Former Vice President Kamala Harris made a brief return to Wisconsin Monday, campaigning in Milwaukee for David Crowley, the Democratic candidate for governor.
The post Kamala Harris stumps for David Crowley in final week of governor’s race appeared first on WPR.
The archbishop of Milwaukee is apologizing after a video of him and other bishops praying over President Donald Trump was recently posted on social media.
The post Milwaukee Archbishop apologizes for White House visit, says permission for posting of video was ‘not given by the bishops’ appeared first on WPR.
Headed into the Nov. 3 election, Republicans hold an 18-15 edge in the Wisconsin Senate. If Democrats flip two seats, and defend their own, they would capture a majority in the chamber.
The post Wisconsin’s state Senate is up for grabs in 2026 appeared first on WPR.
An exhibition at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design's Frederick Layton Gallery showcases art that delves into the spectrum of experiences with infertility, from navigating diagnosis to miscarriage and in vitro fertilization.
The post Milwaukee exhibition explores the many feelings, experiences of infertility appeared first on WPR.
The city of Appleton is expected to lose more than $300,000 in state aid in its upcoming budget after missing a summer deadline to file audit paperwork with the state.
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Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is encouraging expansion of Wisconsin’s only oil refinery to reduce reliance on the Middle East, but energy experts say it would have little effect on bringing down local gas prices.
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As the two candidates for the Wisconsin governor race faced off on television Wednesday night, Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany criticized each other’s records and laid out their governing priorities.
We’ve already recapped key takeaways. Here, we use data to examine how the candidates spent their time, which topics drew the most attention and how they criticized each other.
Each candidate spent over four minutes explaining his take on school funding, including positions on private school vouchers, making it the debate’s most covered topic. Taxes ranked second, with candidates covering several issues: income taxes, state budget surpluses and property taxes.
The two candidates spent roughly the same amount of time on most topics. One notable exception came when Tiffany spent three minutes and 37 seconds — two minutes more than Crowley — explaining why he voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results.
“One of the reasons that I did that is Zuckerbucks,” Tiffany said. “If you remember, Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook billionaire, he put $15 million into Wisconsin, and so he was trying to privatize our elections via electioneering. The people of the state of Wisconsin rejected that a few years later.”
“Zuckerbucks” refers to grants funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, that helped local election officials run elections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wisconsin voters approved a constitutional amendment banning private funding for election administration in April 2024, after Republicans argued the grants disproportionately benefited Democratic strongholds.
Although Tiffany spoke for about 200 seconds longer overall, he spent much of that time explaining and defending his own positions.
Crowley, by contrast, took a more aggressive approach, spending about four minutes more than Tiffany in directly criticizing his opponent.
For this analysis, we classified a statement as an attack when a candidate criticized his opponent or made him the subject of a statement.
Crowley spent the longest time criticizing Tiffany’s positions on taxation, school funding and border control.
“We’re talking about somebody who actually supported the elimination of the United States Department of Education. We’re talking about someone who, when he served as a senator, voted for one of the largest cuts to our UW systems as well as K-12 through education,” Crowley said. “I went to Milwaukee Public Schools. My daughters go to public schools, and I know that they need an increase in funding from the state of Wisconsin because of the fact that we have been dealing with decades of cuts ever since he was in the Legislature.”
Tiffany spent the most time criticizing Crowley when discussing how Crowley would appeal to those who voted for democratic socialist Francesca Hong in the Democratic primary.
“What he said about a week or two before the primaries, he said there was very little difference between he and Francesca Hong,” Tiffany said. “In fact, one of the only things he could think of is that he was supportive of data centers.”
The candidates spent similar amounts of time criticizing one another’s records on data centers — less than a minute each.The candidates spent roughly 50 seconds apiece criticizing their opponents’ record on data centers.
Crowley accused Tiffany of supporting tax breaks for data center operators. (Tiffany voted for President Donald Trump’s tax and spending package that included broad tax breaks benefiting data center developers along with many other businesses, but lawmakers did not specifically vote on a data center tax break.)
Tiffany countered by criticizing Crowley’s past support for subsidies and calling Crowley’s proposal to power data centers with wind and solar energy unrealistic.
After we removed verbal fillers and words used to address the other candidate, the word cloud of attacks shows that Tiffany used the word “taxes” the most often when criticizing Crowley. This reflected Tiffany’s argument that Crowley’s policies would increase tax burdens on Wisconsinites.
“Taxes have went up every single year that David Crowley has been county executive,” Tiffany said. “You know what he’s going to do as governor.”
Crowley most often used the word “work” when attacking Tiffany, repeatedly questioning Tiffany’s track record in following Trump’s decisions and whether Tiffany would represent Wisconsinites if elected.
“Congressman Tom Tiffany, it doesn’t sound like you want to work for the small guys,” Crowley said after Tiffany said he was open to raising income limits on private school vouchers. “It sounds like you want to work for those who have the money and have the means to continue to pay their way. This is what this election is about.”
The pattern was less pronounced in the word cloud analyzing defensive statements. Tiffany most often said the word “Wisconsin” while Crowley’s most frequently used word was again “work.”
Wisconsin Watch transcribed the gubernatorial debate audio through Parakeet MLX, an automatic speech recognition model, then used the artificial intelligence tool Pyannote to assign each line in the transcript to a speaker. Automated transcription and speaker recognition can produce errors, which may affect the results.
We manually reviewed the transcript to correct as many speaker-identification errors as possible. We also tagged each line spoken by the candidates by topic and tone. We categorized a line as “aggressive” if a candidate referred to his opponent as the subject of a sentence or otherwise clearly criticized him. We categorized all other statements as “defensive.”
We calculated speech duration using the transcript’s start and end time stamps.
The SpaCy tokenization algorithm we used to generate the word cloud misidentified “taxes” as “taxis,” so we manually corrected that error.
Brittany Caroloni contributed reporting.
By the numbers: How Crowley and Tiffany used their debate time 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.
Eliminating state income tax on tips and overtime could cost Wisconsin $2.7 billion in revenue over the next decade, with eligible workers seeing an equal savings over the same period.
The post Eliminating state income tax on tips, overtime could cost Wisconsin $2.7B over a decade appeared first on WPR.
Republican candidate for governor Tom Tiffany says he’ll make Wisconsin schools more accountable by giving parents and teachers more rights.
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Democratic Rep. Angela Stroud is running for re-election this year, again facing Republican Frank Kostka.
The post Democrat Angela Stroud focuses on state school funding for property tax relief in Assembly race appeared first on WPR.
“The biggest priority (facing the Legislature) is high taxes. There were bills that should have addressed some of that, but they either were voted down or vetoed,” said Republican Frank Kostka, who is challenging Rep. Angela Stroud for the 73rd Assembly District seat.
The post Republican Frank Kostka cites tax relief as top priority in Assembly rematch appeared first on WPR.
Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil of Janesville easily won his previous elections for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District. But challenger Mitchell Berman is hoping a Democratic wave could change that.
The post Republicans have held Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District for decades. Could this be the year it flips? appeared first on WPR.
Over the course of a sometimes contentious, sometimes awkward hour, the two candidates for Wisconsin governor sparred over taxes, data centers and abortion in the only debate of their general election campaign Wednesday night.
The post Crowley, Tiffany spar over taxes, data centers and abortion in only debate of governor’s race appeared first on WPR.
The number of Wisconsinites casting in-person absentee ballots on the first day of early voting surged by 65 percent compared to figures ahead of the 2022 midterm election.
The post In-person absentee voting surges amid declines in ballots arriving by mail appeared first on WPR.
Republican Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney is waging his second challenge against Wisconsin's Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul on Nov. 3.
The post Trump looms large in rematch for Wisconsin attorney general between Kaul, Toney appeared first on WPR.
After a unanimous vote by the Milwaukee Common Council to pause new data center construction, city leaders hope to develop new zoning rules while business groups say a pause sends the wrong message.
The post Milwaukee joins list of Wisconsin cities putting a pause on data center projects appeared first on WPR.
The candidates vying to represent constituents in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District sparred on some of the key issues during an hour long debate Tuesday.
The post Steil, Berman spar on key issues ahead of Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District election appeared first on WPR.
More elected leaders including both U.S. Senators from Wisconsin have reported their offices received packages containing a suspicious substance.
The post More Wisconsin lawmakers receive ‘suspicious’ substances by mail appeared first on WPR.
The nation’s top defense official on Tuesday traveled to Wisconsin for the second time this year to speak to manufacturing workers supporting the defense industry — and to boost U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden just weeks ahead of the Midterms.
The post Defense secretary promotes defense industry, Van Orden in Eau Claire stop appeared first on WPR.
Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden and Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke held their first and only debate in Eau Claire, Tuesday. It's the first time Van Orden has debated a challenger in nearly six years.
The post Van Orden: Iran war makes 2026 ‘exponentially harder’ for Republicans appeared first on WPR.
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