Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who dropped out of the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor and then rejoined the race with the endorsement of Gov. Tony Evers, is campaigning across the state in the last days before the election on Aug. 11. Freelance videographer Jonathan Klett captures full video of his Wednesday, Aug. 7 campaign stop in Waukesha.

With a week remaining before Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley is gaining late momentum with a series of endorsements and a fundraising advantage as state Rep. Francesca Hong faces renewed scrutiny about years-old, controversial social media posts. 

Crowley, who reentered the race about two weeks ago after dropping out, is campaigning across the state this week, including with Gov. Tony Evers. The popular two-term governor had stayed out of the race until after a series of upheavals in the primary that helped Hong to grow her lead over other candidates. Evers recently told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Hong could “probably not” win the general election against U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the likely Republican nominee for governor. 

Crowley only has six days to build momentum before Election Day. Last week, the latest Marquette Law School Poll, which was taken before former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes dropped out of the race, found Crowley polling at 7% — more than 30 points behind Hong, with about 34% of voters still undecided. Asked on Tuesday if Evers’ endorsement came too late on Tuesday, Crowley said it could “be critical.”

“I would’ve loved to have Gov. Evers’ endorsement earlier, but this is where we are today,” Crowley said. 

Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus and the Vice Chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview that she is endorsing Crowley and doesn’t think it is too late for him to win. 

“I believe that with the right support, he can get it done,” Drake said. “It’s clear that [Hong] is leading in the polls, and everyone’s talking about it, but I will say what I have seen is you have a lot of folks that reached out to Crowley to get back in the race because they trust his leadership that much, and so for that reason, I do believe that there is a possibility that he could still pull this off.”

Drake is the latest to come out in support of Crowley in recent days. He has also gained endorsements from the Congressional Black Caucus PAC and U.S. Congresswoman Gwen Moore in recent days.

Crowley has a slight fundraising advantage over Hong, according to pre-primary reports filed on Monday. 

Crowley reported $775,813.32 raised between July 1 and July 27. He spent $627,921 and ended the period before the primary with $463,070. Meanwhile, Hong reported raising $338,757. She spent $343,204 and had $406,117 in the bank. 

Tiffany is also continuing to build his financial strength, reporting $4.6 million raised between July 1 and July 27. That brings his total raised this year to $13.3 million. He has spent a little over $10 million, including $2.6 million during the period, leaving him with $4.97 million in the bank.

Drake, who previously served in the state Assembly with both Hong and Crowley, has stayed neutral in the race up to now, especially as she said that she hasn’t appreciated conversation that downplays either candidate’s accomplishments. She said that she understands the momentum for Hong.

However, Drake said the debate was a turning point for her. 

“For me, knowing the need to introduce legislation, move it through the building, and get it to a place where it gets signed by a governor, you need someone that’s going to understand the legislative process and the governing process — and David Crowley has both,” Drake said. 

Democrats are also competing to flip the state Senate and Assembly. Drake said she’s confident they’ll be able to flip the Senate and doesn’t see the party’s gubernatorial nominee affecting those chances, but as Drake and her caucus are seeking to make progress on their caucus’ policy goals next session, she says the governor’s office is vital.

Drake said Crowley’s positions on education also informed her decision. She said Crowley is the “only candidate aware of the nuances facing Black and brown families and their children; especially on education disparities.”

“I want someone as governor who will focus on getting things done rather than political platitudes that dictate where Black and brown parents should send their kids to school,” Drake said. 

Hong has called for the “responsible” end to the private school voucher program, including in Milwaukee. Nearly half of school-aged children in the city attend charter, private voucher and other non-traditional schools. Crowley has said he doesn’t want to expand or cut the programs, but wants to focus on the question of funding public schools. 

Hong responds to renewed scrutiny over old posts

Hong held an energetic rally with U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and controversial leftist streamer Hasan Piker over the weekend in Milwaukee. Asked whether it was risky to associate herself with Piker, she told reporters that “it would be a risk not to try to build the broadest coalition possible.” She also launched a nearly two-minute video ad that tied data center construction to FoxConn. 

Hong spent the first part of this week navigating controversy over her past posts on social media. Republicans, including presumptive GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany, have resurfaced and amplified posts about canceling Thanksgiving in 2020, about abolishing police because they “exist to uphold white supremacy” and about wanting to leave a Culver’s in Black Rivers Falls with her young son because she “was on the verge of a anxiety attack” because of “too many old white people who didn’t think we spoke english.”

In an interview with CNN journalist Kaitlin Collins, Hong was asked whether she still wants to cancel Thanksgiving.

“I’m a chef, and one of the first meals that I made for the community when I was 16 was a Thanksgiving meal. But Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities,” Hong said. “And so I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve.”

Tiffany issued a statement saying that he wouldn’t cancel Thanksgiving as governor. 

David Axelrod, former advisor to President Barack Obama, said in a post that it is “answers like these that cause many to think if this chef wins the gubernatorial primary in WI, Ds may be cooked.” 

Drake said she thinks Democrats need a nominee “who is ready for prime time,” noting how Republicans attacked Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes during his 2022 run for the U.S. Senate. 

“Given some of the stuff that’s being done now by the GOP about [Hong’s tweets], they’re nothing more than a distraction, and it’s intentional,” Drake said. “You have folks that are concerned about housing, that really don’t know where their next meal is going to come from, and our food pantries are already struggling to keep their food in stock with grocery stores and just affording gas. An everyday voter is not going to be concerned about somebody’s tweets. They’re going to be concerned about issues of how am I going to take care of my kids? How am I going to provide for my family? How am I going to have a job that pays me enough that’s well? And so, for me, it’s nothing more than — it’s a distraction, where we’re not talking about the actual issues that voters care about.”

Evers also voiced his strong doubts and concerns about Hong’s general election chances while on the road with Crowley in Appleton, which was recently hit by tornadoes. 

“She spends a lot of time from what I understand talking on Twitter and all these other extraneous issues. We’re working together on issues and getting it done. People of Wisconsin expect this,” Evers said, noting that there were “people in this room who have seen tornados destroy their city and we’re going to spend time on that bullshit that others are talking about on Twitter. You can ask me a hundred times, I’m going to give you the same damn answer. This issue is around getting things done. This guy has done it.”

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who hasn’t endorsed a candidate, weighed in on the race on Tuesday. 

“Candidates give bad interviews sometimes. They better grow from it. The [governor] has a right to endorse & campaign for people. Get over it. People have a right to run even if they get single digits. I may not get it, but it’s their right,” Pocan wrote on X. “Did I piss off a little bit of everyone?”

Former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan and State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) are also continuing their campaigns across the state.

Hong’s campaign said in a statement that Evers’ characterization “does not reflect the race we have run.” The campaign said Hong is not bringing up the posts, but that others are bringing them up to distract “from the strong support her policy platform has earned across Wisconsin” and that they are staying focused on the issues including leading the call for a moratorium on data center construction and lowering costs of housing and groceries. 

Hong, in her CNN interview, said Tiffany is “having to go back to a lot of my old tweets, because his actions and his resume, what he’s done is defunded healthcare, ripped food away from our children, supported a national abortion ban.” 

“And last time I checked, he still hasn’t said who won the 2020 election,” Hong added. “Being an election denier is an automatic disqualifier.”

UPDATE: This story has been updated with additional details.

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes announced he is suspending his campaign for governor Thursday in a video posted to social media, narrowing the field to four as state Rep. Francesca Hong has expanded her lead in polls. 

“We’re incredibly proud of all the things that we’ve accomplished and all the resources that we have raised to spread our message, but it’s become very clear who our nominee is going to be,” Barnes said in the video without naming a candidate. 

Mainstream Democrats in recent weeks have been seeking a candidate to consolidate behind to stop Hong, a democratic socialist many fear cannot win the general election against Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, but her lead has only grown in the last week. 

Barnes had faced doubts since he launched his campaign last Dec., in part due to his failed U.S. campaign against U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022, but he has largely been considered to be among the  frontrunners in the race. The latest Marquette University Law School poll showed him with 16% support among likely primary voters, second to Hong’s 38%, but way ahead of the rest of the field, with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley placing third at 7%. In recent weeks, Barnes has been competing most directly with Crowley, who exited the race a few weeks ago, but restarted his campaign with the endorsement of Gov. Tony Evers after Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez dropped her bid.

According to a Politico report, Barnes’ announcement comes as damaging media reports about him were expected to hit in coming hours. His exit leaves it a four-way race between Hong, Crowley, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan and state Sen. Kelda Roys. 

The winner of the Aug. 11 Democratic primary will likely face U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the presumptive GOP candidate in November. 

“Now, we have to do everything we possibly can to defeat Tom Tiffany, and that’s exactly what I’m committed to do for the next 96 days,” Barnes said.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Barnes’ decision also comes amid reporting by the outlet on allegations that Barnes took advantage of his role in the party to have sexual encounters with young adult women. He has not been accused of any crimes. According to the Journal Sentinel report, in 2025, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin hired a law firm to look into similar claims but the allegations they received were anonymous and unspecific and nothing actionable was found.

Reactions from Evers, candidates

Evers told reporters, in reaction to the news, that he was surprised by Barnes’ dropping out. Barnes served as lieutenant governor during Evers’ first term in office and was the first Black person to hold the position in the state’s history.

“But he needs to do what he needs to do,” Evers said. “I don’t know why he’s getting out. I have to believe it’s something relatively important.”

Evers also reiterated his support for Crowley.

“He’s the best candidate running even if Mandela was in,” Evers said.

Other candidates in the race sought to encourage Barnes supporters to join their campaign.

“The Barnes campaign helped grow the progressive movement,” Hong said in a statement. “To everyone who supported Mandela because you believe working people deserve a government that fights for them, I welcome you to our movement.”

“To everyone who backed Mandela: there’s a place for you in what we’re building,” Crowley said in a social media post. “It’s going to take all of us to beat Tom Tiffany.”

Brennan said it is “unfortunate for voters that this primary has gotten more attention for chaos than the stakes of this election.” He said that he is “going to continue to focus on reaching voters to talk about what I’ll do to win and lead our state to a stronger future.”

In a statement, the Roys campaign also focused on moving forward with sharing her message across the state.

“She has the most endorsements, the most cash on hand, the most experience, and the most likelihood of beating Tom Tiffany in November,” Jalen Knuteson, spokesperson for the Roys campaign, said in a statement. “No drama, no baggage, just a lifetime of fighting bullies and billionaires and turning progressive ideas into law.”

 

Thank you, Wisconsin. pic.twitter.com/FKDjCaPdJZ

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) July 30, 2026

The five Democratic candidates for governor of Wisconsin will face off in the only televised debate ahead of the Aug. 11 primary Tuesday evening at 7 p.m.

The candidates are former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, Joel Brennan, former state Department of Administration chief, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Rep. Francesca Hong and state Sen. Kelda Roys.

The meeting of the candidates comes on the first day of in-person early voting with two weeks to go before Election Day. Candidates are still seeking ways to gain an advantage in the race as over 40% of Wisconsin likely voters have not made up their minds about which candidate to support. Recent polls show Hong leading the race. 

The winner of the primary will likely face U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the presumptive Republican nominee in November. 

The debate, which will run until 8 p.m., will be hosted by WISN 12 on the Marquette University campus and moderated by Gerron Jordan and Matt Smith, WISN 12 journalists and hosts of “Upfront.” There will not be an in-person audience. 

According to WISN, the debate will air on WISN 12 along with local ABC affiliates across the state including WBAY in Green Bay, WKOW 27.2 in Madison, WXOW 19.2 in La Crosse, WQOW 18.2 in Eau Claire and WAOW 9.2 in Wausau. It will also be livestreamed on the WISN-12 app as well as the station’s Facebook page and YouTube page. 

Joel Brennan was taking a break from his shift at a Sheboygan County Dairy Breakfast on a sunny Saturday morning in June. Outside the sprawling barn where he’d  been handing out sausages to hungry customers, he met up with Rosemary Verheyen.

A Wisconsin native who moved back to the state after spending most of her career in California, Verheyen, 66, had looked up Brennan’s campaign for governor on Facebook — part of a personal project to meet all the candidates before casting her ballot.

She sent Brennan a direct message asking for a chance to meet him in person. She got a reply the same day and learned about his upcoming dairy breakfast gig.

Verheyen and Brennan talked for 10 or 15 minutes. Brennan asked her about the younger generation in her extended family and what concerns were on her mind. The talk turned to housing, and Verheyen explained she owns a mobile home but has to rent the lot where she keeps it.

“My rent goes up by more than my Social Security does every year,” she said. In California, she explained, state law caps how much rental mobile home lots can increase their rental costs annually — but not in Wisconsin.

At the end of their conversation, she took a selfie with Brennan.

“You should keep after me when I get elected,” he told her with a smile. “I will!” Verheyen replied cheerfully.

Recalling their conversation a few weeks later, Verheyen told the Examiner that Brennan had impressed her right away. “He looked me right in the eye when he said ‘hello,’” she said. “So that right there made me feel like, oh, my gosh, he actually can see me. Because if I can’t be seen, how can I be helped, right?”

An outlier in the race

Joel Brennan is counting on moments — and impressions — like that one as he pursues the Democratic Party nomination in the 2026 election for governor. Among the five remaining hopefuls in the field, he’s something of an outlier — the only one who is not either a current or former elected official.

Brennan, 56, served as Department of Administration secretary for the first three years of Gov. Tony Evers’ eight-year tenure, then left to become executive director of the Greater Milwaukee Committee. He’s currently taking an unpaid leave from the civic group made up of business and nonprofit leaders.

As an Evers cabinet member Brennan was very much in the background. That’s a political disadvantage when it comes to name recognition, a baseline asset for anyone running for office.

“That’s my biggest challenge, simply that I am not well known enough,” Brennan says. To overcome that, he adds, “It’s shoe leather and trying to organize around the state.”

Although he entered the race in early December, months after most of the other Democratic hopefuls, a campaign finance report filed in mid-January showed that he had already raised more than $500,000. He decided to spend money on early advertising to introduce himself to the public.

“I got in the race late, but I was able to get general parity with the rest of the field, who had three months to raise money, and I had just a couple weeks,” Brennan says. “That is a demonstration, I think, of some of the support that I had, and the network that I’ve got around the state, and I’m leaning into that.”

When he tells people he meets at campaign events and meet-and-greet sessions why he’s running and “the path that I want to lay forward for Wisconsin,” Brennan says, he gets a positive reception. “I think that truly undecided minds — I win more of them than I don’t.”

Policy laundry list

Brennan’s  policy positions  overlap those of most of his rivals. His campaign website issues section has at least as many provisions and goes into at least as much detail as any of the others. It includes break-out sections on healthcare, housing and  democracy, as well as proposals addressing property taxes, education, the environment and other topics.

The website includes general assurances about “How we pay for it,” pointing out that some of his proposals will save taxpayers money, advocating for closing tax loopholes, requiring community benefit agreements for data centers and assessing the sources of pollution for the cost of cleanup.  

Although they may differ on some details, he and the four other Democrats in the race have all called for restoring public employees’ collective bargaining rights, repealing other laws passed during former Gov. Scott Walker’s two terms that weakened labor unions, and passing budgets that increase funding for public schools and reduce school districts’ dependence on property taxes.

Brennan endorses a paid medical and family leave program funded through employer and employee contributions, a free school lunch program, and measures reducing childcare costs for families while bolstering childcare providers’ resources.

He has publicly criticized the Trump administration on tariffs, healthcare cuts, other federal program cuts and abuses by federal immigration officers. Yet Brennan’s approach is less pugilistic than that of some of the other Democrats. “Joel doesn’t wake up looking for a fight,” his website states. “There’s a difference between fighting and getting something done. Joel intends to do both.”

Emphasizing experience, competence

For all his policy specifics, Brennan rests the case for his candidacy on a three-decade-plus history of executive jobs in government and nonprofits — both for the experience he has gained and the connections he has forged.

“I grew up in a large family, and relationships were absolutely central to that, and they’ve been central to every part of my career,” Brennan says.

Brennan was born in the Milwaukee suburbs, the second youngest of 11 children. He grew up there and in the city and graduated from Marquette University, where he majored in English literature and political science. Brennan interned for a Massachusetts member of Congress one summer, and served on the staff of U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett before working in public affairs at Miller Brewing Co. and then at the Greater Milwaukee Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Brennan has also been a behind-the-scenes political insider. He managed two Barrett campaigns — for governor in 2002 (Barrett lost the primary) and mayor in 2004. After Barrett won that race, Brennan worked in the Milwaukee redevelopment authority during Barrett’s first three years as mayor.

Before joining the Evers administration, Brennan was CEO at Discovery World, a Milwaukee museum and education center for science and technology.

In his campaign trips around Wisconsin, Brennan has earned “some credibility because of the company I keep,” he says. “Those people who have been supportive and been part of my career — I’ve got to demonstrate to them that I can do the job, and they want to kick the tires on me, but those are opportunities that I’ve gotten because of some of the relationships that I’ve developed and I’ve cultivated over the course of my career, in the course of my life.”

When Barrett ran for governor in 2010 against Scott Walker, then the Milwaukee County executive, Brennan was drafted to play Walker in debate rehearsals. He repeated that role with Barrett in the 2012 recall election and again for Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate who challenged Walker for reelection in 2014.

The Democrats nominated Evers to run against Walker, seeking a third term, in 2018, and Brennan was asked if he’d do a repeat performance as the Republican governor.

“I said, ‘Great, I’ll be happy to do it again, but we’ve lost the last three times I’ve done this,’” he recalls. Despite his demurrals, “they wanted me to do it again,” he says. “My job was to toughen him up for the debate prep with Scott.” When Evers won the election, he says, “I was thrilled.”

Brennan says he didn’t actively seek a job in the new administration, but he had several connections with the Evers transition team and was soon tapped to lead DOA.

“Really the job is to help the governor run the executive branch,” Brennan says. The Department of Administration helps the governor’s office put together the state budget proposal, serves as the human resources department for the state’s 35,000 employees and manages Wisconsin’s real estate — the Capitol, the executive residence in Maple Bluff and the state’s office buildings. It’s also the face of state government in its interactions with local municipalities and negotiates compacts with the tribes located in Wisconsin.

Making appeals to the undecided

After the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, the department was responsible for managing more than $4 billion in federal relief funds, first in the 2020 CARES Act in the last year of the Trump administration and then in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act that President Joe Biden signed about two months after taking office.

Brennan has been emphasizing those experiences when he meets voters.

“I can tell you that most every room that I go into, if there are undecided people in them, or if there are people who don’t know who I am, they walk away thinking, One, ‘Here’s somebody who’s got a history of accomplishment, and who, over the course of two decades, has almost exclusively executive experience, more executive experience than anybody else in the race,’” Brennan says.

“‘Two, he’s demonstrated that he can do the job, he knows state government, he knows the context around Madison, he’s got passion,’” he continues. “I think everybody who sees me walks away with that, and you know, more often than not, I believe I’m walking away with more of those people for me than for somebody else.”

Translating those small-group connections into a message that will reach a lot of voters is a challenge, he acknowledges. “I can’t do that in groups of 25 and 50 forever,” Brennan says. “I’ve got to find a way to speak to a larger audience.”

Brennan has looked for other ways to garner attention.

An early campaign ad featuring his teenage children pokes fun at him for telling “Dad jokes.” 

Brennan was one of a handful of politicians who volunteered to serve at the Sheboygan County Dairy Breakfast. (The presumptive Republican nominee, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, did as well — handing out slices of ham at a table right behind Brennan.)

Recently, as his Democratic  rivals began issuing  negative statements about each other, Brennan’s campaign released a 99-page opposition research report on himself. Perhaps its harshest bullet points were public statements that criticized his opposition as Greater Milwaukee Committee CEO to a Milwaukee Public School referendum that narrowly passed in 2024.

“My life has pretty much been an open book — and here are 99 pages of data that demonstrate it,” Brennan said in a written statement accompanying the oppo research report. “I might even be the only gubernatorial candidate in the country willing to take this step — but more should. And voters would be better off if we did.”

The report didn’t refer to an April Urban Milwaukee column by Editor Bruce Murphy, which cited an anonymous source who said Brennan’s campaign had been pitched to donors as a safe “white centrist.” Brennan flatly denies the characterization.

“I am somebody who has demonstrated throughout my career that I’m about trying to give opportunity to everybody, and there’s nothing I have to do to respond to that, except to say I never said that,” Brennan says. “I don’t control what somebody says outside about me, and it’s offensive to me that anybody else would do that, and if they had the guts, they’d identify who they are.”

When Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the Democratic primary and joined former candidate Missy Hughes in endorsing Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Brennan expressed his admiration for Crowley but reaffirmed his commitment to stay in the race.

“David Crowley made the campaign for Governor – and the eventual Democratic nominee – stronger and better through his work. I am honored to still be able to call myself a constituent and friend,” Brennan wrote on Facebook.

In answer to a question from the Examiner, his campaign manager replied, “We respect David Crowley and wish him well. Joel is focused on making his case to Wisconsin voters between now and August 11.”

A new environment?

Brennan says he admires his old boss, Evers, for integrity, “his commitment to kids” — and for the role the governor played in drawing new legislative maps.

When Evers took office, “he didn’t have many conversations with legislative leaders in the first two years,” Brennan says.

He doesn’t blame the governor for that. The art of maintaining personal relationships among lawmakers, including across party lines, “has been lost in Wisconsin,” Brennan says, “and I lay that at the feet, to be honest, of Scott Walker and the Republicans in 2010, where they took over, they gerrymandered things so that they could protect their majority, and they legislated in a way that was about vengeance.”

Referring to the new, more politically balanced voting maps Evers signed into law, Brennan told Verheyen during their chat at the dairy breakfast, “This is a very different environment. That’s Tony Evers’ great gift to us.”

Unlike some of his rivals who seem to be counting on a Democratic sweep in legislative races this year in order to accomplish their goals, Brennan emphasizes his ability to work across the aisle.

He says he believes that  Democrats could win both houses of the state Legislature this year. “But even without that — or even with that — there will be only a one- or two-seat majority,” he says. “So it’s going to require a level of cooperation and conversation that just didn’t exist in the early years of the Evers administration.”

He argues that he can best navigate the change in temperature that he believes will be essential in the next term, whether Democrats achieve trifecta control  or the November election produces divided government.

“All I can tell you is, on my phone right now there are probably 10 Republican legislators whose cell phone numbers I have,” he says. Meanwhile, the current crop of Democratic lawmakers includes many first-term members who took office after he left state government. That can make it possible to shed some old baggage, he suggests.

“I’m going to be accessible to the Republicans, but also, absolutely, to those Democrats,” Brennan says. “In the course of the way we’re going to have to govern over the next eight years, I want to make sure that people have a personal relationship with me. And I think that also enables us to not make this the kind of blood sport that we oftentimes see.”

Brennan contends he can “stand up passionately around the issues that I care about and the progressive Wisconsin values that are absolutely ingrained in me” yet still be able to work cooperatively with Republicans.

“But if this election is just about how do we get back at the other side, how do we rub somebody’s nose in it? How are we just about vengeance? How are we just about grievance? Then I don’t think that’s worthy of who we are as Wisconsinites, and that’s not who I’ve been over the course of my career,” Brennan says.

“I am absolutely going to defend democracy, I’m going to defend people’s rights, I’m going to make sure we’re promoting our Wisconsin values, but at the end of the day, I think people need to know … they want to see that we’re in a position to get something done,” he says. “We’re poised to be able to do that in Wisconsin, and I think I’ve got the personality, the temperament, the background and the vision to do that.”

Editor’s note: The Examiner is running periodic profiles of the contenders in the Aug. 11, 2026 gubernatorial primary as well as the candidates in the general election Nov. 3.