We journalists love to cover political elections, like horse races – who’s ahead in the polls and ballot boxes and who’s not? Who’s gaining and who’s falling behind?
Covering the underlying political and societal issues is far more complicated and less compelling than news stories.
The horse race for nominations for Wisconsin governor is over. But the race for governor between Rep. Tom Tiffany of the north woods and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley of the biggest city on the other end of the state is out of the starting gate. The contest will only be about two months long, and millions of dollars in simplistic advertising has kicked off.
Tiffany won the Republican nomination going away after several credible candidates dropped out of the contest for various reasons, personal and political, business owner and former Navy Seal officer Bill Berrien and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann.
Seven Democratic primary candidates made the crowded primary contest far more interesting and dramatic. Four of the seven dropped out in response to polls, including Crowley, who jumped back in at the 11th hour.
Six of the seven Democrats were trailing state Rep. Francesca Hong in the polls. Her leftist stance as an outspoken Democratic Socialist drew the support of more than one-third of Democratic voters.
Her front-running in the polls proved, however, to be an illusion. Two-thirds of her party’s respondents were not in her high-profile camp. In the pre-primary run up, they knew clearly who she was and opted against her in the polls as either “undecided” or for one of the other six candidates. She had 38% support in the polls, but 62%, a majority, of respondents were not behind her.
The majority of Democrats feared that her extreme views would lead to a governorship win by Tiffany, a spear-carrier for MAGA President Donald Trump. For them, what could be worse?
So, not surprisingly, a plurality of Democrats went for what they viewed as the most electable Democrat. Reading the polls incisively, Crowley’s team, led by Gov. Tony Evers, pulled him back into the horse race. The polls were accurate. Hong gained almost nothing in the primary election itself, and Crowley came from way behind at 7% and defeated her on the thinnest of margins.
Now comes the hard part. Tiffany and Crowley will have to define themselves by where they stand on the issues.
The late John McIver, a most successful GOP strategist, always stressed two things that campaigners needed to do: Pick three or four issues to highlight and stick with them. Second, be mindful of news stories that will break prior to the general election.
With the general election looming on Nov. 3, here, in my view, are the surfacing issues that will separate the two candidates:
- Affordability – Tiffany will have a lot of baggage due to his rubber stamp approval of President Trump’s agenda that has done nothing but raise prices for American consumers. Tiffany has supported the war in Iran that has jacked up gasoline prices. He has supported the president’s tariff wars against other countries, friends and foes. The tariffs are essentially a tax on families at more than $1000 a year and on businesses. While he has been in Congress, the U.S. deficit has grown to more than $2 trillion per year, and our annual debt has climbed to more than $40 trillion. That financial reality spells higher interest costs for Americans across the board. Crowley has been exceedingly general in his desire to seek lower prices for Wisconsin consumers.
- Health Care Costs – The number one issue under the heading of affordability is health costs. They are killing the budgets of families and businesses. AON, a professional services company, projects a 9.5% increase in medical bills in 2027. That will mark the 4th consecutive year of elevated care costs approaching double digits annually. That kind of inflation is simply unsustainable. Neither Crowley nor Tiffany have laid a glove on how to reduce that cost trend.
- Jobs/Entrepreneurship – Wisconsin job growth has been stagnant in recent years, despite the spectacular employment growth at startup companies like Exact Sciences and Epic Systems. Together they have created more than 20,000 jobs. The four Wisconsin economic summits at the turn of the century pointed to the necessity of reinventing the Wisconsin economy away from an over-reliance on manufacturing and agriculture where efficiencies have led to major job reductions. Innovative policies like the Wisconsin Investment Tax Credits for startups have worked, but have gone unremarked by the two gubernatorial candidates.
- Voting Integrity – Wisconsin elections have a history of near-perfect execution, despite some minimal glitches. Trump, looking like a loser, is obsessed with attacking the electoral systems at many levels. Will Tiffany support Trump in his attempts to rig the elections? Will Crowley fight off his attacks?
- Conservation of Land, Water and Air – The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund to protect precious lands went dark in 2026 after 36 years of brilliant work. State Republicans, especially northern legislators, have led the way in pulling the plug on the Stewardship Fund. Where will Crowley and Tiffany come down on conservation?
- University of Wisconsin Reform – In the face of sharply declining enrollments, Wisconsin needs a bold strategy to preserve the “Wisconsin Idea,” which has long promoted affordable education to the borders of the state. Will Crowley and Tiffany step up as leaders where Gov. Evers stepped back? Our governor vetoed a pilot project in Washington County to combine the state’s 16 technical colleges with the two-year UW colleges, which once encompassed 13 campuses and now has been reduced to seven. They would have become community colleges with both technical and liberal arts tracks. Six already exist.
- AI Data Centers – Federal and state governments, including Wisconsin, have defaulted to local governments for the regulation of massive data centers to support an economic revolution centered on artificial intelligence. Wisconsin now has a patchwork of public policy in communities across the state, even as multi-billion dollar data centers are under construction in Port Washington, Mount Pleasant and Beaver Dam. State leadership has been absent. Hong called for a moratorium on new centers. Where will Crowley and Tiffany come down?
Public policy in the above pivotal arenas will probably determine whether Crowley or Tiffany sits in the governor’s mansion for the next four years.
It will be a two-person horse race, with fat cats lobbing in millions of dollars for campaign advertising.
Hopefully, Wisconsin voters will be swayed more by where the two gubernatorial candidates come down on the issues rather than on what is certain to be gutter-level attacks on the candidates. Note that both candidates have respectable political experience.
More on each of these broad areas of pressing policy development in future columns.
