energy policy will decide how reliably, and at what price, Wisconsin keeps the lights on.