Groups defending Republican majorities in the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate have outraised and outspent their Democratic opponents thanks to nearly $8 million in donations from billionaire Diane Hendricks.
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Voters in Sauk and Winnebago counties will choose between sheriff candidates with competing visions for local law enforcement’s relationship with ICE.
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Sign for the Wisconsin Elections Comission. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
The Wisconsin Elections Commission met Thursday to assess its preparations for the midterm elections in November, review reports on allegations of voter fraud and determine the outcome of two complaints against election officials.
The commission met as concerns continue to swirl around Wisconsin and the country over the possibility that President Donald Trump and his Republican allies will work to undermine confidence in the results of the election.
In the meeting, WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe gave the agency’s pre-election readiness report in which she outlined the ways the commission works to keep the state’s voter rolls accurate, train election officials, ensure the election’s security and answer any questions that come from local officials or voters.
One of the most frequent complaints about the election system made by conspiracy theorists is that Wisconsin’s voter registration database includes the information of “inactive” voters who have moved, died or been convicted of a felony. The critics argue that leaving these files in the database makes it easier for fraud to occur.
The report states that WEC and local election officials have reviewed or updated nearly 500,000 voter files ahead of the election to make sure that only eligible voters cast votes in November.
“And in total, since the last general election, our municipal clerks have updated or deactivated over a half a million records, and so I think that’s really, really important to highlight how much work goes into maintaining Wisconsin’s voter registration list all day, every day to ensure that anybody that’s lawfully registered will show up on the registration list,” Wolfe said. “They’ll show up on the polls when they go to vote on Election Day, and anybody who is not eligible, so anybody who maybe has been convicted of a felony or is otherwise not eligible, is removed from the list or their record is updated.”
Commission Chair Don Millis, a Republican, said that leaving the inactive voter files in the database actually protects against fraud.
“Basically, you have one database with 7 million records, and there’s a very good reason why we keep records of inactive voter records, deceased voters, because if you got rid of those, you would lose one of your best tools to combat election fraud,” Millis said.
Wolfe also said that in an effort to provide as much information as possible to voters and clerks, the WEC office is set to open at 5 a.m. in the weeks ahead of the election.
Commissioner Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said she appreciates the sacrifice from WEC staff to help people, but that the agency’s 30-person staff is not large enough to handle the demands of the public.
“We have put in a request for our budget for many more positions because the work we’re doing has expanded dramatically,” Jacobs said. “It shouldn’t be something where people are sacrificing as much as they are. And I want to express my admiration for our staff’s devotion to this work and commitment to it. And also say that our need for additional staff is real. It’s profound. And I hope if any legislators are out there listening, that you treat our budget request for more personnel with great attention, and hopefully give us those staff positions.”
Commission staff also presented the results of the agency’s regular reports on felons who have voted and reported election fraud.
As is generally the case, neither report shows widespread levels of election fraud at the level Republicans have regularly alleged in recent years.
The report shows that since the 2020 general election, nearly 22 million votes have been cast in Wisconsin. Only 445 of those votes, 0.002%, were matched to voters with felony convictions and an even smaller number of those instances were actually referred to prosecutors and charged.
The commission’s annual report on voter fraud found that in the elections since November 2025, municipal clerks have referred 53 cases of election fraud to local prosecutors. The WEC report, agency staff said, could be an undercount because it’s dependent on clerks reporting the referrals to WEC when they happen.
Most of the referrals, 44 of them, were made because the “election day registration” postcard delivered to a person’s address after they register at the polls was returned undeliverable.
The commission also voted on Thursday that there is no probable cause to further investigate a voter’s complaint that the city of Milwaukee violated state law by sorting absentee ballots at its central count location behind a curtain.
The complaint alleged that city staff were conducting “observable” election activities behind the curtain at the city’s central count location during the November 2024 and April 2025 elections. The commission’s discussion of the complaint reopened long-running arguments between commission members — most notably from Republican Robert Spindell, who has long been the WEC member most friendly to election conspiracy theories.
Spindell argued that people continuing to have doubts about Wisconsin’s elections is evidence that Wisconsin’s elections aren’t run competently or transparently enough.
“Let’s stop having these problems that we have, where 45% of the citizens of Wisconsin feel that there’s something wrong with this thing,” Spindell said. “I’m sure Mayor [Cavalier] Johnson does not like the bad publicity that comes out regarding the lack of transparency. There’s no reason why that black curtain is up. There’s no reason why all these actions are being blocked if there’s nothing nefarious going on.”
Jacobs pointed out that the complaint included several blatantly false statements.
“Bob, I’m concerned by your comments because I know you’ve been to Central Count. I know you have seen ballots being opened in the machines. I know you have seen the tables. I know you have seen the poll workers calling out names. I know you have seen all this,” Jacobs said. “And this complaint was by someone who swore under penalty of perjury that those things were happening behind this curtain. This man brought a lie to us, a lie, because he’s so invested in putting forward this conspiracy theory of secret things going on behind black curtains that he’s willing to lie on these documents to us. You and I both know, we’re both there, you and I both know that’s not true and he lies to this commission with the hopes of diminishing the work being done in the city of Milwaukee and I think you should be as offended as I am by that, because I’m pretty darn offended.”
Mark Thomsen, another Democratic member of the commission, said that it’s Spindell’s repeated indulgence of conspiracy theories that has allowed distrust of the system to continue.
“For you to turn this discussion about a complaint and a recommendation into the politics of the election, I think that hurts us more than anything,” Thomsen said. “I think that promotes mistrust, and … years and years of this is like it’s like Chinese torture, Bob. I mean, it’s enough.”
Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich will not seek a third term as the city government’s top executive.
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Republican Tom Tiffany's campaign for governor raised more than $26 million in less than three months, dominating Democratic challenger David Crowley's figures, but early all of Tiffany's latest haul came from three billionaires funneling money through the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
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Democrat Rebecca Cooke is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in a closely-watched race for Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District.
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Democratic candidate David Crowley takes a photo with Soham Bhatnagar, a 22-year-old Verona resident. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin’s race for governor is tight with Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley up in the most recent Marquette poll over Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany, but down in fundraising.
“Why on Earth would anyone contribute that amount of money?” Crowley said, addressing supporters at an event on the north side of Madison Wednesday evening, the deadline for campaign finance filings. “Because they know that Congressman Tom Tiffany is willing to sell the state of Wisconsin, our precious state, to the highest bidder.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany’s September campaign finance report showed that he raised over $26 million between July 1 and Sept. 23, bringing his fundraising total for the year to over $39 million.
Of the money raised since July, over $24 million — or 93% — came from the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The party, which under state law is allowed to transfer an unlimited amount of money to candidates, reported raising $29 million during the period. Billionaire donors Diane Hendricks and Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein contributed $27.6 million of that amount.
State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), a former opponent of Crowley, joined the event with Madison’s Northside Action volunteers to tell supporters that Crowley “needs your money.”
One attendee brought up a recent ad from Texas Senate candidate James Talarico in which Talarico calls his Republican opponent Ken Paxton to propose a debate. Like Paxton, Tiffany has declined a few debate offers — although unlike Paxton, Tiffany has agreed to one debate, to be hosted by WISN-12 on Oct. 21.
“Talarico’s got a lot more money than me,” Crowley said in response.
While talking to another supporter, Crowley threw up his hands and shrugged his shoulders, declaring Tiffany “doesn’t have to fundraise because billionaires.”
Tiffany also reported spending nearly $19 million, leaving him with $12 million on hand.
Dane County Executive Melissa Agard told the Examiner that she doesn’t think Tiffany’s fundraising dominance will carry him to victory, noting that Elon Musk’s attempts to “buy” a state Supreme Court seat in 2024 did not work.
“We’ve seen in Wisconsin billionaires try to come in and buy election results, and folks in Wisconsin have woken up to that. It’s not going to work. We take care of each other,” Agard said.
Crowley told the Examiner that he is trying to focus on growing “people power” instead of focusing on “money power.”
“We didn’t get anywhere near $26 million dollars,” Crowley said of his fundraising.
Crowley’s campaign reported raising $10.2 million during the period. He spent $7.8 million and ended with $2.8 cash-on-hand. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin contributed $2.7 million of that total. The state party received two $1 million donations during the fundraising period, one from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and one from Lynde Uihlein.
He added that Tiffany’s $24 million “coming directly from three billionaires means that the rest of this state and those that he reached out to only donated $2 million, which lets me know that folks don’t believe in his leadership,” Crowley said. “They don’t believe that he’s going to do right by this state, and so we’re going to focus on people power, because that’s what trumps money power any day.”
A Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday showed Crowley leading Tiffany among likely voters 49% to 46%, with 5% of voters undecided.
“There’s been very little movement. These are, I think, obviously, inside the margin of error,” poll director Charles Franklin said. He noted that Crowley’s lead was slightly smaller than it was a month ago, especially among people who said they were likely to vote. Crowley’s support has dropped among independents, more of whom have developed a negative impression of him as the campaign, and a negative advertising blitz, have continued. But, Franklin noted, independents have also not moved to Tiffany. “It’s not yet boosting Tiffany a lot.”
Among registered voters Crowley led Tiffany by only one point — 46% to 45%.
The number of voters who said they thought favorably of Crowley dropped dramatically, with 13% more respondents seeing him unfavorably than favorably, compared to 4% more favorable than unfavorable in the previous poll. Franklin said much of the change came from Republican voters.
“People have gotten to know him some over this last month, though a quarter say they still haven’t heard enough, but of those people who’ve learned something about him, many more have formed an unfavorable opinion in this month than a favorable opinion,” Franklin said, adding that Tiffany’s favorability fell from -4 to -6. “He’s become just slightly more unfavorable, but very little change relative for him. A lot of change for David Crowley.”
Scot Ross, a longtime Democratic strategist, said he would rather be Crowley than Tiffany in the race, given the friendlier atmosphere for Democrats in the midterms, but he warned that the Marquette poll is a sign that the Republican candidate’s messaging is landing.
Ross said Tiffany and Republicans have been “lambasting” Crowley with ads that are “98%” negative, while Crowley and Democrats aren’t effectively showcasing Tiffany’s support for President Donald Trump.
“Tom Tiffany is 100% tied to the most unpopular elected official in American history, and I don’t think Democrats and their allies want to let this get away from them by not properly prosecuting the case against Donald Trump and Tom Tiffany,” Ross said. “And I do think that there has been a lack of advertising on the larger Democratic side attacking and tying Trump and Tiffany together.”
Trump’s approval among Wisconsinites fell to its lowest level in the poll at 38% and 60% said they didn’t approve of the job he was doing. Tiffany was viewed unfavorably by 45% of people.
Ross said the expected Democratic wave that is being shown in polling doesn’t “exist because of the good things necessarily that the Democrats are doing.”
“It is because, in every possible way, the corruption, the incompetence, the self-dealing of the Republicans under Donald Trump has turned off the American people,” Ross said, adding that Crowley needs to be on television and doing more media that ties Tiffany to the president.
Crowley recently returned from a trip to California for a fundraiser with former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in Wisconsin in 2024, and actor Sean Penn. People who attended the event gave contributions of between $500 and $20,000. Crowley’s fundraising in California follows a trend as Democrats travel to the West Coast to seek money, illustrated by a recent analysis by the L.A. Times of congressional campaigns.
After the trip, Crowley told reporters that he would be open to campaigning with Harris and “anyone who is willing to focus on lowering costs for working families.”
Asked about the shift in his favorability in the recent Marquette poll, Crowley said, “Well, when you have $15 million being spent on you.”
“The Republican playbook is to lie, distract, and to defy, and we’re going to bring more people to the table, and that’s what this campaign is focused on,” Crowley said. “Making sure that we can lower costs for our working families, that we can provide and expand childcare and healthcare.”
Crowley also said his campaign has been working to tie Tiffany to Trump, but that he is more focused on issues closer to home.
“I think that when people see the wave that happens across this entire country, it only has a ripple effect here in the state of Wisconsin, national politics has not really moved voters here in the state of Wisconsin,” Crowley said. “What’s going to move folks in this state is focusing on Wisconsin values.”
But for one Wisconsin resident at the Crowley event, national issues are part of why he is leaning toward Crowley.
Soham Bhatnagar, a 22-year-old who lives in Verona, said he learned about the Madison event online and decided to hurry over when he got off work early. He identifies as an independent and said he appreciates hearing from political candidates “no matter their persuasion.”
“At the beginning of the race, it was honestly a true toss-up for me,” Bhatnagar said.
“As the war has drawn on and the prices have gone on … when you have the congressman who’s not seeming to in a meaningful way break with anything, I believe that in itself injects a national element into this.”
Erica Bartsch, a mother from the northeast part of the state who posts on social media, supported state Rep. Francesca Hong in the primary, then turned her attention to trying to get people to vote for Crowley. Her advocacy turned to pleading in some of her recent videos as she asked where Crowley has been and urged him to get in front of voters more often.
“We need him to be accessible to the people. How can the people see where he’s at if it’s not even on his website?” Barsch said in one video, noting that she and many Wisconsinites would not be able to pay $20,000 to attend an event like his recent fundraiser in California.
Hong, who narrowly lost to Crowley in the primary, has been travelling the state to persuade people who voted for her to support Crowley in the general election.
Crowley’s campaign website does not currently include a “Meet David” page, which previously included a list of events where people could meet the candidate. His campaign says the website is being updated.
His website does include a link to volunteer opportunities, including knocking doors and phone banking, but not a list of events where people can meet Crowley.
Crowley is also traveling across the state, including attending Oktoberfest Parade in La Crosse, the Jackson County Fall Rally in Black River Falls and a community pig roast in Kenosha. Some of his appearances are not advertised ahead of time on his website or through social media. The Madison event was advertised not on Crowley’s website, but on the Northside Action Team’s Facebook page. Crowley also has scheduled appearances this week at the Public Market in Milwaukee and in Mauston.
The campaign and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin report attempting to contact more than 500,000 voters since the end of the primary. Crowley’s field campaign is coordinated with the state party.
Bartsch said Hong’s campaign helped bring out people who aren’t always engaged in politics and Crowley could do more to reach those voters and bring Democrats together.
“David Crowley has the plans and policies that can make people’s lives better,” Barsch said. “He just needs to get out and connect with the people on the ground to show that — to show how much he cares about Wisconsinites,” Bartsch said.
The poll found that Crowley is the choice of 98% of Democrats who favor socialist candidates, while 92% of those who do not favor socialists also support him. It also found that 44% of independents favor Crowley, while 18% support Tiffany. Another 38% of independents are undecided. While Crowley is ahead of Tiffany with independents, his support among independents recently fell by 11 points.
Agard said time is running out before the election.
“Everyone wants to have more face time with the candidate,” Agard said. “At this point, the countdown is on. We’re literally talking days now until our election and some people have already cast their vote, but there are only so many hours in a day. I look forward to more opportunities like this, where David is coming into town and is able to mix and mingle with ordinary people, but also, I encourage people to be curious and do their homework.”
The latest Marquette University poll of Wisconsin's race for governor shows Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly leading Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany.
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A growing number of states are taking action to respond to spiking gas and diesel prices. But Wisconsin isn't one of them.
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Sometimes voters who are dissatisfied with their choices write in candidates. But in Wisconsin, write-in candidates must typically be registered with the state for the votes to count.
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The entrance to the Wisconsin Assembly chambers. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
Republicans’ control of the Wisconsin Assembly is up in the air this November, and GOP candidates in competitive districts are taking steps to convince voters to allow them to extend their 16-year streak of leadership, including by distancing themselves from Republican leaders in Washington, D.C. and in Wisconsin.
Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email that the 2026 election environment is “more advantageous to Democrats than the 2024 environment was.”
Part of that environment can be seen in the approval ratings of President Donald Trump. A Marquette Law School poll released in September found that Trump’s approval has declined to 37% — down from 40% approval in July; 63% of respondents said they disapproved of the job Trump is doing.
A recent Marquette poll found that 46% of Wisconsin voters said they would vote for Democrats in legislative races, while 42% said they’d vote for Republicans. The survey did not deliver detailed information on specific districts.
“The party is all but certain to make additional gains,” Burden said of Wisconsin Democrats. “The question is whether the wave will be sufficient to put them over the top.”
Republicans hold a 54-seat majority in the 99-seat state Assembly. Democratic lawmakers need to hold all of their current seats in the Assembly and pick up five additional seats to flip the body, a steeper task than in the Senate where Democrats are looking to pick up at least two seats to take control.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Rep. August Tyler (R-Walworth), who is heading up the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee, did not respond to requests for an interview from the Examiner. In an interview with the New York Times, Vos described Trump as a “drag” on the party and said Republicans have worked to recruit center-right candidates to run in competitive districts.
“There’s nobody in Wisconsin that I think is yearning for a hard turn left or right,” Vos told the New York Times.
Assembly GOP candidates are sending out mailers that claim that politicians in Washington — where Republicans currently control every branch of government — are “driving up costs and increasing inflation.”
Instead of embracing their party’s leadership in Wisconsin, Republican candidates are also highlighting the moments where they have disagreed with their leadership to position themselves as independent voices.
A law that expanded Medicaid coverage for postpartum mothers and another measure that expanded breast cancer screenings are major reference points for Republican Assembly candidates. The bills had been held up by Vos until at the end of the legislative session. In a late-night press conference a group of Republican Assembly lawmakers — each from the most purple districts in the state and most of whom are now running for reelection — said they had convinced Vos and other caucus members to let the bills through. They also blamed Democrats for the bills almost failing.
A mailer for Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) includes a photo of him standing at the podium in the state Capitol talking to reporters during the press conference. Snyder faces a challenge from John Kroll, a Democratic Marathon County Board supervisor.
The image is accompanied by text that says Snyder’s work “wasn’t about the spotlight” and he will “always challenge the political leadership of either party if it’s the right thing to do for Marathon County’s families.” The same mailer pitches Snyder as an “old-school public servant” who has had “no problems bucking his own party to extend postpartum care for new mothers.”
In a Facebook post Friday, Rep. Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield) said he would “stand up to anyone to get stuff done for my local community” including Republican leadership, adding that he “did it when I fought for postpartum Medicaid expansion & Gail’s law, and I’ll do it again.” Donovan faces a challenge from Democrat Ben Brist, an army veteran. Donovan won his 2024 election in with 51.6% of the vote compared with 48.4% for his challenger
During a recent WisPolitics event, Joe Handrick, a former Republican Assembly member, said that Democrats can only flip the Legislature if Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley has a “really, really big” win against Republican Tom Tiffany. His prediction was that it would have to be a win of more than 4 or 5 points.
“If Tom Tiffany ties in the state of Wisconsin or loses by a couple of votes, the Republicans will maintain the Assembly,” Handrick said. “These Assembly Republicans outperform the top of the ticket.”
Handrick said swing voters’ interaction with Republican incumbents can help swing them their way.
“They can vote for one person for governor or president and then they’ve been voting for Assembly Republicans. The incumbents — every day when you’re an incumbent you’re helping somebody. You’re helping them with a problem with the DNR or with the driveway or helping them get their Medicaid issue resolved,” Handrick said. “Those Assembly Republicans have always done better than the top of the ticket and there’s no reason to think they won’t this year.”
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) told the Examiner in an interview that Republican candidates’ strategy to try to distance themselves from the rest of their party won’t work. She said that Democrats’ path to the majority is helped by Trump’s unpopularity.
“Trump is deeply unpopular across our battleground districts, and that’s more than the five that we need to flip in order to gain a majority,” Neubauer said. “We have a real opportunity here to put forward a new vision. We know that it is not easy to beat long-term incumbents, but we feel that we have the winning formula this year.”
Neubauer said Wisconsinites are “smart enough to see through these half-hearted attempts by Republicans to distance themselves from their own party.” She noted that Snyder, who has been in office for nearly a decade, has often voted in line with his party.
“He, of course, has not actually fought back against the Trump administration and Republicans in Washington who are doing nothing to address the cost increases that voters are experiencing,” she said. “Pat Snyder is an establishment Republican, and I think his voters understand that, and this strategy will not work.”
“Republicans understand that people are unhappy with their party, and they are not excited about showing up to vote Republican this fall,” Neubauer said. “Pat Snyder can try to tell his voters that he’s not a Republican, but at the end of the day, there’s going to be an R next to his name, and he went right along with his party in giving a tax break to data centers, in refusing to adequately fund our schools and thereby increase their property taxes,” Neubauer said. “Pat Snyder and his colleagues across the Republican battlegrounds have been with Robin Vos every step of the way, and I do think that their strategy is not going to work.”
The Republican Assembly Campaign Committee has raised $10.6 million this year to fuel the party’s efforts to keep control. The majority of the funds were donated by Diane Hendricks and Elizabeth Uihlein, billionaires who have contributed millions to help get Republicans elected up and down the ballot in Wisconsin. Hendricks and the Uihleins have also donated millions to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which has, in turn, channeled millions to Republican gubernatorial candidate Tiffany.
The Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee has reported raising more than $3.3 million this year.
Neubauer said Assembly Democrats’ formula for winning is a combination of candidates who understand the challenges of their local communities having direct conversations with voters and a “robust” paid media program.
Neubauer said that Democrats just have a “different” fundraising model. She said she expects there to be spending similar to the last election cycle when $1 million or more was spent in the most competitive seats and that money for Democrats tends to come later in the cycle.
“Assembly Republicans have raised a lot of money from three billionaires whose financial interests are directly tied to whether Republicans control the state Assembly,” Neubauer said, adding that the ADCC has more than 2,500 donors from across every county in the state. “Our candidates and our members are on the phone every single day, calling donors to bring in the dollars that we need to get our message out. And often those dollars come in in more like $50 or $100 checks than several-million-dollar checks, so we are going to continue to work hard to make sure that we have the resources that we need to compete… I am confident that we will be able to bring in the resources that we need to communicate this year.”
Burden noted that individual Democratic candidates have in some cases outraised their opponents. He named Assembly District 88 where Brandy Tollefson, the Democratic candidate and a De Pere school board member, reported raising more than $80,000 over the year compared with her opponent, incumbent Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere), who reported raising more than $27,000.
“Although the Republican Party has been outraising the Democrats, individual Democratic candidates have been doing well raising funds,” Burden said. “This pattern has also been happening nationally in that federal Republican Party committees have been raising more but Democratic candidates have mostly been outraising their Republican opponents within districts and states. Big donations from a few wealthy individuals are keeping Republicans more competitive this year in Wisconsin, but the money alone will not guarantee them victory.”
Here are the most competitive Assembly races to watch in the Nov. 3 election:
Francesca Hong, the progressive state legislator who narrowly lost the Democratic primary for governor, is hitting the road over the next month to rally her supporters around other Democratic candidates this November.
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“The formula used for funding our schools, for years, has failed our children, schools and entire communities,” Underly said during her address. Underly speaks to reporters after delivering her sixth State of Education address. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin State Superintendent Jill Underly called for the state to overhaul the school funding formula in her sixth State of Education address Thursday, saying that the state “simply cannot afford to wait any longer.”
Underly delivered the address less than six weeks before the November election, when Wisconsin voters will decide who she will be working with in the governor’s office and in the state Legislature on the next state budget. She will need their support to get the funding for the budget proposals she has begun to formulate.
The Department of Public Instruction so far has only submitted the first part of its budget request, which covered funding for libraries, support for children who are deaf and blind, public libraries, cybersecurity, technology modernization and the investigation of alleged educator misconduct. The agency said last week that it would release the second part of its request, for “categorical aid programs and other critical supports” for Wisconsin’s public schools, in November. The election is scheduled for Nov. 3.
“The formula used for funding our schools, for years, has failed our children, schools and entire communities,” Underly said during her address. “The reasons are varied and complex, but you don’t need to be familiar with every detail of the funding formula to know that it’s simply not working. The evidence is all around us.”
More than 75 school referendum requests carrying a total cost of $1.5 billion will go before voters in November. It’s just the latest round in a now-familiar ritual as school districts across the state seek approval to raise property taxes to make up for a shrinking pool of state aid. School districts that can’t pass a referendum have had to cut costs including by eliminating programs, staff and in some cases closing or consolidating schools. Districts on a streak of failed referendum requests have faced dissolution.
Underly noted that the classrooms of the Hustisford School District “sat empty” on the first day of school this year. The district started the dissolution process after its referendum failed in April.
“Every kid felt the impact,” Underly said. “Kindergarteners, who should have been walking through the doors of the school their family chose when they made this beautiful community home, instead traveled to a neighboring town. Meanwhile, seniors who spent the past 12 years as Hustisford Falcons started their last year of school in an unfamiliar building,” Underly continued. “This is what happens when we turn our back on our schools. And when schools close, the impact doesn’t stop with students. It ripples through entire communities.”
Underly said the state funding formula “places value on the wrong things,” including enrollment, district spending and property value, instead of on student needs.
“It fails to ask the most essential question: How much does it actually cost to educate the students who live in a district so that they have an equal opportunity to succeed? A student’s opportunity for success should not depend on their zip code,” she said.
School funding will depend on who’s in office. Republican candidate Tom Tiffany and Democratic candidate David Crowley are running to be governor and control of the state Senate and Assembly are up for grabs.
Some lawmakers have argued that rather than increase funding for schools the state needs to explore more school consolidation given declining enrollment. Asked about when school closure is the appropriate answer to declining enrollment, Underly told reporters she thinks “it deserves some study and conversation to figure out what’s best for kids.”
Underly pointed to the 2019 bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission while speaking to reporters. The commission, which was created by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and then-Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald in 2017, developed a report offering ideas to address school funding issues, as a guiding document for what the state should be doing. She said that the reports showed that there are kids who need additional support including those in poverty and who have special needs. She said money also needs to be invested in career and technical education, mental health supports and speech and language pathology.
“All these things have been in my past budget requests, and that’s what we will be able to expect in the next one, too,” Underly said. The agency’s 2024 state budget request totaled over $4 billion.
While Underly delivered her message with urgency, the timeline for changes could look vastly different depending on who wins in November.
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), who could become the Senate Majority leader depending on the results of the November elections, has said Democrats will increase school funding in the next state budget, but changing the state’s school funding formula could be a “multi-year” process.
“We’re also looking at a long-term goal of seeing what other states are doing and how they are funding their public schools, but that’s going to take probably a multi-year task to try to figure that all out and talking to our friends in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois,” Hesselbein said.
Crowley has been supportive of increasing school funding, including moving the state toward reimbursing districts for 90% of the cost of special education, instead of the current rate of 38% , but he has also suggested throughout his campaign for governor that there may need to be another Blue Ribbon Commission to study tax issues including school and local government funding. The last Blue Ribbon Commission on school funding took two years to complete.
Tiffany has said he wants some increases to school funding, but also promises to freeze property taxes if elected. He hasn’t provided clarity on how much he would invest or how he would balance the two issues. Tiffany has focused on issues of accountability and ensuring “high standards” as opposed to school funding when discussing education issues.
Underly has had a strained relationship with Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee, who have declined to invite her to testify in front of the committee, and it’s unclear whether a working relationship between her and Tiffany would be an improvement. Tiffany recently described the state superintendent’s position as a constitutional office as a “problem” at a Moms For Liberty Town Hall in Richfield. He said he would use the state budget, which determines the state’s spending for a two-year period, to try to steer the superintendent to make the decisions he wants her to make.
Underly said responding to the comments that independence is positive.
“When you think about my office, my office is nonpartisan. It’s independent. It is not at the whim of any governor and I think that actually strengthens public education,” Underly said. “I think his comments stand on their own.”
In her speech, Underly called for people to look at the candidates’ records on school issues, not their talking points, when making their decisions at the ballot box this November.
“We have people running for office who have spent a decade or more in government, in positions to make school funding decisions — or who have left state government for another level and now want to return — whose records include repeatedly voting against investments in Wisconsin’s children,” Underly said, apparently referring to Tiffany, who as a state lawmaker served on the budget committee before he was elected to Congress. “Past actions are the best evidence we have of what someone will do when given power again. Wisconsin does not need more people who tell us they support children while their votes tell a different story. We need people in positions of decision-making power who are pro-public school, pro-child and pro-Wisconsin.”
Leonard Boltz speaks about illegal voting at a Republican Party of Langlade County meeting in June, 2026. (Screenshot via Rumble)
Leonard Boltz, the 73-year-old who has flown Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany to events across the state, has long had ties with some of the state’s most prominent election deniers and said recently that if Tiffany loses in November it will be because of “cheating” by Democrats.
Boltz, the chair of the Langlade County Republican Party and a retired major in the U.S. Air Force, has been a regular contributor to Republican candidates and causes, state and federal campaign finance records show, but has provided personal air travel only for Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign.
Earlier this month, Boltz was flying Tiffany from La Crosse to Wausau when a mechanical failure forced a crash landing into Lake Wausau. Both men swam to a shallow area where they were rescued and treated for minor injuries. Boltz was lauded as a hero.
Wisconsin state campaign finance records show that Boltz flew Tiffany around the state 12 times between January and June. The total value of these in-kind contributions was claimed on campaign finance filings as $2,354.
Beyond the instances in which the Tiffany campaign reported flying with Boltz, the two men appear to have both attended the same conservative events over the past year.
Flight tracking data shows that Boltz’s Beech K35 aircraft was flown to the same area as a Tiffany campaign event on at least three other occasions in July.
On July 11, Tiffany was in Door County picking cherries the same day that Boltz’s plane flew from the Door County airport in Sturgeon Bay to Antigo. On July 25, flight records show the plane flew from Rhinelander to Waukesha the same day that Tiffany appeared at an event in Pewaukee. Two days later, on July 27, the plane flew from Rhinelander to Milwaukee on the same day Tiffany held events across the Milwaukee area.
The plane was also in Green Bay the same day that Tiffany attended a Charlie Kirk memorial event there on Oct. 14 last year and landed in Baraboo the same weekend in May that Tiffany was crowned the Republican nominee for governor at the party’s convention in Wisconsin Dells.
The flight data and campaign finance records, along with public statements Boltz has made, suggest an ongoing relationship between Tiffany and an outspoken member of the election conspiracy wing of the state Republican Party even as Tiffany works to distance himself from his previous support of the ideas Boltz espouses and their originator, President Donald Trump.
Tiffany voted against certifying the 2020 election results and in May of this year, would not say whether Biden won. This month, Tiffany told Wisconsin Watch that Biden won the 2020 election, but that he would cooperate with Trump’s ongoing federal investigations into the election.
The Examiner approached Tiffany for comment for this story at a campaign event in Waukesha County Wednesday evening. Tiffany ducked into his car while two of Tiffany’s staff members, including Alex Walker, the son of former Gov. Scott Walker, physically blocked a reporter as he asked a question.
As of publication, the campaign had not responded to a list of questions sent by email.
The Examiner reached Boltz by email and phone Thursday morning. He said on the phone he had “no comment” and hung up before he could be asked any questions.
An Examiner review of videos of Boltz posted to the right-wing video platform Rumble show the extent of Boltz’s support for election conspiracy theories — including his support for GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde’s claim that, despite Trump’s 2024 victory in Wisconsin, Democrats somehow cheated Hovde out of a win over Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on the same ballot.
At a Republican Party of Langlade County meeting in late June, video shows Boltz saying people had been asking him how Tiffany’s campaign was going. He said the November election would come down to whether or not the SAVE Act is passed to stop “cheating.” The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act introduces a slew of proposed restrictions on voting across the country in the name of stopping noncitizens from voting. Tiffany has been supportive of the measure in Congress, which Trump strongly supports.
“What I tell people is, well, if Trump can get through some of these election integrity issues before November, I think it’s a piece of cake,” Boltz said.
“I don’t think there’s any question that Tom will win if we can stop some of the cheating. Again, we’re not going to stop it all, but if we can stop some of the cheating, I think, certainly, Tom is going to win… Cheating is all they’ve got. They’ve got to cling, they’ve gotta hang onto cheating, and they gotta get cheating. It’s the only possible way.”
At that same meeting, Boltz said he’d recently spoken with Tiffany about the party’s chances of winning this fall.
Harry Wait, a prominent Racine County election conspiracy theorist, also spoke at the county party meeting in June. Wait was convicted in May of breaking state law by impersonating voters to request absentee ballots, with the intention of trying to expose flaws in the election system. He filed the requests using the names of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Racine Mayor Cory Mason without their permission.
Wait, campaign finance records show, has made several donations of $1,000 to Boltz’s Langlade County Republican Party.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Boltz helped Terry Brand, the former chair of the Langlade County GOP and former mayor of Antigo, resurrect the county party, serving as vice chair and then chair. He became involved in the state’s election conspiracy movement shortly after the 2020 election.
Video posted to Rumble shows Boltz appeared at a rally in 2021 outside of the Wisconsin State Capitol to call for a “cyber forensic audit” of the 2020 election. He spoke there about going to Maricopa County, Arizona, the Phoenix-area county that helped swing the state for President Joe Biden and became a target of Trump’s false claims the election was stolen from him. At the time, an IT firm with no election experience was running a widely derided audit of the election.
Boltz said he went to Arizona with former Rep. Janel Brandtjen of Menomonee Falls. Brandtjen, who used her position as chair of the Assembly elections committee to spread conspiracy theories and attempt to oust Meagan Wolfe from her position as the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, was kicked out of Republican caucus meetings and then lost her seat in the Assembly in a 2024 primary election.
“I was very fortunate to be able to get out to Maricopa County,” Boltz said at the rally outside the Capitol. “My chairman, Terry Brand, and I decided that it was high time Wisconsin get out to Maricopa County… I was able to join the delegation. Now, that worked out awfully well, because a lot of the delegation sort of got muzzled… Robin Vos muzzled most of the people that went out there.”
Boltz went on to say the state needed to have a cyber forensic audit because “there’s so much fraud in Wisconsin.” Brandtjen and former state Rep. Timothy Ramthun made similar calls at the time.
“There’s maybe more fraud in Wisconsin than there was in Maricopa County, and they had plenty,” Boltz said. “Our legislators, for the most part, with the exception of Janel [Brandtjen] and a couple others have failed us. Our courts have certainly failed us. Who’s gonna make this happen? You are. You are. We’re gonna have to force this issue. Folks, we’re gonna have to keep the pressure on our legislators, keep the letters, the emails, the phone calls coming, but really, it’s still going to be up to you, us.”
Boltz’s work also extended to electing Republican legislators who would buck the authority of Vos — who in his tenure as speaker was known for maintaining a tight grip on the actions of his caucus. The election denial wing of the party had become hostile to Vos after he fired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman from his job investigating the 2020 election and refused to support the effort to impeach Wolfe.
In an August 2024 video, Boltz stood alongside county party chairs and candidates for the Assembly, including now-Rep. Lindee Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) and criticized Assembly Republicans for not helping oust Wolfe. He said not supporting Brandtjen in that effort was like “going against apple pie in America.”
“That’s why these people are here,” Boltz said. “They want to change things in the Assembly. They want to be independent thinkers and not just vote Robin Vos. That’s why we can’t always be unified with the Republicans in the Assembly because they’re not real Republicans. They’re RINOs.”
The advocacy of Brandtjen, Ramthun and their allies was crucial to the creation of Gableman’s fruitless review of the 2020 election. Gableman donated $1,000 to the Langlade County party last November.
In 2022, Boltz, then the vice chair of the county party, and Brand, then the chair, also played a role in a campaign finance scheme in which about $40,000 was funneled through the county party’s accounts to the campaign of Adam Steen, an election denier who attempted several times to unseat Vos. The state ethics commission recommended that criminal charges be filed against Boltz, Brand and Brandtjen but local prosecutors declined to charge them.
In 2023, Boltz said in an interview that he flew to Springfield, Missouri to appear with Ramthun at the “Election Crime” summit held by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and election conspiracy theorist who this year ran a failed campaign for Minnesota governor. Boltz said he and Ramthun were taking the place of Gableman, who was supposed to deliver a report on Wisconsin at the summit but was unavailable at the last minute.
On Jan. 6, 2025, Boltz appeared on the “Regular Joe” show’s “Red, Right & Wisconsin” podcast where he was introduced as the chair of the county party. Boltz talked about his work to grow the Langlade County Republican Party as well as Wisconsin’s 2024 U.S. Senate race.
Boltz said he didn’t believe Eric Hovde, the failed GOP Senate candidate, lost against Sen. Tammy Baldwin. In 2024, Hovde didn’t concede to Baldwin until nearly two weeks after the election as he questioned the vote counting process. There was no evidence of irregularities in the vote count.
“Why don’t you look to see if Hovde really did lose? I don’t believe he did,” Boltz said. He added that Peter Bernegger, a prominent purveyor of election conspiracy theories in Wisconsin, did not believe Hovde lost either. At Brandtjen’s invitation Bernegger made several appearances before the Assembly elections committee to give testimony containing numerous debunked claims about the 2020 election.
“You know we still have Democratic clerks in Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, Racine,” Boltz said on the Regular Joe podcast. “Those Democrat clerks are a problem and they have proven themselves to be a problem.”
This year, on May 13, Tiffany donated $475 to the Langlade County Republican Party. On the same day, records show, the party gave a “gift” of $3,000 to Bernegger.
In April, Gableman, Bernegger and Wait all appeared as speakers or special guests at the Langlade County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln-Reagan-Trump dinner.
Since 2010, Boltz has given more than $35,000 to county chapters of the Republican Party, the state party and candidates including Scott Walker, Rebecca Kleefisch and Brad Schimel. He’s also donated to several state legislative candidates including Brandtjen, Brill and Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee).
Federal campaign finance records show that Boltz has donated more than $7,000 to the national Republican Party and federal candidates for office. That includes $1,500 in donations to Tiffany’s previous congressional campaigns and a $1,000 donation this year to the campaign of Michael Alfonso, the Trump-endorsed candidate running for Tiffany’s 7th Congressional District seat. He’s also given to the presidential campaigns of both John McCain and President Trump.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany answers questions from the press at the Wisconsin Counties Association annual conference on Sept. 22. (Screenshot/WisEye)
The gubernatorial campaign of Republican Tom Tiffany blocked two reporters for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel from entering an event in Milwaukee Thursday, preventing the state’s largest newspaper from covering the campaign.
The campaign’s decision to prevent reporters Mary Spicuzza and David Clarey from covering the event comes just days after Tiffany said at a news conference that he would allow reporters, even those from “slanted” outlets such as the Journal-Sentinel, access to his campaign. Tiffany was asked about press access in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke White House press badges for reporters from CNN, MS Now and Politico.
“As you can see, I did not deter anyone here from joining us today and I don’t plan on doing that — even you [Journal-Sentinel reporter] Laura [Schulte], I’m going to continue to allow you here,” Tiffany said at the Wisconsin Counties Association conference on Tuesday. “I believe in open, free press, that they be able to ask us questions. The principle that I live with, is I just expect all of you to be fair, and as long as you’re fair in your writing, I always welcome the press here. It’s when the press is slanted, that’s what’s frustrating.”
At the event, Tiffany told reporters that he’ll “have to talk to his communications team” about Spicuzza’s access.
In a post on social media after the event, Tiffany’s campaign said it had notified Spicuzza that she wouldn’t be allowed into the event because of her alleged political views, but that other staff members from the outlet would be allowed.
“Liberal activist [Spicuzza] was notified yesterday that she would not be permitted to attend,” the Tiffany campaign wrote on X. “[The Journal-Sentinel] has a photographer at the event, and we welcome all balanced journalists across Wisconsin, including [Journal-Sentinel reporter Jessie Opoien]. That’s why WISN, CBS 58, and other outlets are in attendance.”
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editor Greg Borowski said in a statement that preventing the paper’s reporters from covering events prevents information from being shared with voters.
“When our reporters cover campaigns and attend political events, they are there on behalf of the public,” Borowski said. “Blocking them blocks the public from vital information. Our aim is to help voters understand the candidates, their backgrounds and their positions. We will continue to pursue fair and unbiased coverage, despite campaigns creating unnecessary hurdles.”
This story has been updated to include the second reporter, David Clarey, who was denied access to the event.
President Donald Trump recently broke Wisconsin law by offering cash to voters if his preferred candidates win this fall’s congressional elections. This continues his patterned disregard for state election laws and long-standing policies enacted to keep our democracy free from corruption. The president is unlikely to face legal repercussions, though others have been punished and likely would be prosecuted for similar conduct. The reality is that we, as citizens and voters, bear the responsibility of deciding what we will tolerate from our leaders.
Recently in Texas, the president said, “If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump dividend.” Some shrugged his comments off as unserious or impracticable. Others opined that they fall within the bounds of First Amendment protected speech. But Wisconsin law expressly rejects paying for votes in any fashion; in particular, Wis. Stat. § 12.11(1m)(a)3. prescribes felony charges for “Any person who … offers (or) gives … anything of value … in order to induce any elector to … vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.”
A different provision in the same statute — this one prohibiting offers to induce people to vote or refrain from the act of voting — is the basis of Law Forward’s ongoing lawsuit against Elon Musk for promising opportunities to receive $1 million payments in exchange for voting before Election Day in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Wisconsin’s election bribery statute contains exceptions to protect ordinary endorsements of candidates and robust campaign activities, but neither the president’s recent promise nor Musk’s scheme last year seems to fit into those exceptions.
This is a big deal. Wisconsin law forbids any offers to voters worth more than a single dollar. This has been raised over the years in response to numerous food-related giveaways, from sandwiches to barbecue to ice cream. Wisconsin authorities even considered filing election bribery charges against Democratic campaign workers who provided kringle to residents of a group home in an effort to encourage them to cast absentee ballots. This is no kringle: The president is using the prospect of $5,000 payments to sway the midterm elections in favor of Republican candidates.
Wisconsin law forbids election bribery to prevent any hint of corruption and to ensure that voters are making their choices on the merits. For the same reasons, Wisconsin forbids voting in an election where you have wagered on the outcome. This law has recently been criticized by prediction market websites.
The law’s laudable goals will remain out of reach if prosecutors are unwilling or unable to enforce them. No prosecutor has challenged President Trump over his latest comments. That is unsurprising: The U.S. Supreme Court decided a few years ago that the president stands above the law, enjoying near-absolute immunity from prosecution for his conduct. In so doing, the court weakened a fundamental axiom of our democracy: that ours is a nation of laws, not men. This misguided decision shields the president from even the threat of criminal liability for, among other things, violations of Wisconsin’s election bribery law.
But even those without presidential immunity are evading criminal accountability. Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Elections Commission found probable cause that Musk engaged in illegal election bribery. La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke nevertheless declined to prosecute, even as he acknowledged that a statement by Musk “could be seen as … (offering) to pay someone (for) voting.” To be sure, picking a fight with Musk is a daunting prospect, given his public profile, his wealth, his ownership of X, and his scorched-earth litigation tactics. But the rule of law requires standing up to even those — indeed, especially those — who wield tremendous power. Yet, sadly, America’s most powerful figures increasingly operate under their own set of rules in our shared democracy.
This is evident right now in the president’s all-out assault on voting rights. Even as he routinely votes absentee by mail, the president seeks to limit everyone else’s ability to do so. He has the federal departments of Justice and Homeland Security running roughshod over state election laws in a fruitless quest to identify noncitizen voters. He has sued dozens of states in an effort to seize private voter information, but courts in Wisconsin and every other state that has considered the matter have ruled against him. And after the president asserted in a primetime national address that DHS had identified more than 24,000 noncitizen voters in just four states, the administration admitted that number is false. DOJ has indicted 19 noncitizens — in the entire country — for allegedly voting unlawfully over the past decade.
So, what should we expect in the face of unprecedented attacks on the right to vote and ever-increasing threats to our democracy? That is up to us, as citizens and as voters. Each of us individually, and all of us societally, must decide how much we value our freedoms, our traditions and the rule of law. In the face of emboldened corruptors, wary prosecutors and an overburdened judiciary, how will we exercise active citizenship and stand up for our values? Will we demand that political parties and candidates for office, if they want our vote, must speak to these issues and defend democracy?
Corruption erodes and weakens the foundations underlying democracy. The future of American democracy is in our hands. We are the inheritors of a profound legacy, and it is up to us to ensure that, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Jeff Mandell is the president and general counsel of Law Forward.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
Guest opinion: Voters must stand up to leaders who act above the law is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany is taking some small steps to distance himself from President Donald Trump. Tiffany speaks to a crowd at his launch event a year ago in Wausau. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
About a month and a half out from the midterm elections, gubernatorial Republican candidate Tom Tiffany is taking some small steps to distance himself from President Donald Trump and the rising gas prices that are resulting from the war in Iran. Meanwhile, Democratic candidate David Crowley is seeking to highlight Tiffany’s history of loyalty to the two-term president.
Tiffany and Crowley made comments about gas prices, the Iran war and Trump’s recent media bans while talking to reporters at the Wisconsin Counties Association on Tuesday after pitching local county officials on why each is the right candidate to lead the state.
Tiffany , who is endorsed by Trump, told reporters that he thinks it is “time to “wrap up” the war in Iran, even though he has voted in Congress against measures that would have directed Trump to end the military engagement and respect the constitutional warmaking authority of Congress. Most recently, Tiffany did not join the seven House Republicans who broke ranks last week and voted to stop Trump’s war with Iran unless Congress approved further action.
Trump pondered on Monday whether to “annihilate” Iran while addressing the United Nations General Assembly.
Tiffany explained that he voted against the measures ending the conflict because he believes the “president has that authority, and so he should exercise that authority.”
Congress holds the sole power to declare war under the U.S. Constitution.
“The president has final say in regards to this, but I just believe that we should be exiting Iran,” Tiffany said. “It’s time to move on. We’ve degraded their nuclear facilities. We degraded their military. Most of their ships are on the bottom of the ocean. Time to come home, take care of business here in America.”
The Iran war has driven diesel prices to a record high average of $6.51 per gallon this week with the Midwest outpacing the rest of the country. In Wisconsin, the average prices of a gallon of diesel hit $6.56 on Monday, according to AAA.
Asked whether the gas prices will hurt Republicans in the midterms, Tiffany said “we’ll see what happens” and said the U.S. needs to work to become energy independent. He argued that Crowley would not help the issue given his support of “net zero.”
“No diesel fuel, no gasoline, no crude oil. Do you think he’s gonna fix the problem? Clearly he won’t,” Tiffany said.
Crowley has been targeting Tiffany on the issue this week, visiting a farmer in Baraboo to talk about the issue and releasing an ad that blames Tiffany for contributing to the rise in diesel and gas prices.
“Tiffany has proven with every vote that he works for Donald Trump and the billionaires trying to buy this election, not for the families, farmers, and small business owners paying the price at the pump,” Crowley said in a statement. “Five times he has had the chance to end the war that’s driving our prices up, and five times he’s chosen Trump instead. Tom Tiffany’s only loyal to Trump — not us, Wisconsin.”
Tiffany said he would not restrict media access on a state level. The Trump administration banned three media outlets, CNN, Politico and MS Now, from covering him in the White House. The outlets are suing, and other major outlets are boycotting by halting TV coverage of the White House.
While Tiffany said he believes in a free press, he also immediately turned to criticize “slanted” media outlets and told a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that despite his belief that her outlet is “slanted,” he would “continue to allow” her to cover him.
“I did not deter anyone here from joining us today and I don’t plan on doing that. I believe in open free press that they be able to ask us questions,” Tiffany said. “The principle that I live with is that I just expect all of you to be fair, and as long as you’re fair in your writing, I always welcome the press here. It’s when the press is slanted, that’s what’s frustrating,” he said, echoing Trump’s criticism of much of the U.S. media.
“Even when the press has been slanted, as we’ve seen with the Journal Sentinel… we still have them here today,” Tiffany added.
Crowley said he would “absolutely not” implement any statewide media ban as governor and said he was glad to see major outlets supporting the other outlets by boycotting coverage.
“We want to make sure that we have the freedom of the press. I think it’s extremely important,” Crowley said.
Wisconsin State Capitol (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Two Waukesha County Republicans are asking voters to reelect them to the state Legislature in November while simultaneously campaigning to become the county’s next executive in a December special election.
Paul Farrow, who had served as the Waukesha County executive since 2015, was a former state lawmaker and previous chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, died in July after a two year battle with a rare and aggressive abdominal cancer. Tom Farley, who previously worked as the county’s lead attorney, was sworn in to serve as the interim county executive on July 30 after being nominated by the county board.
The race to serve the last few months of Farrow’s four-year term has so far attracted the attention of two longtime GOP lawmakers who are also currently running for reelection to their respective seats: Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield).
But the lawmakers concurrently running for two offices sets up a tangle of filing deadlines and election dates. The deadline to file nominating signatures to get on the special election ballot is Oct. 20 and if they both gain access, a primary election will be held Nov. 17 — just over two weeks after they’ll both be on the ballot in the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
Kapenga announced his candidacy on July 13 in an interview with conservative radio host Dan O’Donnell.
“Usually, you get excited about announcing, but this is just unfortunate,” Kapenga said, adding that he was praying for Farrow’s family.
Neylon announced his campaign in early September. Neylon, who said Farrow was a mentor of his, said he spent time grieving and then mulling the decision.
“I believe our families deserve leaders who put community first and show up, listen, work well with others, and deliver results to protect the values that built this place, and I think that, given my experience, my background, that I’m the right person for the job,” Neylon told the Wisconsin Examiner.
After the special election, a regular election for a full term as the county executive will happen in April 2027.
Both will appear on ballots in November in races for their respective legislative seat. Within 60 days following the certification of the election as county executive, a lawmaker would need to resign from their position. State law prevents legislators from serving in the Legislature and as a county executive.
Kapenga and Neylon’s decision to seek the job outside the Legislature follows a wave of Republicans opting to not run for reelection this year, including Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester). Though state lawmakers regularly run for open county executive seats.
Kapenga or Neylon’s departure from the Legislature would be one fewer Republican with legislative experience and would trigger the need for a special election to fill the seat.
Farrow was a state senator when he ran in 2015 and his election created a vacancy that Kapenga filled by winning a special election for the Senate seat that July. Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley, then a state Assembly member, was elected to be Milwaukee County executive in May 2020, and former Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard ran to be Dane County executive after deciding not to run for reelection.
With control of the Senate and Assembly at stake in November, the possibility of a legislative vacancy adds another variable for the next legislative session.
Kapenga did not respond to requests for an interview from the Examiner, but during his interview with O’Donnell, he said he expects another Republican to be elected to his seat if he wins the special election and resigns.
“It’s almost statistically impossible unless somebody really makes a major mistake in this seat to lose it to a Dem so that risk is very low,” Kapenga, who won his last reelection effort unopposed, said.
Kapenga is facing a challenge for the state Senate seat from Mike Van Someren, a Democrat and attorney from the Town of Delafield, in the race for state Senate.
Van Someren has knocked Kapenga for campaigning for county executive while running for the state Senate, saying in a video posted to TikTok that “it’s clear we’re both out there working for the job we really want.”
“So in this instance, I just want to wish both luck,” he said.
The Examiner spoke with Neylon about his campaigns. He said he is focused on winning reelection to the Assembly and then will turn his focus to the county executive race.
“It’s going to be a sprint,” Neylon said of the turn around time between elections. “There’s not a lot of people paying attention to the county executive race right now when you have the general election on the horizon. People are talking about the governor’s race. People are talking about the majorities, and I’m part of that.”
In the race for the Assembly, Neylon faces a challenge from Democrat Stephen Tryon, an author. He won his 2024 election in a 59.1% to 40.9% vote against his Democratic opponent.
Neylon said wants to help Republicans keep their majority as Assembly Democrats are seeking to flip five seats and put Republicans out of power for the first time in 16 years, but that he also has unfinished business in the Assembly that he’d like to work on.
“When I left Madison at the end of last session, I didn’t leave thinking it was over,” Neylon said. “I think it’s actually a positive thing, not something that I’m going to apologize for.”
With Vos and other GOP leadership retirements, Neylon said he wants to be involved in choosing a new leader for Assembly Republicans. He said there is also some legislation that he would want the opportunity to propose, including on AI and regulating Flock license plate readers.
Neylon said it was a difficult decision, but there wasn’t much strategic thought put into running for both seats. He said he sees an opportunity in the county executive role and thinks he is best suited for the job due to his ability to listen to people and work collaboratively.
“At the end of the day, the ultimate consideration was, do I want to do this? And I do,” Neylon said. “I think that when you look at the opportunity that Waukesha County Executive presents to be able to be an advocate and a leader in a community that I love, that I care about, that I want to protect for my kids to make sure that they have the same opportunities that we do. It just felt like I had to raise my hand and step up, and I felt a sense of commitment and responsibility to do so.”
Kapenga is known for being a staunch conservative and fiscal hawk, who wants to cut taxes and reduce government services. He has at times been the lone “No” vote on bipartisan legislation, including a law to provide additional coverage for breast cancer screenings. He’s also been part of hardline Republican intraparty feuding that led to legislation failing or Republican leaders turning to Democrats for help getting bills across the finish line.
One issue that has defined the race so far is taxes. Waukesha County is one of two counties in the state that do not impose a local county tax on top of the state sales tax of 5%. During his tenure, Farrow had proposed a plan to implement a sales tax to avoid steep cuts in services. It was withdrawn in January 2025.
Neylon and Kapenga have said they are opposed to implementing a sales tax.
“Things cost more. Based on the last budget projected deficits into the future at the current levels of spending, so there’s been an interest in looking at different ways to increase government revenues,” Neylon said. “I think we need to be more innovative about the solutions we’re offering to people instead of always just going back to we need to raise tax.”
Neylon said he wouldn’t look to shared revenue from the state to help with the county’s fiscal issues, however, he said he would lobby state lawmakers to allow the county to keep more revenue from fees that currently go to the state.
Neylon has said he would also bring his focus on regulatory reform to county government, including to rising housing costs by looking to ease zoning and permitting rules that he says slow construction. He has spent much of his legislative career focused on rulemaking, including as the the lead author of the REINS Act, the Walker-era law that requires state agencies to halt the rulemaking process for any proposed administrative rule estimated to cost $10 million or more. He also served as the chair of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rulemaking.
Kapenga, who has worked as a certified public accountant, told O’Donnell that his experience would help provide a different perspective to county government.
“I think it really works well with the challenges that we’re facing as we go forward,” Kapenga said.
Voting booths set up at Madison, Wisconsin's Hawthorne Library on Election Day 2022. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
Voting in Wisconsin’s midterm elections has officially begun. Local clerks across the state were required to send absentee ballots to voters with valid requests already on file by Thursday, Sept. 17.
Data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission shows that 299,849 absentee ballots have already been requested and 4,309 have already been returned.
The first absentee ballots were sent after months of wrangling by the administration of President Donald Trump to restrict ballots sent through the mail. While the court system thwarted that effort, concerns about the timely return of absentee ballots through the mail remain.
Absentee ballots must be returned to a voter’s local election clerk by the time polls close on Election Day, Nov. 3. To give ballots enough time, election officials have recommended they be placed in the mail at least 10 days before Election Day. WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe recently changed that recommended deadline to 14 days before Election Day, or Oct. 20.
Voters can also return their absentee ballots directly to their municipal clerk’s office, take it to their polling place on Election Day or, in communities that use them, drop their ballots in an official municipal absentee ballot drop box.
Early in-person absentee voting will open Oct. 20. Hours and locations for early voting and returning mailed absentee ballots can be found on municipal clerk websites.
The biggest race on the ballot in Wisconsin this year is the open race for governor between Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany. Wisconsin’s eight congressional seats, 99 state Assembly seats and 16 state Senate seats are also up for election. Control of the Legislature is up for grabs for the first time in more than 15 years.
Voters will also decide statewide races for attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state and will vote on three proposed constitutional amendments. The constitutional amendments would prohibit state and local governments from instituting diversity, equity and inclusion policies, prevent government edicts closing places of worship during emergencies and limit the governor’s line-item veto authority.
Voters can see the candidates and referendum questions on their ballots at MyVote.WI.gov.
Rep. Jenna Jacobson ran a campaign ad claiming Sen. Howard Marklein "invested thousands of dollars in Chinese corporations." (Photo of Jacobson courtesy of campaign. Photo of Marklein by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Both the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Wisconsin Senate have said of their efforts to win control of the chamber that their candidates are staying focused on issues close to home. However, this week the focus of the race for the 17th Senate District turned to a country 6,000 miles away: China.
The race in Wisconsin’s 17th Senate District, a key district that will help determine control of the body, pits Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), the incumbent in the race, against Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon), a two-term state representative. Marklein was first elected to the seat in 2014 after serving two terms in the Assembly and has served for the last two sessions as the co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, which drafts the state budget.
The subject of China entered the race when the Jacobson campaign began running an ad last week that claimed Marklein had “invested thousands of dollars in Chinese corporations” while voting against a “measure that would have made Wisconsin buy more American made products.” The ad displays an image of Marklein’s face beside the Chinese flag.
“While Marklein was making money off of his Chinese investments, he was stealing money from American workers like me,” a man dressed as a construction worker says in the ad. “Someone who sold us out like that should never be in the state Senate.”
The ad led to Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), head of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate, to call a press conference to defend Marklein Tuesday. Testin called the ad “deceptive” and a “sick smear campaign.”
Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email that it’s “quite unusual for China or another other foreign country to be much of an issue in a campaign for a state legislative seat.”
Burden said the “focus on China in the 17th district is a kind of proxy for other issues,” including concerns about politicians “enriching themselves unethically because of investments” as well as worries about the construction of new data centers that some Wisconsinites see as drain on resources and harmful to the environment in addition to being related to U.S. AI developers’ competition with China.
The ad, however, is seeking to tie some of Marklein’s prior reported investments to his lack of support for a Democratic bill in 2013 that would have required state and local contracts to give preference to materials manufactured in the United States.
Wisconsin public officials and candidates are required to file a Statement of Economic Interests under state law to disclose financial relationships and prevent conflicts of interest.
According to his 2022 statement of economic interest, Marklein had over $50,000 in a WisdomTree Emerging Markets Fund as well as between $5,000 and $50,000 in investments in the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Fund. According to Sofi, investing in emerging market funds means owning shares in companies from India, Brazil, South Africa and China with the latter representing a large portion of many emerging market index funds.
Marklein’s most recent statement of economic interest included no emerging market funds.
In his press conference defending Marklein, Testin appeared to think the ad was related to investments made through the Wisconsin Retirement System, saying Jacobson, and every state employee, has similar investments. (The Wisconsin Retirement System is not prohibited from making investments in businesses in China, though Republicans have proposed barring the State of Wisconsin Investment Board from doing so in the past.)
Testin said Jacobson was “trying to be tough on foreign adversaries now that it might be politically beneficial for her.”
“The truth is that Jacobson could have spent months standing up to our nation’s adversaries like China, but when she had the opportunity to support meaningful legislation that would protect Wisconsin from foreign influence, she voted no,” Testin said, referring to bills that would have restricted business with China.
Testin proposed and Marklein co-authored a bill that would have barred Wisconsin agencies from contracting with certain foreign businesses, including China. Two other bills would have prohibited China from buying Wisconsin land and prohibited the University of Wisconsin system from providing study abroad and research there.
“Jacobson has no backbone, only a slick eye for political gain. She’s quick to point a finger at people like Sen. Marklein when it benefits her, but when she has the chance to help Wisconsin, she’s only interested when there could be gains for her,” Testin said.
Jacobson voted against the two bills that passed the Assembly. Both were vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers. The issue has also come up in the race for governor, with Republican candidate Tom Tiffany saying he would have signed at least one of those bills as governor.
Burden said connecting politicians to China could “tarnish” their reputations. According to a Nov. 2025 Marquette Law School Poll, 65% of Americans held an unfavorable view of China and its leader, President Xi Jinping, while 19% said they had a favorable view of China.
Burden said of Jacobson’s ad that “a connection to Marklein’s potential support for Chinese businesses and government is a way for her to point out to voters without a strong partisan preference why he should be defeated.”
Will Karcz, a spokesperson for the State Senate Democratic Committee, said in a statement to the Examiner that the ad was meant to provide voters in the 17th with “the truth of Howard Marklein’s personal foreign investment history.”
“Howard has repeatedly voted against protecting Wisconsin manufacturing while cashing in on tens of thousands of dollars he invested in Chinese-owned corporations,” Karcz said. “He got rich on the backs of Wisconsin workers. Jenna Jacobson is running to make Wisconsin stronger while Howard has spent the last 10 years putting his bottom line ahead of his constituents.”
Whether the message resonates with voters is unclear.
Todd Allbaugh, a former Republican who grew up in Richland Center and formerly worked for Sen. Dale Schulz, told the Examiner in an interview that he was confused when he saw the ad about a week ago. He lives in Madison, but still has family in the district.
“I’ve seen this ad now probably somewhere around 20-ish times. It was baffling,” Allbaugh said. He said he didn’t understand what it was trying to get at until he looked it up using Claude, the AI assistant developed by Anthropic. “If you have to go to Claude to figure it out, it probably isn’t a really effective ad.”
Allbaugh acknowledged that Marklein has some advantages in the race given his status as an incumbent. Marklein won his 2022 race with 60% of the vote, though the district has changed considerably under the new maps. It now represents Iowa, Lafayette, Green, Crawford and Grant counties as well as parts of Dane County.
“I know the 17th Senate District pretty much like the back of my hand because it’s home,” Allbaugh said. “With the newly drawn maps it’s certainly become more competitive for Democrats, probably the most competitive in a very long time.”
Allbaugh said that he thinks Marklein is “scared for his political life,” as he is suddenly running in a competitive district and that can be seen in his campaign. One of Marklein’s recent ads positioned him as a bipartisan “bridge builder” and as “your man in the middle” and highlighted tax cuts that have been made while he’s been in office as well as some investments that have been made into local EMS and into the Lone Rock Bridge, which opened this year after two years of construction.
In Allbaugh’s opinion, Jacobson’s campaign should focus on local issues that Marklein has had some say over. He noted the closure of the UW-Platteville Richland Center campus and the UW-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County campus that have happened while Marklein has chaired the Joint Finance Committee as well as the struggle that public schools in the district have had.
“I think she’s a super strong candidate. She’s affable. She is enormously more likable and connects to people better than Howard Marklein, and I would if I were advising them, which I’m not, I would lean into that,” Allbaugh said. “Be authentic instead of listening to consultants with boilerplate things that they’re using in the other races. It doesn’t seem like a smart use of money when there are so many more easily understood issues that are particular to the 17th Senate District.”
Jacobson’s economic statement of interest from 2022 and 2024 does not list any emerging market funds.
Her 2024 statement lists an investment in the American Funds The New Economy Fund. According to the Capital Group website, it is mainly invested in the U.S. though it has a mix of investments abroad. About 15% of the fund is in Asia, including China.
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