Small wonder nearly half of voters haven’t decided who to back in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s next governor. If you sent in your ballot early, you might have voted for the candidate who won the straw poll at the Democratic party convention only to flail her way through a dramatic public scandal, run out of money and quit. The latest Marquette Law School poll, released this week, still had her name as a candidate, but didn’t include the candidate who dropped out two weeks ago before getting back in the race with Gov. Tony Evers’ endorsement. 

Meanwhile, the frontrunner in poll after poll, as Baylor Spears reports, is Francesca Hong. 

Some Democrats are so sure Hong, as a democratic socialist, will lose in a general-election matchup with Republican Tom Tiffany they’re desperately hopping from horse to horse, searching for an alternative. One of those horses, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, stumbled badly and collapsed. Now we’ve got Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, whose late endorsement by Evers generated a backlash against the “Democratic establishment.”

Whoever’s running the “establishment’ might be overbearing, but they sure don’t seem to be adept at picking winners. Days after his reentry, Crowley is struggling with negative stories about crude posts to an old Twitter account.

The problem Democrats in Wisconsin face is less about party bosses behind the scenes calling the shots than it is lack of any organization. A little leadership from Evers earlier in the process might have staved off disaster.

At a minimum, he could have made up his mind to back Crowley before Crowley dropped out. He could have had painful but necessary conversations with Joel Brennan, Sara Rodriguez and Missy Hughes, the other members of his administration who campaigned at least partly on their association with him. “Look, I see a bright future for you in politics, but I’ve decided to go with Crowley in this race,” he might have said. Then Crowley (or whoever Evers decided to support) could have built some strength over the course of the campaign.

Instead, we have the current mess.

Wisconsin’s messy primary is also a symptom of Democrats’ general disarray. Unable to come up with a plan to effectively counter the frightening power of a violent, kleptocratic regime in Washington, they are waffling between trying not to alienate swing voters by sounding too radical versus tapping into the energy and outrage of the anti-Trump electorate.

Looking over their shoulders at the Republicans, several Democratic campaigns point to the millions of dollars in TV ads the Republican Governors Association bought featuring light criticism of Hong. The ads appear to be a transparent effort to boost Hong in the primary, since Republicans think they can beat her in the general election. So what? Hong appears to be winning the primary anyway, with or without the RGA boost, through her straight talk, superb social media strategy, grassroots ground game and the enthusiasm she’s generating, especially from young voters who don’t trust normal politicians and institutional Democratic party politics. 

That doesn’t mean she’s the best candidate to beat Tiffany. But instead of buying into the Republican political analysis, or as one Democrat did, running an ominous attack ad trumpeting that Hong is a “proud socialist!” (the horror!), Democrats should be trying to steal a page from Hong. That ugly ad, featuring photos of the three candidates of color, labeling them all unelectable, and then toggling to Joel Brennan, the only white guy in the race, is a good example of what Democratic primary voters want to reject.

It’s no surprise Hong is catching fire. People like candidates who say what they mean and aren’t afraid to be themselves, as opposed to candidates who seem to be trying to tell them what they want to hear or pretending to be just like them. They want to see courage and conviction in the face of bullying and corruption. They do not particularly like seeing Democrats tearing each other apart — especially not by drawing on the kinds of smug, bigoted attacks made by the other side. 

Imagine a Democratic party that includes democratic socialists and more middle-of-the-road candidates, promoting an uplifting message about protecting a decent society, functional government and human rights. 

That’s the vision people are hungry for. Wisconsin Democrats should not be afraid to serve it up. 

State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) is leading the four other Democrats in the primary campaign for governor in a new Marquette Law School poll, a sign of her continued momentum, while more than 40% of primary voters remain undecided.

The poll was conducted July 8 through 16 — around the same time that the Democratic primary field changed dramatically — failing to capture Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez’s exit from the race and the reentry of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley with the endorsement of Gov. Tony Evers.

Charles Franklin, the poll’s director, said upon it’s release that there is  “plenty of room for change” in the race.

Hong led her primary opponents, excluding Crowley, with 26% support among Democratic primary voters, with 45% undecided. The poll included Rodiguez, who dropped out after it was completed, but not Crowley, who had not reentered the race.

Hong has led the Democratic field in each Marquette Law School poll released this campaign cycle so far. 

“Consistency counts for something,” Franklin said. “And we see that consistency over this entire time.” 

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes had 15%, Rodriguez had 11%, Joel Brennan garnered 2% and 1% supported state Sen. Kelda Roys.

Some Democrats are skeptical of how Hong, a democratic socialist, will perform in November against presumptive GOP nominee U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany.

The new Marquette poll also showed that Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was the only candidate who polled ahead of Republican candidate Tom Tiffany. Barnes had 44%, while Tiffany had 40%. 

Hong in a matchup against Tiffany polled at 40% to Tiffany’s 43%.

The Hong campaign pointed out  that among likely voters the poll showed Hong and Tiffany tied at 44%.

“This poll puts to rest the claim that our campaign cannot compete statewide,” Hong said. “We are building the multiracial, multigenerational and working-class coalition it will take to defeat Tom Tiffany and deliver universal childcare, fairer and cheaper health care, fully funded public schools and permanent affordability for Wisconsin families.”

Franklin said the takeaway from the poll is that the race is close. Another poll will be released next Wednesday, the day after the candidates are scheduled to debate.

Barnes and Crowley both released internal polls seeking to highlight their advantages, though each poll also showed Hong leading. 

The internal poll from the Crowley campaign showed Hong with 35% of the vote, Barnes with 15% of the vote and Crowley at 14%. His campaign highlighted that after people were provided with information about the candidates he jumped to 22% of support — 11 percentage points behind Hong. 

The internal poll from the Barnes campaign showed Hong at 39%, Barnes at 26% and Crowley at 11%. 

A poll conducted by the Roys campaign found that Hong polled at 29% followed by Barnes at 21%, Crowley at 11% and Roys at 7%. According to the poll when voters were provided with information about Roys, their support shifted to 25% Hong, 21% Roys and 16% Barnes.

“We are proud of our momentum, but as they say: Polls do not decide elections – people do,” Hong said. “Over the next 20 days, we will keep traveling, organizing and working to earn every vote in every corner of Wisconsin.”

Hong’s opponents target her in new TV ads

Hong’s Democratic primary opponents have begun to target her in campaign ads. 

Crowley does not mention Hong by name in his first ad released since getting back into the race, but highlights a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about Republican groups investing more than $2 million in ads that seeming aimed at boosting Hong’s campaign.

“The Republicans have made their choice,” Crowley says in the ad, “spending millions of dollars on candidates they know they can beat. It’s time for Democrats to make our choice.” He also highlighted Evers’ endorsement.

The Barnes campaign also focused on the Hong ads purchased by the Republican Governors’ Association.

“There’s nothing more important than beating Trump’s handpicked candidate Tom Tiffany, and polls show I’m the only candidate in this race who can,” Barnes said in a statement. “That’s exactly why we are seeing the Republicans meddle in our primary with over $3 million to boost my opponent who Tom Tiffany beats in every poll.” 

Joel Brennan, the former head of the Department of Administration, who has consistently polled behind his opponents in the primary, released an ad Tuesday that flashed photos of  the three frontrunners, all of whom are people of color. 

“She’s a proud socialist,” Brennan says as Hong’s photo is displayed on screen. “He lost statewide before,” he says over an image of Barnes. “A couple weeks ago, he dropped out,” he says over an image of Crowley.

The ad does not mention Roys, who, like Brennan, is white. 

“They’ll all lose to Republicans in November,” Brennan says in the ad, before talking about himself. 

His campaign has received pushback for targeting the candidates of color in the race. 

According to the Milwaukee Courier, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin Black Caucus Executive Board responded to the ad by saying it is “extremely disappointing that Joel Brennan released an ad saying none of the candidates of color running for governor could win in November following previous comments in May on this issue.”

Brennan’s campaign said in a statement that the ad was meant to highlight that there are other candidates running apart from the three promoted by “Madison insiders”.

“Each candidate has to make their own case, and the ad points to the facts about others running, why Joel is the strongest candidate to beat Tom Tiffany and what he’ll do for Wisconsin as governor,” the Brennan campaign said in a statement. 

Hong released her own ad this week that goes after Tiffany, not her Democratic opponents. She called him an “anti-abortion,” an “election denier” and an “Epstein pedophile protector” and said he “sides with the powerful, not the people.”

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley announced he was reentering the Democratic primary for governor Saturday, reversing his recent decision to drop out of the race. “Wisconsin, we cannot afford four years of Tom Tiffany,” Crowley told dozens of excited supporters gathered to hear his announcement Saturday morning in downtown Milwaukee.

Crowley suspended his campaign just 10 days ago and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. But a crippling campaign finance mismanagement scandal forced Rodriguez to drop out of the race Friday. This left a four-person Democratic field consisting of Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Rep. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, and former secretary of the state Department of Administration Joel Brennan. Barnes has raised the most money among the Democratic contenders, while  Hong and Roys have the most cash on hand. 

Crowley started his campaign with the most money raised, but reports filed this week showed he had not kept up with his opponents still in the race. He started the year with $602,181 in the bank, raised $250,047 over six months and spent $537,050. He ended the last reporting period with $315,178 in cash on hand. 

Crowley had endorsed Rodriguez after suspending his own campaign last Wednesday — the same day Rodriguez said she learned about the financial troubles that ultimately sank her campaign. “I believed that I was supporting the strongest candidate at the moment,” he told the Examiner Saturday.

The crowd that came out to hear Crowley jump back in the race included a who’s who in Milwaukee politics and organizing. Among those in attendance were activist Vaun Mayes, former state legislator David Bowen who is now executive director of Wisconsin Voices, a statewide coalition of progressive advocacy groups, state Sen. Melissa Ratcliff and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson as well as the mayors of Sheboygan, Waukesha and Wauwatosa, members of the Milwaukee County Board and Common Council and union leaders.

Crowley was also joined by his wife Ericka, introduced by the mayor  as “the next first lady.” She told the crowd that she wasn’t thrilled when “people were encouraging him to get back into this race.” The couple had closed that chapter, she said, and they were beginning to focus on spending more time with their family. “But the phone calls didn’t stop,” Ericka Crowley said. “Friends called, community leaders called, people from every corner of Wisconsin called, and they were like, ‘David, please reconsider,’ and still, the answer was no!” 

Ericka said the family relied on their Christian faith and prayed for a sign. She saw a cardinal, she said, a significant religious symbol to them. Then Rodriguez,  dropped out. “And in that moment, everything that we prayed about just felt different,” she said . “It was like the atmosphere shifted.” Crowley told reporters that both dropping out of the race and then reentering it were “very hard” decisions to make.

Evers’ endorsement and the ‘Democratic establishment’ 

Crowley returns to the primary race with departing Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ endorsement, a benefit none of the other candidates, including Rodriguez, Evers’ lieutenant governor, received. 

“I have indicated I did not plan to endorse anyone in the race for governor because I know each of the candidates and I wanted them to have the opportunity to make their case to Wisconsinistes first, just like I did,” Evers said in his statement endorsing Crowley Saturday. “I also believe that, in a race this close, Wisconsinites deserve to have the perspective of someone who’s done the job, who understands what it takes, and who’s had the benefit of spending years quietly watching how others in politics conduct themselves and treat people when they thought no one was paying attention.”

“David is not only the best candidate to beat Tom Tiffany,” Evers continued, “he’s the right candidate for the people of Wisconsin. He’s created thousands of new jobs, cut the county’s local carbon emissions in half, and passed a balanced budget, all while delivering the largest property tax cut in the county’s history, and I know he’ll continue to deliver results statewide.”

“It’s just an honor to receive his endorsement,” Crowley told the Examiner. He recounted Evers’ victory over former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, his leadership  guiding Wisconsin through the COVID-19 pandemic, and his tenure as “the best damn goalie that Democrats could have from stopping the Republican-controlled Legislature from having its way.” 

In addition to Evers’ endorsement, he said, he has received  “a groundswell of support from volunteers, from other elected leaders, as well as labor unions.” 

Responding to criticism that his re-entry into the race represents an effort by the Democratic party establishment to push forward someone to defeat Democratic Socialist candidate Francesca Hong, who had repeatedly finished at the top of public polls, Crowley said, “This isn’t about any of the other primary candidates.” Rather, he said, “this is about making sure that we have the best candidate that can defeat Tom Tiffany and his extreme MAGA agenda,” a goal he said he shares with all of the other Democratic candidates. 

Yet when he addressed the crowd of supporters in Milwaukee Saturday, Crowley took more direct aim at his opponents. He pointed to the Republican Governors Association’s recent $2 million ad blitz featuring Hong. The ads portray Hong, a self-described Democratic Socialist, as “too liberal for Wisconsin” and denounce her for wanting to return the state to its “progressive roots.” Barnes has called the ads “counterintuitive,” saying they appear to feature political attacks but are actually designed to increase Hong’s popularity among Democratic voters instead of hurting her chances. Many Democrats have concluded that the ads are designed to boost Hong, the Republicans’ preferred target in November, and that the Republicans are holding back stronger criticism they plan to deploy against her in the general election. 

Crowley seemed to endorse that theory at his campaign relaunch event, saying that the ads are meant “not to attack the Democratic party, but to boost one up.” He told  the crowd that Republicans are “deciding the Democratic nominee that they want to beat in November. They’re making an investment right now, and this should all be a five-alarm warning sign to all of us. We cannot allow the GOP to choose the Democratic nominee for governor of the great state of Wisconsin. Period.” 

Crowley told the Examiner  that people should be alarmed that Republican money is being used in a Democratic primary. “At the end of the day, there’s clearly an agenda there if they’re spending money in our primary,” he said. 

Democratic candidates respond

The Barnes campaign immediately blasted   Crowley’s reentry into the race in statements issued Friday and Saturday, claiming that Crowley’s campaign has ties to big corporations, that he’s trying to emerge as the “leading establishment Democrat” despite under-performing in multiple polls, and highlighting a county health insurance scandal earlier this year. 

A March Marquette Law School poll showed support for Crowley among voters at 3%, compared with 14% for Hong, 11% for Barnes and 3% for Rodriguez, with most respondents still undecided. 

Crowley discounted claims that he’s being hand-picked by the Democratic establishment, saying that “a 40-year-old Black man” isn’t what people think about when thinking about the “Democratic establishment.” He told the Examiner, “I know where my roots come from,” including  growing up in the impoverished 53206 zip code, “being the son of loving parents who struggled with mental health and drug addiction, who did everything that they could to make sure that their children were successful.” He added, “I look at my story as Wisconsin’s story.” He called the attacks by the  Barnes campaign “unfortunate,”  particularly because they are, by extension, also attacks on “a governor that he actually served alongside with during his first term.”

Hong took a less combative tone, welcoming  Crowley back into the race. “I look forward to the perspective he’ll bring as we each make our case to Wisconsinites over the next three weeks,” Hong said. “Competition is good for democracy, and voters deserve a substantive debate about the future of our state. Our campaign will remain focused on building the working-class coalition it will take to defeat Tom Tiffany and deliver permanent affordability for Wisconsin families.”

Brennan’s campaign released a statement saying, “Joel Brennan is in this race to win it. Wisconsin needs a candidate who can beat Tom Tiffany in November and get to work for Wisconsin families from day one. That was true yesterday, and it’s still true today — no matter who else is in or out.”

A spokesperson for the Roys campaign said, “We need to move forward and unite behind the strongest candidate to beat Tom Tiffany and deliver a Democratic legislature, which is Kelda Roys. We have been on TV statewide for over a month and still have more cash on hand than most of the field, the most endorsements by far, and the most momentum. We are laser-focused on winning August 11 and delivering a trifecta on November 3.”

The Republican Governor’s Association issued a statement mocking both the demise of the Rodriguez campaign and  Crowley’s decision to reenter the race: “Watching Wisconsin Democrats is like watching a clown car crash into a parked semi-truck,” RGA  communications director Kollin Crimpton said. “From financial scandals to re-launching failed campaigns, these Democrats shouldn’t be in charge of a lemonade stand let alone the state of Wisconsin…Tom Tiffany is fighting to lower property taxes, protect Wisconsin land, and require health care price transparency. The choice is clear for Wisconsinites: commonsense versus crazy.”

Beating Tiffany will require a focus on “policies that people care about,” Crowley told the Examiner Saturday, highlighting his campaign’s Badger Basics Plan to increase affordability, care and opportunity. “People care about making sure that we fully invest in our public schools,” he said, “that we increase the reimbursement rates for special education; that childcare and 4-K is affordable and accessible; that we expand Badger Care across every community across Wisconsin.” 

Repealing Act 10 and “enshrining workers’ rights directly into our Constitution” are also priorities, he said. “We have to speak directly to what people care about. And we can’t get caught up, you know, in the misinformation, in the disinformation, in the distractions quite frankly that Tom Tiffany, the Republican Party, as well as the Trump administration continue to throw our way.”

 Addressing voters across Wisconsin from the podium as he relaunched his campaign, Crowley declared, “Let’s ride, not just on Aug. 11 but in November.” He added,  “My goal is to get as many people to the table as possible,” so “if you see me out there, please don’t be afraid to come speak and spark up a conversation.”

Last week, for a brief, beautiful span of days, all three of our young-adult daughters were immersed in nature, reveling in the delicious freedom of summertime. One, a camp counselor, was leading a group on a two-week trek through Yellowstone National Park. She sent us photos of the mountains, campfires, sweaty, grinning campers, a herd of bison they encountered by the side of the road. The other two sisters were on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. They paddled from lake to lake, fell asleep to the sound of loons, woke up early to plunge in the crystal clear water.

Just as all three girls were ending their trips, more than a dozen wildfires swept through the Superior National Forest, prompting the Forest Service to close all entry points to the Boundary Waters. Some visitors were stranded. Eight Forest Service rangers paddled in to rescue people throughout the 150-mile stretch of wilderness on the U.S.-Canadian border. Our daughter who led the trip to Yellowstone returned to her base camp in Grand Marais, Minnesota, to learn that further trips have been canceled. A group of campers who were stuck in the Boundary Waters had to be rescued by helicopter. The smoke was chokingly thick. “It feels like the apocalypse,” she texted.

In Madison we woke up Thursday morning to the stinging haze of wildfire smoke blanketing the city, drifting down on us from the same forest fires.

The abrupt end of summer’s idyll is a heartache, not just for the immediate shock, but for what it means — a world on fire, a feeling of dread of the losses to come. There is no escape from the rapidly accelerating disasters caused by climate change. All of us are touched by it in our interconnected world. Yet somehow, we can’t get our act together to respond. As a country, we seem determined to kid ourselves about what we are seeing with our own eyes. Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor, has called warnings about extreme weather triggered by climate change “doomsaying, sky-is-falling rhetoric.”

Last summer, Tiffany and fellow Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, along with three of their Republican colleagues from Minnesota wrote a letter to the Canadian embassy to complain that wildfire smoke was ruining summer across the Midwest.

“In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things,” Tiffany and his colleagues wrote, demanding to know what the Canadians planned to do about it. Tens of thousands of Canadians were being displaced by raging fires at the time. “With all the technology that we have at our disposal, both in preventing and fighting wildfires, this worrisome trend can be reversed if proper action is taken,” Tiffany and his colleagues wrote.

Wildfires are getting worse because of climate change. The problem is particularly acute for Canada, where the Arctic region is rapidly warming and hotter, drier summers are turning forest land into a tinderbox, where a stray lightning strike can start a conflagration. The same thing is happening in the Superior National Forest this summer, where the fires are caused by lightning and the hot, dry conditions that are not letting up.

Instead of working to mitigate the threat, the Trump administration has dismantled the arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that researches wildfires and other climate-related threats, as well as the Forest Service’s firefighting teams. In 2025, the Forest Service lost nearly 6,000 employees. Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget aims to cut the Forest Service budget by 75%. 

Tiffany’s scolding letter to Canada aside, the policies he has supported under Trump have directly increased fire hazards. To the eight rangers now searching the Boundary Waters for people trapped by the fires, the Forest Service office in Minnesota is hoping to add back some of the staff they’ve lost to Trump’s ill-advised reorganization and cuts. 

“We are actively trying through our existing staff to reach out to former staff that have retired or moved to another position off-forest that still have firefighting skills and credentials,” Forest Service spokesperson Christine Kolinski told the Minnesota Star Tribune. 

This summer’s fires are more than just a wake-up call. They are a five-alarm emergency alert. We are losing so much so fast. We all have a stake in facing it and acting now. It does no good to pretend the disaster isn’t happening or to blame our neighbors, as if they could fix things for us by getting out their rakes. The least we can demand of our political leaders is that they stop dismantling the only tools we have to fight the incineration of our world. We owe that much to every kid who looks forward to every future summer.

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include further details on candidates’ finance reports, additional reaction from campaigns and the amended report from the campaign of Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez.

With 26 days until Wisconsin’s primary election, campaign finance reports filed Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany show he raised over $8 million, the bulk of which came from the Republican Party of Wisconsin after major gifts from rightwing donors. Democratic candidates in the primary for governor show former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is raising and spending more money than his rivals.

The primary is scheduled for Aug. 11, and the recent reports cover the period of time from Jan. 1 through June 30. 

Tiffany, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, reported raising $8.7 million during the latest period, bringing his total raised over the course of his campaign to more than $10 million. 

Tiffany ended the period with nearly $3 million cash-in-hand, having spent $7.4 million during the reporting period. 

Over $6.1 million of Tiffany’s contributions came from transfers from the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

The state party received more than $6 million in contributions from megadonors including $4 million from Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, owners of Uline shipping supply company located in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, as well as $2.5 million from Diane Hendricks, ABC Supply CEO and a billionaire from Beloit. The contributions helped the party outraise the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which reported raising $3.17 million, spending $2.87 million and having $1.59 million cash-on-hand. 

There are five Democratic candidates running for the spot on the November ballot, and candidates sought to use their campaign reports to highlight their strengths.

Barnes reported the highest amount raised of the period at $841,358. He also spent the most of any Democratic candidate at $1.1 million. He ended the period with $204,207 on hand, nearly the least of any candidate. Barnes’ campaign manager Darby O’Connor said the numbers show that the campaign has the “resources we need to communicate on air to Wisconsin voters, most of whom already know Mandela very well.”

State Rep. Francesca Hong, the Democratic Socialist from Madison who has been tapping into national progressive networks, including appearing on progressive streamer Hasan Piker’s California-based program, reported raising $708,883, spending $432,508 and ending the period with $410,563 on hand. 

According to the Hong campaign, the average size of a donation to her campaign was $45. The campaign’s only $20,000 contribution, the maximum limit for an individual donating to a candidate for governor, came from a Florida resident named Robert Clancy. 

“We are proving that a campaign powered by working people can compete with the millionaire and billionaire class,” Hong said. “Our message of permanent affordability and our vision for building a better Wisconsin are resonating with voters across the political spectrum.”

The campaign has received more than 22,700 contributions which have come from more than  13,000 unique donors, 9,455 of whom are from Wisconsin.

The campaign declared that the Democratic primary race has become a two-person contest between Hong and Barnes, noting that 41% of donors to Democratic candidates in the primary have given to Hong, while 39% gave to Barnes. 

In spite of her trip to California to fundraise ahead of the reporting deadline, Hong highlighted the number of Wisconsin residents who contributed to her campaign in a memo. According to Hong’s analysis, about 70% of the contributions to Barnes’ campaign came from donors out of state, whereas out-of-state contributions made up just 24% of her money.

In the most recent fundraising cycle, some of the notable donors who gave Barnes $20,000 contributions included Elizabeth Diane Simons, daughter of the late billionaire hedge fund manager and mathematician James Simons, and Lynda Resnick, co-owner of the Wonderful Company.

Joel Brennan, former head of the Department of Administration under Gov. Tony Evers, raised $665,627, spent $858,382 and reported having $359,583 cash-on-hand. Brennan, similar to Barnes, had money from the previous reporting period that allowed him to spend more money than he raised in this period. In a memo, his campaign argued that the reports showed him at least even with all the other candidates. 

“No candidate has a fundraising advantage in this primary race, and Joel has raised similar amounts of money and has similar cash on hand to his rivals,” the memo stated. 

State Sen. Kelda Roys reported raising $527,431 during the first half of the year, the least of any candidate. She spent $453,971 and ended the period with $406,492, an amount that leaves her with more cash on hand than most of her rivals. 

Roys argued that the primary is now a two-way race between Hong and herself, instead of between Hong and Barnes. 

Roys spokesperson Jalen Knuteson said in a statement that the “difference is that Kelda has been up on TV statewide for 4 weeks, and has just made a significant broadcast buy in Milwaukee, while Hong has yet to launch any paid media.” 

“Kelda is now well positioned to consolidate support across the state, as Democrats face the very real threat of a Tiffany governorship and a GOP legislature,” Knuteson said. 

While Hong hasn’t launched paid media, she has invested in an online media campaign as well as found earned media coverage from national outlets including the New York Times, Politico and NBC. 

Rodriguez’s reports show she has only $35,000 with $150,000 in debt

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who is navigating the fallout from a financial disaster that led her to fire her former campaign manager, ended her reporting period with a little less than $35,000 in the bank. 

Her original report filed at midnight on July 15 listed her as having a $29,089 opening balance, only $34,991 cash on hand and $152,276 in debts. The campaign said in a statement Thursday morning that it was “actively working to ensure our financial records are accurate and complete.”

“The former staff member who was responsible for preparing our campaign finance information provided limited documentation before termination, and we are continuing to gather the full picture. We expect to amend our reports as additional information becomes available,” the campaign said in a statement. The Thursday statement also said that “since July 1, the Rodriguez campaign has raised $219,307.00, and since Monday morning, the Rodriguez campaign has raised $143,028.48.”

Rodriguez’s campaign did submit an amended report Thursday afternoon that dramatically increased the tally of her campaign dollars, showing that she started the reporting period with $603,075 in the bank and ended the period with $643,206. However, the campaign later told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Jessie Opoien that the report was a mistake, and the campaign did end the period with only $34,991 cash-on-hand after all.

Rodriguez also announced the launch of a new campaign ad Thursday highlighting her plans to hold drug and insurance companies accountable, reverse cuts to Medicaid and create a public option in Wisconsin. 

The Barnes campaign criticized Rodriguez for running the ad given her debts. Both her original and amended report listed a little over $152,000 in debts.

“Cool that you’re on TV. Have you paid your debts? You owe taxpayers thousands of dollars for security costs but are making TV buys?” Barnes’ campaign account said on X.

According to Rodriguez’s campaign finance report, about $9,430 of the $152,000 she owes is to the state of Wisconsin for mileage during the first quarter of the year. As lieutenant governor, Rodriguez must travel with the Dignitary Protection Unit, which is part of the state patrol, when she travels. When it is for campaign related expenses, she must reimburse the state.

Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, one of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary for governor, fired her campaign manager over the weekend due to mismanagement of financial reports. She told reporters Monday that her campaign will continue, calling it a “bump in the road,” although the error means she has hundreds of thousands of dollars less than she thought.

On Sunday at 9:30 p.m., the Rodriguez campaign released a statement saying that the candidate had fired her campaign manager, Kara Spencer, “after discovering serious mismanagement and inaccuracies in campaign finance filings she prepared.”

Rodriguez said at the press conference at her campaign office in Madison that she became aware something was wrong when a statewide ad did not start to run on TV last Tuesday. The campaign had put out press release announcing it was making a $1 million ad buy. 

Rodriguez said she became concerned and started asking questions when the ad did not run. She said that on Wednesday she was notified by her media team of an unpaid invoice. 

“I was given excuses by my campaign manager that did not make sense. By Thursday afternoon, I saw that the total cash was far lower than I had expected,” she said, adding that she wouldn’t be able to give a specific number because her books were still being reconciled.

Rodriguez said she brought in a team of political communications, legal and compliance experts to analyze her reports. They found “double counting of contributions that inflated how much money we had raised” and “a significant failure to report certain expenses that had been paid.” 

According to Wisconsin’s campaign finance website, Rodriguez’s January report was submitted at 2:13 a.m. — after the Jan. 15 deadline. It was then amended at 3:23 a.m. and then again at 5:01 a.m.

Rodiguez’s final campaign finance report uploaded that evening included a number of duplicate payments. According to a review of the campaign finance reports by WisPolitics, there are  at least $275,000 in duplicate donations.

In January, Rodriguez reported raising $618,284.

Rodriguez said her campaign manager had worked with her for several years and in compliance for her whole career.

“As we are trying to make sure we have a lean campaign, it made sense for her to do the compliance report since that was her expertise, and that was one thing I had full trust in,” Rodriguez said, adding that Spencer had given her reports on a regular basis about the finances and everything looked fine until last week. 

“I cannot tell you what was in her mind about why she did what she did. I will tell you that when you work with somebody for as long as I have, it was an enormous shock that this happened,” Rodriguez said. “It took me a little while to believe that these reports were erroneous, but once I was able to look within the system to look within the bank accounts, to look at the reports that were filed, it was clear that these were egregiously in error, and that she needed to be let go.” 

Rodriguez said she had had a conversation with Spencer, but did not provide details on her reaction. She said Spencer’s termination notice was addressed by a lawyer.

“I am hurt, angry and deeply disappointed by someone I trusted to run my campaign,” Rodriguez said, adding it was a breach of her trust as well as her supporters’ trust. 

Rodriguez argued that her press conference and willingness to answer questions was a show of her commitment to accountability and transparency, which makes her a good candidate for governor.

In recent weeks, momentum appeared to be building behind Rodriguez’s campaign after she finished first in a straw poll conducted at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin Convention. Last week, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the race and endorsed her, as did  former Wisconsin Economic Development CEO Missy Hughes, who dropped out and endorsed her in June.

“I think we still have that momentum. I think we’re still moving forward. This is a bump in the road for the campaign, but we are going to be as honest and transparent as we can be,” Rodriguez said at the press conference inside her Madison, Wisconsin, campaign headquarters Monday. “That is why I am standing here in front of all of you in front of all of these cameras in front of all of these microphones and telling you when I see something that is an error.” 

Rodriguez said the analysis of the report is still underway, but they are working to see whether there are any additional discrepancies. Her campaign has also contacted the Wisconsin Ethics Commission, which administers and enforces Wisconsin law pertaining to ethics and lobbying, to report the discrepancies and make a plan to correct the mistakes. 

The firing and revelation about her January report comes just ahead of the next campaign finance report deadline on July 15. 

Rodriguez said she will report having about $200,000 cash-on-hand and that she has raised nearly $1 million over the course of the campaign. She said she plans to continue her campaign and that her ad will go up on TV next week. During the press conference, Rodriguez surrounded herself with supporters holding signs and cheering.

“I know who gets hurt when people like me decide it’s not worth the fight. I intend to put my heart and soul into this race over the next month, and until November, every single day of it. There are people who get knocked down, and don’t get back up. I’m not one of them,” Rodriguez said. 

Democratic opponents critical

The rest of the Democratic primary candidates in the race were highly critical of Rodriguez Monday afternoon. Joel Brennan, a former head of the Wisconsin Department of Administration, was one of the first to speak out, saying in a statement ahead of the press conference that she needed to answer several questions to be transparent with Wisconsinites. 

“How is this not disqualifying?” Brennan asked.

Brennan told the Wisconsin Examiner in a phone interview Monday afternoon that the issue is one of competence and accountability and the “buck stops” with the candidate when it comes to campaign finance. 

“We are ultimately accountable for everything that’s got our name on it, and there is nothing more important in that than managing the resources we have because those resources come from voters in the state of Wisconsin, they come from family, they come from close friends, they come from networks, they come from allies and advocates and people who we need to represent,” Brennan said. “If you can’t manage several hundred thousand in a campaign account, how are you going to be able to demonstrate to people that they should trust a $110 billion budget for the state of Wisconsin?”

Brennan questioned why Rodriguez did not have the infrastructure to ensure there were checks in her finances. He said that he knows on a “day-to-day” basis how much money there is in his campaign.

Brennan said Rodriguez did not provide direct answers to key questions, but instead provided “some self congratulations for standing up in front of a bank of cameras” to address problems that were “created under her watch” and she was “expecting to be congratulated for doing that — like that somehow is courageous.”

Brennan stopped short of calling for Rodriguez to end her campaign, saying he doesn’t make that decision for anyone. However, he said Democrats should be spending time talking about issues that matter to people.

“If we are spending our time talking about missed deadlines when it comes to campaign, being unable to track down hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions, we will never get to the point where we can talk about Donald Trump, about Rep. Tom Tiffany, about the harm they’ve done to Wisconsin, and what we’re going to do for people to make their lives better in our state,” Brennan said. “The stakes are high when it comes to healthcare that people can’t afford. The stakes are high related to utility costs that are out of control and housing challenges that people face, whether they’re renters or homeowners, and where we are in public education.”

The firing is not the first controversy to disrupt Rodriguez’s campaign for governor. She also faced criticism from her opponents for saying she would negotiate the state’s budget “behind closed curtains” and recently for taking corporate PAC money from WE Energies after voting for a Republican-authored tax break for the company. 

Jalen Knuteson, spokesperson for state Sen. Kelda Roys’ campaign, highlighted those instances in a statement, saying that the “public is getting far too familiar with hearing Sara Rodriguez apologize.” 

“This recurring pattern shows that Rodriguez is unprepared for the rigors of a general election or governing,” Roys said. 

Darby O’Connor, spokesperson for former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, said in a statement that Rodriguez “only noticed hundreds of thousands of dollars missing when she didn’t see her face on TV.” 

“This level of gross mismanagement of finances and staff is unheard of in professional politics,” Barnes said.

State Rep. Francesca Hong said she was “staying focused on our campaign,” but that her campaign has “shown we’re a campaign focused on transparency and accountability.”

“Especially with the next finance reports coming out this week, I think it’s vital that everyone running for this position is creating a standard of trust, honesty and accountability,” she added.

The gubernatorial primary is scheduled for Aug. 11 — less than a month away. The winner will face U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the presumptive Republican nominee, in November.

I’m no political consultant, but I don’t think I would make “fraud” the theme of the Trump administration’s midterm election campaign push. 

At least not while the reflecting pool disaster remains in the news, the White House is doubling down on sticking with its no-bid contract for the company that oversaw the algae-infested, peeling pool mess, and President Donald Trump is making headlines for raking in $2.2 billion since he came back into office, including $1.4 billion from the Trump family’s cryptocurrency scheme.

“We have got to have a governor who takes fraud as seriously as the President of the United States,” Vice President JD Vance declared Wednesday in Milwaukee during a speech apparently intended to boost Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany.

Vance’s remarks, delivered ahead of a $10,000-per-couple fundraiser ($35,000 if you wanted a photo with the VP), could be read in different ways. 

One way is in the context of the poster-sized photo Vance displayed of a Black woman “with the smug look and a Louis Vuitton bag,” as Vance put it —  one of the people who owned prenatal care coordination businesses that a 2022 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found had defrauded Medicaid, costing the state more than $15.5 million among them between 2019 and 2022. 

Vance, although he was elaborately praised by other Republicans at the Wednesday event in Milwaukee for leading the Trump administration’s crackdown on healthcare fraud, had nothing to do with uncovering the prenatal care scandal in Milwaukee. That was the dogged work of the Journal Sentinel reporters whose efforts led the state Department of Justice to investigate, cut off Medicaid to the fraudulent businesses and pursue criminal charges — all of that years before Vance took office. But Vance saw an opportunity in Milwaukee to connect various Trump administration claims about fraud to a picture of someone Ronald Reagan would have called a “welfare queen.” In his speech, Vance moved directly from that photo to the Trump administration’s efforts to “kick illegal aliens out of our country.” 

Black people, immigrants and people who receive food assistance and Medicaid are the “fraudsters,” according to Vance and Republican Reps. Tiffany, Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil, who joined Vance on stage in Milwaukee. They denounced Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for not sharing sensitive personal data on SNAP recipients with the Trump administration. Vance called Evers’ refusal “borderline criminal.” 

“Why won’t Tony Evers turn over the SNAP rolls? ‘Cause he’s cooked the books!” Van Orden hollered.

Steil connected claims about fraud in SNAP and Medicaid to discredited allegations of voter fraud, calling the federal takeover of elections Trump has been trying to force on Congress as “total common sense.” 

When a reporter asked Vance about Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s request to talk to him about the harassment of election workers by FBI agents deployed to Milwaukee to “investigate” nonexistent voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Vance implied that Johnson is trying to cover up the fraud. 

All of this hype about fraud and repeated assertions by the GOP chorus in Milwaukee that the Trump administration had saved the taxpayers of Wisconsin billions of dollars by rooting it out, is meant to cover up a much, much bigger problem.

Medicaid cuts pushed by the Trump administration and supported by Tiffany, Van Orden and Steil, coupled with the same Republicans’ refusal to renew Affordable Care Act tax credits, have already pushed about 22,000 Wisconsinites off their health insurance. A new KFF report shows that insurers on the ACA marketplace are planning another double-digit increase in rates this year, driven by inflation and the loss of the tax credits, which will cause even more people to lose coverage. Altogether, more than 258,000 Wisconsinites will lose health coverage by 2034  because of Trump administration policy changes, according to an analysis by the Joint Economic Committee Democrats using data from the Congressional Budget Office. 

While Van Orden was yelling from the stage in Milwaukee about people who are ineligible for SNAP allegedly signing up for the program and “literally taking the food out of the mouths of hungry babies,” Wisconsinites know that he voted for SNAP cuts and changes to eligibility rules that led to 15,500 Wisconsinites losing food assistance. 

Instead of adequately funding healthcare, food and a decent society, Republicans pushed through trillions of dollars in tax giveaways to corporations and the very rich, tens of billions of dollars for a domestic paramilitary organization that is conducting violent arrests of people who pose no public safety risk, and hundreds of millions of dollars for an obscene White House ballroom and no-bid contracts for Trump’s vanity projects on the national mall. That is the real fraud.

Republicans are screaming about “waste, fraud and abuse” to try to distract voters from all of this destruction and graft. But their “fraud” talk just reminds people of the stunning theft of public resources they’ve enabled and are now trying to cover up with flimsy, slanderous lies.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

On April 3, Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order creating a process for many people in the Wisconsin prison system to officially apply for commutation. It runs through Jan. 4, 2027, when Evers leaves office.

Commutations have been enshrined in our constitution since 1848, and they have been used in virtually every state as well as by the federal government for almost as long. This provides a rare, time-limited opportunity to prioritize and amplify public safety in Wisconsin. Every political actor in this moment now shares responsibility for whether it succeeds. I want to speak directly to the current and future governor, as well as Wisconsin voters, about the responsibility they all carry.

So here are my three open letters to the people who will shape what comes next.

---

Gov. Tony Evers,

First, thank you sincerely for your record-setting and bold actions regarding pardons and, now, commutations. But two details stand out in order for the latter to be as successful as possible for society.

You have activated an unprecedented process that has fostered tremendous energy, time, expense, expectations, and hope among loved ones and advocates. It is crucial that you maintain that same courage to the end despite predictable attacks from critics. We work with families who have supported their incarcerated loved ones for decades as they await reunification and the chance to demonstrate that growth and redemption are real.

Equally important is how we consider and inform crime survivors. Proactively engaging crime survivors would strengthen the process. No single group or individual should have sway or control over a sentence given by a judge, or over an executive decision to amend that sentence, which is exactly why these powers exist. But the way crime survivors are informed — or not informed — of the possibility that the person who harmed them may be released is a serious shortcoming. If we are to truly create a justice system worthy of that name, we need to engage as fully as possible in addressing crime survivors’ needs and concerns.

---

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany,

I understand this is a political campaign and that the Republican Party has run on a tough-on-crime agenda for as long as I can remember. But I also see the values reflected in your journey as someone who built a family business helping people enjoy the beauty of the Northwoods. You understand the importance of helping people understand a topic that many take for granted and don’t think about until it becomes part of their experience.

A purple state is more difficult than a red state when it comes to addressing the failures of the criminal legal system. In a red state, the majority party doesn’t have to worry about losing power, so advocacy on the issue can focus on dollars, principles and efficacy. In a purple state, crime is too often treated as a political weapon, obscuring the reality that Wisconsin over-incarcerates, its processes inherently fail crime survivors’ needs, and state funding severely underinvests in rehabilitation and reentry efforts. All of this places extraordinary burdens on the personnel who work in the system to the point that suicide rates and substance abuse among correctional staff are some of the highest of any occupation. No one profits from the criminal legal system except those who literally profit from it.

This matters because your campaign rhetoric is building a reality that restricts your ability to govern wisely on this topic. We cannot incarcerate our way to public safety, and we know how to do better.

My request is that you consider your responsibility as the race continues. And if you do win — or, preferably, before the election — I ask that you meet with those of us who know the system from the carceral side to better understand how it can be improved.

---

Democratic gubernatorial field,

During the 2024 presidential election, the almost instinctual, thoughtless decision to use then-candidate Donald Trump’s felony convictions as the key to undermining his candidacy was breathtakingly hypocritical. As Bianca Tylek from Worth Rises stated, using the term felon as an epithet to attack Trump would hurt Black and Brown men more than it would hurt Trump. This sent the message that Democrats felt having a felony made a person unfit and that they were willing to stigmatize a population that they claimed to advocate for when it was politically convenient.

I say this: Do not shy away from the commutations issue. It is a good policy, and people with felony convictions cut across every demographic in society.

The data, research and millions of lived outcomes point very clearly to what works and what doesn’t regarding criminal legal systems change. Whatever happens over the remainder of this year and under the next governor regarding commutations and broader sentencing policy, Wisconsin leaders and citizens must confront a simple question: If states with lower incarceration rates, use of commutations and smaller prison populations and costs are achieving public safety outcomes equal to or better than ours, what is stopping us from doing the same?

Shannon Ross is a member of the Justice Forward Wisconsin coalition and founder/CEO of The Community — both focused on creating a justice system more worthy of that name.

Guest opinion: open letters on justice and public safety as Wisconsin weighs commutations 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.

After denying requests for disaster relief to Wisconsin over recent months, President Donald Trump has approved $22.6 million in assistance to several counties that experienced extreme weather in April. Wisconsin Emergency Management determined that over $27 million in damage occurred as a result of the historic April storms that hit communities, bringing tornados, heavy rain and flash flooding.

The storms broke records as rivers overflowed and skies darkened under heavy cloud cover, high winds and torrential rain. According to the National Weather Service, a record-breaking 8.56 inches of precipitation accumulated in Green Bay during the month of April, breaking the prior record set in 1929 by more than 2 inches. Wausau also broke the record for precipitation with 8.74 inches accumulating in April, compared to the 6.06 inch record set in 1954. Historic flooding flowed out along the Wolf River basin in Shiocton and New London, as well as near the Embarrass and Peshtigo rivers near Porterfield. The Menominee River at McAllister reached its second highest level on record, and multiple dams overflowed in Waupaca and Shawano counties.

Residents living in the counties of Bayfield, Brown, Jackson, Jefferson, Juneau, Kenosha, Manitowoc, Marathon, Milwaukee, Outagamie, Racine, Rock, Sauk, Vernon, Washington, Waukesha, Waupaca and Winnebago, along with the Oneida Nation, will have access to the assistance. The funding will cover temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses and other programs. Federal funding is also available to state, tribal, and local governments which are eligible for assistance, as well as certain private nonprofit organizations to help replace damaged facilities. 

Trump posted on Truth Social that he’d contacted U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — the Republican candidate he  endorsed for Wisconsin governor —  about greenlighting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance. Trump said that “the wonderful people of Wisconsin are in good hands with Tom,” alongside other Republican politicians which have been endorsed by the president. Meanwhile, Tiffany posted on X saying he called the White House after the storms and thanking the Trump administration “for their partnership.” Tiffany said in his post, “We’ll keep working to ensure every Wisconsin community has the resources needed to recover.”

Trump’s effort to spotlight Tiffany in connection with the announcement of emergency assistance comes ahead of the gubernatorial primary in August. Tiffany is the leading Republican contender, while six Democrats with a range of experiences and political leanings are competing for their party’s nomination. 

When Trump first announced the emergency relief for Wisconsin, saying he had contacted Tiffany to inform him, neglecting to mention the current Gov. Tony Evers, Evers said in a statement posted to X, “Wisconsinites and I will believe it when we see it.” 

“President Trump and the Trump Administration have declined tens of millions of dollars in Wisconsin disaster relief requests,” Evers wrote, “and have been playing politics by withholding emergency FEMA assistance from states across our country that’s supposed to go to helping families and communities rebuild and recover after a disaster—and all while he uses taxpayer dollars to build himself a golden ballroom.”

In February, the Trump administration denied disaster relief — for a second time — which would have helped Wisconsin communities recover from historic, record-breaking flooding and storms that hit in August. Over 1,800 homes in the Milwaukee area alone were left either damaged or destroyed, and multiple parks were left virtually underwater. The state fair shut down early as people fled the fairgrounds through waist-high water, and some were left stranded on roadways after their vehicles were flooded. Collectively, the August floods caused about $76 million in damage to private homes and public infrastructure, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. 

A letter sent to Evers by FEMA in February said that assistance was “not warranted” but didn’t explain the rationale the agency had used to make that decision. Flood assistance was also denied for Milwaukee in November and October. A month after the FEMA denial, Wisconsinites endured a historic blizzard so bad that it shut down plowing services in a state used to snowfall. This summer, residents have been contending with a dangerous heatwave. 

These are just the latest bouts of extreme and dangerous weather which have challenged the ability of residents to adapt and of local and state governments to respond. Researchers have long warned that extreme weather including more intense flooding, heatwaves and blizzards would become more common due to climate change. Trump has called climate change a hoax and his administration has cut back the federal programs to improve climate resilience. 

Early on a Friday morning in June at the 76th annual Musky Fest in Hayward, Wisconsin, a sprawling conversation between state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), who is running for governor, and dried gourd vendor Pam Boesch ended with an exchange of pregnancy stories.

“I worked in the kitchen at the restaurant until about five hours before my water broke,” said Hong, who has worked as a dishwasher, executive chef and bartender.

Boesch laughed.

“I was bowling in a tournament right up till two days before I had the baby,” she said in response. “I bowled so good. I couldn’t cross that arm over for nothing,” she added, making a swinging motion with her arm. “That baby was keeping me straight.”

The exchange lasted a few moments before the two parted ways, and Boesch, a retiree who makes and sells decorative gourds with her husband in northern Wisconsin, is not likely to vote for Hong, but the moment represents part of how Hong, a two-term state lawmaker from one of the bluest cities in Wisconsin, is working to break out in a crowded Democratic primary. 

Hong is betting that her working-class background and her pledge to build a government that works for people will connect with a broad swath of Wisconsinites and fuel a movement that crosses partisan lines in a closely divided battleground state.

Building on a national political movement 

Hong, a single mom and self-proclaimed “outsider” known for her prodigious cussing and for her Democratic Socialist politics, is running in a six-way primary for a spot on the November ticket in the race to succeed Gov. Tony Evers. The other candidates in the race are Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, and former head of Gov. Tony Evers’ Department of Administration Joel Brennan. 

Hong, the first Asian American to be elected to the state Legislature, has represented a big section of deep blue Madison since 2020. She ran for office motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need for more relief for working Wisconsinites. At the time, Hong owned and operated the restaurant Morris Ramen in downtown Madison, which was closed in 2024 due to financial difficulties.

Her candidacy for the state’s top executive office comes at a moment when Democratic socialist and progressive candidates are winning races around the country, challenging establishment Democrats. Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won last year and, in June, three of his endorsed congressional candidates in New York won their primary races, two of them by defeating longtime incumbents. More recently, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old Democratic socialist defeated a 15-term Democratic incumbent congresswoman in Colorado. 

Hong’s run for statewide office in a state that President Donald Trump won twice, in 2016 and 2024, is a new test for the movement. 

Hong has sought to connect with voters on the ground, while also tapping into a growing national progressive movement to bolster her campaign. Ever since she launched her longshot campaign for governor, momentum has been steadily growing behind her campaign.

In Marquette Law School polls, Hong has repeatedly polled at the top of the Democratic field, although more than 60% of voters still said they were still undecided. She came in second behind Lt. Gov. Rodriguez in a straw poll conducted by WisPolitics at the state Democratic Party convention, winning 138 votes, or 23.1%.

At a rally at Atwood Music Hall in Madison on the same weekend as the convention, Hong filled the room with excited supporters. Ro Khanna, the progressive Democratic congressman from California and Kat Abughazaleh, the former congressional candidate who made waves by running an upstart campaign as a young progressive in Chicago, both campaigned for her. Along with Khanna, Hong has the endorsement of progressive Minnesota U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.

At the Atwood Music Hall rally, Hong pitched herself there as following in the footsteps of Wisconsin’s progressive trailblazers  former Gov. Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day and the “father of environmentalism,” former Secretary of State Vel Phillips, the first Black statewide officeholder in Wisconsin who spent much of her career combating racial discrimination in housing and former governor and Sen. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, leader of the progressive movement who helped pioneer progressive taxation and workers’ compensation. 

Hong said all of these Wisconsin leaders were called “unreasonable” in their time, but today they are “thought of as visionaries.”

“Did you know that it is our state where environmentalism was born? It was our state where sewer socialism was born. It was our state where Social Security was born,” Hong said to the crowd. “Our progressive roots run deep. F*** Robin Vos and the Republicans, who’ve been trying to uproot our history,” she added, referring to the longtime Republican Assembly speaker who is retiring this year.  “That time is over.”

Hong also noted at the rally, which was held immediately after the close of the Democratic state convention in Madison, that she has been repeatedly fielding a lot of the same questions. 

“I got asked over and over again about, ‘We love your campaign. We love what you stand for. Your policies are amazing. It’s so thorough, but can you win?’” Hong said to shouts of “Yes!” from the crowd, “I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t think we could win.”

While she has growing support, Hong has had to navigate a number of controversies in recent months. She was sued for a $30,000 credit card debt, accumulated by her now-closed restaurant, although she said it was paid off  by her parents shortly after Capital One Bank filed the lawsuit, according to the Capital Times. She has also taken to social media to answer criticism of  her past statements that she supports policies to “defund the police.” 

Another controversy popped up this week during livestreams Hong appeared on to raise money and bolster her candidacy nationally. Just ahead of a key fundraising deadline, Hong flew to California to speak with Hasan Piker, the left-wing Twitch streamer who has made controversial comments including saying that the U.S. “deserved 9/11,” which he later said was “inappropriate.” During the same week, she appeared on a show with streamer Michael Beyer, also known as Mike from PA, who has been criticized for saying that Jews are “demonic.”

Hong raised over $92,000 for her campaign during the appearances on Beyer and Piker’s streams. Piker also said during the stream that he would come to Wisconsin to campaign for Hong. 

Hong’s campaign responded to the criticism in a lengthy statement, saying “antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, transphobia, and all forms of dehumanization have no place in Wisconsin politics or in the movement we are building,” condemning all violence including the Hamas attack on Israelis on Oct. 7, and that she was unaware of the comments made by Beyer before going on.

However, the campaign also said the discussion was a distraction from the substance of the conversation on the live streams where she said she was trying to reach voters who have typically ignored and disengaged from politics. 

“Appearing on a podcast or livestream is not an endorsement of every statement a host has ever made,” the campaign said. “Fran is willing to go anywhere and talk to anyone about her vision for a better, more compassionate world… If we refuse to show up, those voters will hear only from the right, from the conspiracy theorists, or from people who do not share our values.”

Hong’s Democratic primary opponent David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, said on X that he would not go on Piker’s broadcast if invited, as his statements are “beyond the pale.” Another opponent, Kelda Roys, also criticized the appearance, saying it “wasn’t about trying to persuade voters who disagree with you and having an honest conversation across differences; it was about raising money” and that it was “a deliberate choice about what you’re willing to tolerate when you’re seeking campaign cash.”

The livestreams did not include discussion of the controversial comments, but focused on Hong’s campaign, including her proposals for taxing the rich, funding public schools, implementing universal child care, paid family and medical leave and putting a moratorium on data center development.

Hong also promoted establishing a public grocery store, noting wryly that a similar policy is being implemented in “communist” Indiana. She proposed a public bank, which would be modeled after the country’s only such bank in North Dakota (“famously a communist state,” she joked), that would be used to give small businesses subsidized loans.

“If it is radical to have free child care and public grocery stores, I would say, let’s be radical, let’s embrace that,” Hong said on Piker’s stream. “That hasn’t been what we’ve done in the past, and look at where we are now using the same playbook and strategy. We’ve been incremental in the past, and it’s led to complacency.”

Reaching voters in Tom Tiffany’s district

Beyond Madison and national livestreams, Hong is taking her message to voters across the state. 

During her day visiting a handful of towns north of Highway 29, in the heart of the 7th Congressional District currently represented by Republican gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, Hong spent the majority of the day meeting with Democrats and progressives. But she started the day at the 76th Musky Fest in Hayward, an annual celebration of the area’s deep fishing culture, where she spoke with Republicans and politically unaffiliated Wisconsinites. 

Boesch, the retiree, who makes “thunder gourds”  — percussive instruments made from dried gourds that make a sound like thunder when shaken — that she sells with her husband mostly at farmers’ markets. It’s a side gig for the couple who are on a fixed income and expressed concerns about rising property taxes. Boesch said she plans to vote for Tiffany, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor and said he had “blessed” her and her husband. 

During the conversation, Hong learned that the retirees were friends with Rep. Chanz Green (R-Mason), her colleague in the Assembly, and Green had once referred them to Tiffany’s office, when they weren’t able to cash a check from Veterans Affairs. Tiffany helped them recover the money.  

“[Tiffany] does care about people, and he’s very down to earth and very personable, too, and he makes a presence in this north country. That is important, just like she is,” Boesch said, referring to Hong.

While she appreciated the conversation and Hong’s visit to the Northwoods, Boesch questioned some of the ideas that Hong articulated, including taxing billionaires to pay for bolstered government services. 

Hong has said that she wants to take the burden of school funding off property taxpayers by increasing state funding to two-thirds of the cost of public schools, but that it will be necessary to bring more revenue into the state by taxing rich individuals and megacorporations. She has said that she would also wants to legalize and tax cannabis to help pay for her policy priorities, as well as explore putting in place a small payroll tax and eliminating tax exemptions for data centers. 

Boesch asked how many billionaires there are in Wisconsin to tax. According to In Business Madison, there are seven.

“Is that the answer? Taxing the millionaires and billionaires? Is that the whole answer to it? I don’t know,” Boesch said. “I think cutting spending is a good answer… We have to learn how to live within a budget. We shouldn’t have to look for another way to find more money so you can spend more money.”

Boesch added that she and her husband are low-income, but never borrow money. “I mean, living in a budget is something everyone has to do,” she said.

Hong then spotted Robert Olson, who was wearing a “Trump 2028” hat. He told the Examiner he only wore the hat “to get the flakes going.”

The two spoke about patriotism and public schools. Olson said he was worried about the lack of training in the trades, including shop classes in the schools, while Hong said the state could get rid of Act 10, the Walker-era law that stripped collective bargaining rights from public employees including teachers, so they could get paid more. When his wife, Lolita, who is a town clerk and on the county Board of Supervisors, walked up, the conversation turned to shared revenue, the state’s system for funding local governments.

Olson said after that it’s not a “shoe-in” that he’ll vote for Tiffany. He described him as “OK” and not “breaking any records.” He said if there is a Democrat with better ideas, he’d be open to voting for them.

“She pays attention very close, and she’s got her mind on the issues,” Olson said of Hong. “And she never said what party she’s with, which to me is very important.”

Progressives and Democrats in the Northwoods

After spending the morning talking with skeptical Republicans and independents at Musky Fest, Hong faced a different audience: Democrats and progressives. In that safer forum she addressed, in her words, the “big scary S word.”

In Luck, Wisconsin, about an hour and a half south of Hayward, Hong told a small group of progressives and Democrats that she had “some really good conversations” with voters who wanted to talk about issues like public schools and property taxes. 

“It turns out folks are pretty excited about taxing the rich, too,” Hong said. “Wisconsin voters care more about solutions than labels.”

University of Wisconsin-Superior political scientist Alisa Von Hagel told the Examiner in a phone interview  that while the Northwoods has trended more Republican over the past decade, the region also has deep roots in labor unions and progressive politics. 

“It isn’t the progressive liberalism you would see in San Francisco… but a progressivism that has roots here in the northern Midwest,” Von Hagel said. 

Von Hagel said there continues to be a strong Democratic base in the area and it’s important for candidates looking to make inroads in the area to show up. 

“Thinking about campaign visits as purely reciprocal… getting as many votes as possible, [a visit] doesn’t have that transactional outcome, perhaps, for visitors coming to the area. However, it’s still symbolically important,” Von Hagel said. 

Even so, Von Hagel said Hong’s biggest challenge may not be convincing voters about Democratic Socialism but simply introducing herself to them. 

“Especially in a primary election, name recognition is the primary concern that most candidates who aren’t already an incumbent struggle with,” she said. 

William Johnson, a former member of the Polk County Board of Supervisors and Frederic resident, told the Examiner that he supports Hong because she is more progressive than other Democratic candidates. 

During the meeting at a coffee shop in Luck, Johnson asked Hong about how she plans to overcome name identification challenges across the state. He said some residents in their part of the state know more about Minnesota politics than Wisconsin and some have even claimed that former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura was their governor. 

Hong said that’s why she launched an aggressive social media campaign early. On social media Hong has sought to reach voters with frequent video posts, and has addressed controversies including her credit card debt. Her campaign has also hosted and attended over 300 in-person events since it launched in September.

During a Polk County Democratic Party meeting, Hong started by talking about public schools and wanting to end the state’s school voucher system, implementing a public option for healthcare and ensuring that the state’s natural resources aren’t “for sale” to data center and AI companies. 

“We can do this, especially when we have a trifecta. We’ve got an opportunity this year to make sure that we flip the Legislature,” Hong said, referring to Democrats’ hopes of winning majorities in the state Assembly and Senate as well as the governor’s office.

As she took questions, the broader concern about the Democratic Socialist label came up. 

“If you’re more left than center, I mean we live in a state that, let’s face it, we have a lot of Republicans in this state,” one attendee said, “what is your plan to win those people over if and when you win the primary election?”

Hong explained that she has embraced the label because it aligns with her values. 

“Republicans have made it so that we think government has to be dysfunctional, but the policies that we’re running on make government a force of good,” Hong said. “That’s what it’s actually supposed to be… a social insurance space.” 

Hong compared “mutual aid,” a term used in urban activist and progressive circles for pooling resources to help communities, to neighbors in rural Wisconsin helping their neighbors mow their lawns and plow driveways in the snow.

Von Hagel said she thought the message could be effective with people in the Northwoods, pointing to the tradition of community spaghetti dinners for people facing hardships.  

“It’s one small example, but I think it’s a philosophy and a tradition that resonates with people who are from here and live here.” Von Hagel said.

Hong described on her conversations at  Musky Fest. She said she didn’t know whether the people she spoke with there would vote for her, adding that if the guy wearing the Trump hat Googled her he might find things he dislikes. 

But, she said, she hopes when he remembers the conversation he feels that “Democratic Socialism isn’t scary, that I’m someone that is an ordinary person trying to make it so that folks can live easier lives, be able to take care of themselves, their kids, aging parents, and help their neighbors.”

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. 

One year ago, President Donald Trump signed the first piece of legislation Republicans in Congress had introduced at the start of his second term.

Passed using the complicated budget reconciliation process that enabled GOP lawmakers to enact the legislation without Democratic votes, HR 1 paired $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years with $1 trillion in cuts to federal healthcare programs as well as other initiatives to cut federal spending.

With the legislation’s first birthday on July 4, critics of the Trump administration and Democratic politicians have been using every opportunity to highlight the legislation’s role in driving unpopular results.

Healthcare cuts are among the most prominent of those outcomes. They include a series of changes to Medicaid — the state-federal health insurance program for people at or below the federal poverty guideline, with annual incomes of just under $16,000 per year for a single person or $33,000 for a family of four.

For medical and hospital care, Medicaid is called BadgerCare in Wisconsin. Medicaid also covers long-term care services for people who qualify, including home healthcare for the elderly and people with disabilities, and goes under a variety of names including Family Care and IRIS.

On Tuesday, the anti-Trump political activist group Indivisible and members of the healthcare union SEIU Wisconsin gathered in front of the Wisconsin Republican Party headquarters in Madison with an out-of-service ambulance to denounce  cuts to healthcare attributed to HR 1.

“We are here to give voice to the millions of Americans who have lost access to healthcare and to the tens of thousands of Wisconsinites who have lost healthcare,” said Jean Grow, co-leader of Indivisible’s Milwaukee chapter.

The group aimed its barbs not just at Trump but at Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the party’s nominee for governor in the November 2026 election, who voted with the rest of his party in the U.S. House of Representatives for HR 1.

“Who in this state is primarily responsible for these cuts? Tom Tiffany,” Grow said, to hearty jeers from the crowd of about two dozen during the lunchtime protest.

HR 1 also cut the federal nutrition assistance program SNAP — known as FoodShare in Wisconsin — by 20% by 2034, about $187 billion.

The changes will pass on to most states a portion of the program’s costs, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington says could lead “the lowest-income people, including children, older adults, veterans, and people with disabilities” in every state to lose access to food assistance.

The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act “has been brutal for Wisconsin families,” said Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, a Democrat who is running for lieutenant governor, at a press conference Wednesday at the Democratic Party’s Capitol Square offices that focused on Tiffany’s record.

“We know that the impact it’s going to cause — things like potentially 270,000 Wisconsinites are going to lose healthcare,” said Godlewski. “We know tens of thousands of Wisconsinites are going to lose access to FoodShare.”

While Trump and GOP congressional leaders initially called HR 1 the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” critics quickly mocked it as “the Big Ugly Law” or variations on that theme. In September, the Republicans rebranded the bill as “The Working Families Tax Cut.”

The CBPP, however, found that the tax cuts are “tilted to the wealthiest households.”

The Congressional Budget Office “finds that the new law’s program cuts and tax cuts will make households with incomes in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale worse off: they will lose more from the cuts in health coverage, food assistance, and other programs than they will gain in tax cuts,” the  CBPP reported in February.

For the bottom 10% by income, average annual incomes will fall by $1,200 — 3.1% — the CBPP reported, citing the CBO. Meanwhile, the top 10% will see their annual incomes rise $13,600 on average.

HR 1’s advocates said the healthcare spending reductions would only address waste, fraud and abuse.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said during a virtual press conference in June that the changes — such as new work-reporting requirements for some Medicaid participants — would impose administrative burdens and red tape that will block people who are qualified to receive benefits.

“They’re trying to kick people who are fully eligible off the program,” Baldwin said. The press conference was organized by the advocacy groups Protect Our Care and Main Street Alliance.

Most of the Medicaid changes won’t take effect until 2027. Enrollment in the program has already been dropping, however. Federal data tracked by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families show that in Wisconsin, more than 75,000 Medicaid recipients had left the program in the first five months of 2026.

Dr. Kristen Dall-Winther, a family physician in Birchwood, Wisconsin, also took part in the press conference with Baldwin.

“I see how access to affordable healthcare can make the difference between something that’s a manageable condition and a medical crisis. I also see the difficult choices patients are forced to make when healthcare becomes too expensive, which it generally, universally is now,” Dall-Winther said. “When funding is reduced, healthcare providers face greater financial strain, especially in rural areas where many of our facilities are already operating on razor-thin margins.”

Seven candidates vying to become governor addressed a large audience in Pewaukee Monday night at a forum organized by WISDOM, a non-partisan organization dedicated to social justice and prison reform. Moderated by James Causey and Mary Spicuzza of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the question and answer session covered policing and incarceration, healthcare, immigration and other issues.  

Republican frontrunner U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany did not attend. Andy Manske, a 26-year-old medical service technician who is running a longshot Republican campaign for governor  joined Democrats Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), former Department of Administration chief Joel Brennan, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. 

Below are each candidate’s answers to a handful of key questions from the moderators. 

How would you reduce incarceration while improving public safety?

Manske answered the question by drawing on his personal relationships with people who struggled with addiction and incarceration. He said  he believes that people need not only a path out of prison, but support so they can become healthy and productive citizens. This is especially true for people leaving jail or prison and people living on the street without housing, he said. He added that he supports building a location in Madison where the best professionals could gather “and those who want help can get that help.” 

Roys said she favors following evidence-based practices and expanding treatment and diversions.  “This is not rocket science,” she said, adding that it’s possible to reduce the number of people Wisconsin incarcerates while also saving money and human lives. Addiction and mental health should be treated as medical issues, not with incarceration, Roys said. She connected these medical struggles to her proposal to open up the state employee health insurance plan to all Wisconsinites to get the same health insurance that she enjoys as a state employee. Roys also endorsed ending crimeless revocation, which has increased Wisconsin’s prison and jail population by reincarcerating nonviolent offenders for minor violations of their conditions of release and implementing restorative justice practices.

“Everybody in our state deserves to live a life of dignity, including people who are incarcerated right now,” said Hong. She said that the overcrowded conditions in prisons across the state — especially for incarcerated women — are “abhorrent.” Hong said that some communities are creating local programs the state should support and fund, including  efforts to provide affordable housing, community centers and  mental health resources. “For too long our local governments have been starved of resources due to Robin Vos and the Republicans freezing and not funding our local governments,” said Hong. Many of the problems communities face could be best addressed through increased state support for local organizations that are already doing the work on the ground, she said. 

Brennan said that about one-third of all state employees work for the Department of Corrections, making it the largest state agency. “We have about three times as many people incarcerated in Wisconsin as they do in the state of Minnesota,” Brennan said,  adding that Wisconsin’s  neighboring state spends $100 per capita less than Wisconsin on incarceration. He suggested that  the state could make a profound positive impact by investing  $600 million “on the front-end,” dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline by increasing prevention and education and providing opportunities for job training and re-integration for people leaving prison.  

Crowley said one of his  first jobs after high school was working at Project: Return with formerly incarcerated people, helping them find housing. Under his leadership, Milwaukee County has taken on responsibility for running the Community Re-Intergration Center, formerly called the House of Corrections. He said that government’s focus needs to be directed at “how we invest upstream” to address the root causes of crime. Supporting mental health care, continuing the commutation process started by Evers, decriminalizing cannabis, creating a pathway for expungements and expanding drug courts are among the measures he said he supports. 

Barnes highlighted lack of opportunity as a contributor to Wisconsin’s high incarceration rate. He said he  has known people who’ve made bad decisions because they felt the consequences of their actions were no worse than their living conditions. “That’s something we need to reckon with,” said Barnes. “Right now, we’re doing things totally wrong. We’re spending so much money and the cost is not just in dollars and cents, the cost is in lives.” During his time as a state lawmaker, Barnes visited many prisons around the state and was the ranking Democrat  on the Legislature’s  Corrections Committee. He recalled talking to a boy who’d spent time in Lincoln Hills who said that when he was released, “that he knew for a fact that he was going back in because he did not know what else to do.” Barnes said that people need to be rehabilitated and provided opportunity, not just warehoused. 

Rodriguez connected Wisconsin’s incarceration rate to its “shameful” record of failing to invest in public health. “And so what ends up happening is that people do not get the services that they need,” she said. When she chaired the governor’s healthcare workforce task force, she said, she learned that Wisconsin could double the number of therapists it provides “and it would still not be enough.” She stressed the disproportionate rates of  incarceration of of Black and brown Wisconsinites despite similar rates of drug use and addiction. Like Brennan, Rodriguez pointed to Minnesota’s record reducing incarceration without triggering an increase in crime. Rodriguez said that Wisconsin could look at how other states have tackled the issue. “I am not about re-inventing the wheel,” she said, adding that Wisconsin needs to adopt the best practices from other states.

How would you use the pardon and clemency powers as governor? 

Roys stressed that community safety is “the most important aspect” of decisions about releasing people from prison. Gov. Tony Evers  should have used his power to reduce prison sentences and pardon Wisconsinites  “much more” aggressively. She also said that the governor has significant power to shape how the Department of Corrections operates, and to help provide meaningful pathways to reintegration of incarcerated people. Yet the state continues to incarcerate people who have served such long sentences they have grown old and have aged out of crime. “I actually think that we have a constitutional problem here in Wisconsin,” said Roys. “How long you go away depends on when you committed the crime and when you were sentenced.” The power to pardon should be used “because justice is not always served,” she added. 

Hong also said that the governor should wield executive power more assertively . The conditions of Wisconsin’s prisons could be considered “a state of emergency,” Hong said. “There are executive orders that should have been placed during the Evers administration that I was disappointed not to see happen,” she said. She felt Evers could have been more responsive to  families, formerly incarcerated people, and advocates who are “organizing and demanding justice,” adding that those folks deserve a place at the table when discussing pardons and clemency powers. “It should be the folks who are closest to the problem who are closest to the power,” she said. By listening to these voices, she suggested, Wisconsin can move away from being among the  states with the highest Black incarceration rates and  where women’s prisons are desperately overcrowded. “This is about dignity,” she said. 

Brennan said that Evers’ was dedicated to using his pardon powers to right wrongs. “The pardon process was one where he was emotionally invested in the stories,” Brennan said. He promised to continue that commitment. He expressed optimism that the end of Republican gerrymandering will help create a state where justice and vengeance are not blended together. “We have had a generation in Wisconsin that in some ways we have lost because of that confusion,” he said, adding that pardon and clemency powers need to be used judiciously and that the governor cannot rely solely on those powers to achieve criminal justice reform.

Crowley promoted the idea that anyone and everyone should be able to apply to get their record expunged once they’ve served their time. Pardons need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, especially since everyone’s situation is different, he said. He highlighted that his former deputy chief of staff was a four-time felon. “Yes, I hired a four-time felon,“ he said, adding that one of the charges was for child abuse. But what that charge obscures, he said, is that his employee was convicted of child abuse after getting into a fight as an 18-year-old with someone who was 17. “And even though the victim said ‘this is not what we want to do to his life,’ the judge still threw the book at him.” This is why every case needs to be reviewed carefully, and that assumptions should be avoided, Crowley said.

Barnes said that politically polarized positions on pardons and clemency have contributed to problems in Wisconsin. He reiterated that people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law have been blocked from opportunity, which led them to prison in the first place. Non-violent offenders and people suffering from mental illness or addiction and other unique situations are all treated the same under the current system, which needs to change, he said. 

Rodriguez said that she would continue the pardon, commutations and clemency process Evers began. Each case should be viewed individually, she said, but  public safety has to be the first consideration, followed by justice, fairness in sentencing, and finally a demonstrated commitment to integrate back into the community. Rodriguez and Crowley both said  that cannabis needs to be legalized and that convictions based on outdated laws, including cannabis convictions, need to be expunged. 

Manske agreed that cannabis should be legalized “with rules and guidelines,” and cannabis convictions should be expunged. He added that the justice system should treat the powerful no differently than those who are not wealthy or well connected.

How would you make immigrant communities feel safe and reduce labor shortages?

Hong said that no one should have to live in fear in their own communities and described the pain of immigrant workers who are afraid of being arrested by federal agents if they show up for their jobs. Ensuring that people know their rights is important, she said, so they can fight back against wage theft and workplace maltreatment, while also navigating life under the threat of deportation. 

Brennan said he recently toured a Manitowoc foundry where the CEO spoke to employees in Spanish and discussed a recent chilling of the labor market. “For the first time in many months, he found no Spanish speakers at all,” said Brennan. The federal immigration crackdown has harmed the dairy industry and agriculture generally as well as manufacturing and the service industries in Wisconsin, he said. Brennan described it as a joint responsibility to ensure Wisconsin is the state “we thought we were.” He said that means making sure that state resources are not being used for immigration enforcement, ending agreements between local law enforcement and immigration enforcement, and creating a welcoming state where people are treated with respect and can contribute their cultures. 

Crowley said he has been dealing with the federal immigration crackdown directly in Milwaukee, adding that his county has the state’s largest Latino and Muslim populations statewide. Both the state and local governments and the community itself need to step up to protect neighbors, he said. Milwaukee County has created an online resource hub for immigrants and concerned  residents. Crowley stated his position that local law enforcement should not become a tool of a federal immigration agenda. 

Barnes said that Wisconsin grew because people, including immigrants, chose to move here. Being able to access the middle class has become more difficult over time, causing people to point fingers at each other and to blame immigrants, he said. He called scapegoating immigrants unfair, describing immigrant workers as essential to the state’s economy. Fundamentally, Barnes said, there is a broken immigration system that needs to be fixed at the federal level.

Rodriguez recalled when her young child first asked her if Donald Trump won, and whether the president would send  his father — a naturalized citizen — back to Mexico. “And it broke my heart that that man’s words had gotten into my child’s head,” she said. She added that her husband now walks around with his passport card after Trump was elected for a second time. “We have to make sure that immigrants feel safe in Wisconsin,” she said.

Manske said he doesn’t like seeing immigration enforcement going into communities and hurting people. He said two classes of “oligarchic Republicans and corporate Democrats” look at immigrants almost as a “slave caste.” Manske said that it’s heartbreaking that immigrants are facing threats and repression. He added that he wants to see a working legal immigration system, but that communities shouldn’t be lied to and told “they’re safe when they’re not safe.” 

Roys said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) needs to be abolished, a position she has articulated over the last  decade. “I foresaw how it could be used as a paramilitary force,” said Roys. America can have secure borders, a functional immigration system and public safety “without dehumanizing people,” she added. “What is happening now is an abomination,” she said. She highlighted her record of supporting legislation to limit or prohibit state and local cooperation with ICE, and to allow ICE agents to be sued and prosecuted for breaking laws. Roys also added that  she supports raising the minimum wage, providing universal childcare, and providing driver’s license for immigrants as ways to support workers. 

All of the candidates were asked specifically whether they support 287(g) agreements between local law enforcement and ICE. They all said they would not support the agreements except for Manske, who is skeptical that state law can trump federal law in this circumstance. 

What would you do to significantly reduce childhood lead poisoning?

Crowley said he believes the discussion of lead poisoning  plays into the political divide in Wisconsin. “We don’t just talk about clean drinking water,” he said. “We pit lead laterals against PFAS contamination in rural communities … when what we need to be focusing on is “how do we just talk about getting people access to clean water?” He said he wants to  empower the Department of Natural Resources to hold polluters accountable, and work to overcome the daunting barriers to replacing lead laterals across the state, a task challenged by a lack of plumbers and tradespeople trained to do the replacements. 

Barnes said that, although federal funds to address lead are drying up, the state still has a responsibility and an opportunity to step in. He described going into communities and talking to people who got good, union-paying jobs to replace lead laterals, and how the loss of those jobs is another serious problem. Barnes said that besides lead pipes, the state also needs to hold landlords accountable for having lead paint on their properties. 

Rodriguez also pointed to cuts and changes at the federal level, which have frustrated efforts to replace lead laterals. She feels instead of relying on the federal government, neighboring states should collaborate to tackle the lead crisis. 

As a  Republican, Manske said, he doesn’t mind the idea of spending money on issues like this. He doesn’t want Wisconsin communities to deal with a water crisis like Flint Michigan, which seems to never end. Manske said he doesn’t like hearing about people being sick and not being able to pay for the bill. “At the end of the day, whatever it takes,” he said, stressing that investing in people is important. 

Roys said that corporate money in politics is the reason clean water isn’t coming out of every tap in the state. She recounted working to hold corporate polluters accountable for curbing disparities in infant mortality rates, which have environmental components. On the Joint Finance Committee, she fought for funding to clean up water contaminates. “We need to restore environmental law and order in the state,” she said, adding that science needs to be put back “in the driver seats at the DNR.” 

“Delete existing tax exemptions for data centers and the additional subsidies,” said Hong, keeping her remarks brief and pointed. The $2.1 billion the state could recoup from data centers, could be put back into infrastructure to address issues like the lead crisis, she said. 

Brennan said the state could use a clean water loan fund at the local level, and could view the cleanup effort as an opportunity to create good paying jobs. Brennan recalled visiting a woman who lived in a rural PFAS-contaminated community and asking her what she wanted out of state government. Her community had been dependent on bottled water for the last five years. She turned on her tap and told him “I want to be able to use this to cook, to brush my teeth.” Brennan said, “it’s our responsibility to do better.”

What is something you disagree with your party or its leadership on?

Barnes said that “we have to tax the wealthiest in our society” and restore opportunity. The reason people can’t access the middle class is because so much wealth has been concentrated in the hands of just a few people, he said. Allowing money to influence politics has allowed the wealthiest people to control who is elected, “not the voters, not the people.” Barnes said that Democrats need to “reject this level of corporate influence,” hold the wealthiest accountable, and stop profiting from systems that oppress people.

Rodriguez said that people are forced to choose unnecessarily between moderate and progressive Democrats. In reality, there is a lot of agreement across the board, she said. She added that there’s an illusion of difference among Democrats who share the same principles but differ on the right  methods to achieve the same ends. 

Manske said that other Republicans see him as an “enigma.” He believes the government should spend money to help people, he supports a high-speed train from Milwaukee to Green Bay, “if the money would allow it.” He  also supports legalizing cannabis, and is pro-choice even though he is religious. Manske feels that people are unable to afford the families they may want. “The conditions need to change. People choose life if they have hope,”  he said. 

Roys said Wisconsinites value independent thinkers, which is why she’s well suited to take on Tom Tiffany, whom she called a “rubber stamp” for Trump. She’s gone against her party even when it hurt her, she said. “I was one of the first candidates in the country to say that I’m not going to fund my campaigns with corporate money, back in 2011,” said Roys. “You can’t tell me how many rooms I was laughed out of.” She said she believes in public financing, and pushed for fair maps when other Democrats wanted to draw maps that favored themselves. Roys also said she supported bills to put more nurses in rural communities, despite multiple vetoes from Evers. She has also pushed for ending mass incarceration, despite other Democrats not being as enthusiastic, she said. 

Hong said she disagrees with some of the political strategies favored by the Democratic Party. Working class people, especially in rural communities, feel left behind, she said, and the party has a problem with “elitism.” Independents and moderate Republicans should not be seen by Democrats as more important voters than working class people, she said. She pointed to farmers who’ve been crushed by tariffs and big agriculture. Young voters also need to be valued, and issues like childcare and mass incarceration need to be taken seriously, she said. “I think I disagree with who we have been prioritizing, and I think we have an opportunity to course-correct,” she said.

Brennan said he disagreed with Evers on the provision of  Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that offered a $1,700 tax credit for contributions to school choice programs. Evers said he wouldn’t let Wisconsin opt into the tax credit, but Brennan said taking the money was better than sending it elsewhere. The money, he said, could send a kid to camp at Discovery World — which Brennan led — or could support kids who need opportunities. Brennan added that he believes that every dollar that can be used to support kids in Wisconsin should be used. 

Crowley said that the Democrats are playing “the part of reaction.” All the party has done for the last 12 years is react to what the Republicans and Trump are doing, he said. Doing this allows Trump and the Republicans to “define us, for us,” he argued. No one wins a game if they’re only playing defense, he said. Crowley recalled when Trump said that private equity firms shouldn’t be buying single family homes, something he agrees with and that Democrats had fought for years to achieve. Democrats have forgotten how to be proactive and how to sell a vision of what they want for their communities, he said. 

The Democratic primary will be held on August 11, followed by the general election for governor on Nov. 3. 

This article has been edited to correct that Rep. Francesca Hong referred to $2.1 billion in tax exemptions and subsidies for data centers, not $2.1 million. 

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Some of the top speakers at the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s annual convention in the Wisconsin Dells Saturday included 84-year-old former Gov. Tommy Thompson, 77-year-old U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, 71-year-old U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and 68-year-old U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, now officially the party’s endorsed candidate in this year’s governor’s race. 

As the old guard GOP leaders championed unity and warned of the dangers of “radical” Democrats, some took the stage to remind the party faithful they needed to look to the next generation of voters in Wisconsin to win in November.

“Welcome these young people,” said Waukesha County Republican Party chair Terry Dittrich, pointing to the Wisconsin Young Republicans, Turning Point USA and Americans for Prosperity —  groups that had speaking roles or tables with materials in the hallway outside the convention hall. “They are the future. They’re smart, they’re tech savvy and they just need guidance, and in some cases they need us to just listen to their ideas. …We’re all a bit older, but the bottom line is there’s a really nice fledgling group of young people who want to be involved in this process, and they’re the future.” 

Young people could be the key for Republicans hoping to win back the governor’s office and hang on to the Legislature this fall. Support from young men in particular helped President Donald Trump win in 2024, but that support has softened as the national mood has turned against the party that controls the White House and Congress. 

As Republicans attempt to connect with young people in 2026, they do so without Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA who was assassinated last year during an event on a college campus. Speakers and candidates on Saturday recognized the need to engage with young voters like Kirk did. 

Conservatives are still reeling from Kirk’s death and haven’t found someone like him to connect with young people, said Michael Alfonso, the 26-year-old Trump-endorsed candidate and son-in-law of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy who is among four Republicans and three Democrats running to replace Tiffany in the 7th Congressional District.

“I think having young voices that are brave enough to step up is going to make a huge difference,” Alfonso said. “Because I don’t think one person could ever fill Charlie’s shoes, but I think maybe a thousand could.” 

A CBS exit poll from the 2024 presidential election shows that while voters under age 30 were overall more likely to vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump made inroads with that age group. In 2020, 60% of under-30 voters favored former President Joe Biden and 39% voted for Trump. In 2024, Harris received 54% of the under-30 vote and Trump won 43%.

A recent Harvard Youth Poll conducted by the university’s Institute of Politics found Democrats leading Republicans 45% to 26% in a generic ballot of registered voters ages 18 to 29. Just 35% of young people surveyed said they will “definitely” vote in this year’s midterm elections, but the Harvard poll found a political enthusiasm gap, with 55% of young Democrats saying they will vote this year compared with 35% of young Republicans and 25% of young independents. 

Former Gov. Scott Walker, who turned 43 the day he was first elected in 2010 and now runs the conservative group Young America’s Foundation, encouraged the mostly middle-aged and older crowd to reach out to young people and build enthusiasm as the country prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Walker noted many of the Founding Fathers were younger than 40 when they signed the document. 

“I tell you all those stories here this afternoon, not for a history lesson, although I love history, but to remind you and to remind those that we work with and serve with and live next to that you’re never too old or too young to fight for freedom,” Walker said on Saturday. 

The Republican Party of Wisconsin plans to visit college campuses across Wisconsin and tap campus resources to reach young voters and make the case for conservative candidates, state party chair Brian Schimming said. It’s important for Republicans to connect with young people early, when they’re more likely to stick with a political party throughout their lives, Schimming said. 

“We’re going to have a very active presence on the campuses and our coalition groups, who do campuses as well, AFP, Turning Point, all the other groups,” Schimming said. “We are not leaving the campuses alone.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who faces a nationally watched tight reelection race for the 3rd Congressional District this November, said Wisconsin Republicans should take young people seriously and engage them with facts about Republican priorities. He noted a lot of people in Saturday’s crowd had white hair matching his beard.

“I didn’t bleach this, so we got to make sure that we have more people with your color hair than mine,” he told reporters on Saturday.

He noted his youngest child is 27.

“These are the young people that were locked in their homes. They were forced to wear masks, they were forced to get an injection that they didn’t agree with or they would not be able to go to college. They were told if they write something wrong on the internet that they would be banned from everything,” Van Orden said. “They saw their hero, Charlie Kirk, assassinated live on television, so the younger generation is completely motivated because they want freedom and they look at the Republican Party as the party of freedom.” 

Tiffany emphasizes affordability as top issue

In the Wisconsin governor’s race, Republicans young and old have rallied around Tiffany as their best chance to retake the governor’s mansion. Wisconsin College Republicans endorsed Tiffany in September, before the party coalesced around his candidacy in late January after the Trump endorsement.

It’s Tiffany’s vision on affordability, from freezing property taxes to lowering utility costs, that has resonated with young Republicans and should connect with young voters across Wisconsin this fall, said Kyle Schroeder, the 29-year-old chair of Wisconsin Young Republicans, who spoke on stage at the convention Saturday.

“Even though that is a broad stance for everyone, it resonates so much with the younger generation,” Schroeder said about affordability. “We’re starting families and we are trying to plant our roots in a community post-college. We have great universities around Wisconsin. Whether we want people staying here in Wisconsin or moving to another state, we need to attract those workers and young workers, too.” 

Tiffany is about a decade older than the oldest top Democratic gubernatorial candidates. The current top-polling candidates, Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, are in their late 30s. Tiffany joined the state Assembly in the 2010 Republican wave that now risks losing legislative control for the first time in 16 years.

Tiffany told reporters Saturday he believes young people are pessimistic about economic opportunities in Wisconsin during Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ eight years in office, but emphasizing affordability will help him make inroads with young voters. 

“I want them to be optimistic about Wisconsin, and how you do that is you make the state more affordable,” Tiffany said. “We reduce property taxes, then freeze them. We reduce utility rates.” 

Emily Stuckey, a Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson, described Tiffany in a statement Saturday as the “GOP’s most expensive choice for governor.”

“From his unfettered commitment to Washington Republicans’ MAGA agenda that drives up healthcare premiums and guts coverage, to his support for tariffs that devastate farmers and policies that continue to drive gas and grocery prices higher by the day,” Stuckey said. “The Republican Party of Wisconsin endorsed a candidate who is ready and willing to squeeze every last dollar he can out of working Wisconsinites.”

At annual convention, Wisconsin GOP’s old guard urges party to engage young voters 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.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

It’s boom times for Wisconsin’s congressional delegation: Most members have seen their personal wealth substantially rise since arriving on Capitol Hill, according to a NOTUS analysis of congressional financial disclosures.

That surge in their financial portfolios is primarily driven by real estate, retirement accounts and, in one case, a well-placed billboard, NOTUS’ analysis indicates. In all, five of Wisconsin’s 10 delegation members reported median net worths of more than $1 million in 2024, the most recent year covered by federal disclosures.

Overall, the Wisconsin delegation is much wealthier than the average Wisconsinite, who has a median net worth of about $76,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s median net worth nearly tripled in recent years, from $24 million in 2010, when he was first elected to the Senate, to $64.9 million in 2024.

One of the assets driving the uptick in Johnson’s median net worth is an industrial building he and his wife own in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The property was worth between $1 million and $5 million in 2010. In 2024, Johnson valued it at between $5 million and $25 million, according to his latest financial disclosure.

In a decidedly political twist, part of Johnson’s wealth is tied up with his own reelection campaign committee. Federal Election Commission records indicate Johnson’s campaign owes Johnson more than $8 million from personal loans he’s made to the committee. In his 2024 personal financial disclosure, Johnson lists these loans as assets, valuing them between $5 million and $25 million.

Johnson’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Therein lies a major challenge in pinpointing lawmakers’ net worths: They are only required to publicly disclose the value of their assets and liabilities in broad ranges. So if an asset increased from $4.9 million to $5.1 million, it grew 4%, but the category range (going from $1-$5 million to $5-$25 million) would have increased 400%.

Lawmakers also aren’t required to disclose the value of several assets including personal property, vehicles or their personal residence, although they do have to declare the value of their mortgage as a liability along with other debts including credit card balances and student loans.

To best estimate lawmakers’ wealth, NOTUS calculated the median of their minimum net worth — minimum total assets minus maximum liabilities — and maximum net worth — maximum total assets minus minimum liabilities.

Johnson is hardly alone among Wisconsin lawmakers whose personal wealth has grown substantially while they earn a $174,000 annual salary.

Among the others: Republican Reps. Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil, Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany, as well as Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan.

Steil, elected to Congress in 2018, and Grothman, elected in 2014, have both become millionaires since they entered Congress.

Grothman’s median net worth has more than doubled, from $885,000 in 2014 to more than $2.2 million in 2024. Several accounts Grothman disclosed owning in 2014, including state retirement accounts and two individual retirement accounts, steadily increased in value. And the value of a condominium he owns in West Bend, Wisconsin, greatly increased, from a reported minimum value of $15,001 in 2014 to $100,001 in 2024, according to his financial disclosures. The condominium could be worth as much as $250,000, according to Grothman’s latest disclosure.

Grothman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Steil’s median net worth more than doubled from 2018 to 2024, from $812,000 in 2018 to nearly $1.9 million in 2024, according to his financial disclosures. Several of Steil’s brokerage and retirement accounts jumped in value, including Vanguard Target Retirement, Mid Cap Growth Index Fund and Strategic Equity Investor accounts. He also added a Vanguard U.S. Growth Fund account worth between $250,001 and $500,000 that’s now among his largest assets.

Steil’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Fitzgerald’s median net worth increased from $3.5 million in 2021, his first year in the House, to $6.3 million in 2024. His financial disclosure report from 2020, the year he was elected, is blank and has not been amended.

A spokesperson for Fitzgerald did not return a request for comment.

Fitzgerald’s wealth spike is primarily driven by real estate investments. The minimum disclosed value of his Wisconsin farm increased from $500,001 to $1 million over those three years, and he disclosed a property in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 2024 that’s worth at least $250,001. He also disclosed a Big Horn, Montana, property worth between $1 million and $5 million, although the property’s value range did not change between 2021 and 2024.

Tiffany’s median net worth ticked up slightly from $230,000 in 2020 to $296,000 in 2024, according to his latest disclosure.

Some of his income comes from on high: He owns a billboard in Oneida, Wisconsin, worth between $1,001 and $15,000 that consistently generates between $5,000 and $15,000 each year, according to his disclosures.

Tiffany’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Pocan’s median net worth has also risen, from $541,000 in 2012 to $778,000 in 2024.

Most of his net worth comes from Budget Signs & Specialties, a printing company Pocan fully owns. It sells custom signs, awards and apparel, as well as campaign materials to Wisconsin Democratic candidates, and is valued between $500,001 and $1 million. It was valued between $250,001 and $500,000 in 2012.

Political candidates and committees have paid Pocan’s Budget Signs & Specialties more than $1.2 million since 2004, according to FEC data. That includes about $12,700 so far during the 2026 election cycle, with $7,600 collectively coming from Pocan’s own congressional campaign committee and the committee of Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

Baldwin’s campaign committees and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin are among Pocan’s biggest political customers over the last 22 years, FEC filings indicate.

The state Democratic Party has paid Pocan’s company more than $500,000 for materials such as yard signs and T-shirts since 2008. Committees for Baldwin’s House and Senate campaigns have collectively spent $171,000 since 2004.

In addition, Pocan’s campaign committee has paid his business more than $91,000 for printing and copying services and signs since 2018, according to FEC filings.

Pocan’s office declined to comment on the congressman’s net worth increase and business.

Baldwin’s median net worth has dipped slightly from $623,000 in 2012 to $588,000 in 2024, according to her financial disclosures.

Baldwin’s office said in a statement that the Wisconsin Democrat has “no knowledge of where her assets are invested or the composition of her portfolio” and communicates with her trustee through the Senate Ethics Committee.

One of the delegation’s wealthiest members is also its newest.

Republican Rep. Tony Wied, whose median net worth is nearly $10.1 million, arrived in Washington in 2024 after selling his chain of dinosaur-themed gas stations and convenience stores.

Wied holds between $50,000 and $100,000 in Black Hills Corp., an electric and gas utility in the West, and at least $250,000 in companies that produce tractors, trucks and automotive parts, including an investment in the Canadian National Railway.

That’s notable because Wied sits on the House Agriculture Committee and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where he serves on the subcommittee for rural development, energy and supply chains. These committees have oversight jurisdiction for the industries in which Wied personally invests.

Wied reports his stock trades each month to the House Ethics Committee in compliance with current law and guidelines, spokesperson Aidan Strongreen said.

“Congressman Wied’s investments are managed solely through an independent financial adviser, and he has no role in any of their decisions,” Strongreen said.

Only two members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation have net worths below the Wisconsin household median, according to a NOTUS analysis of their annual financial disclosures: Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore.

Van Orden’s median net worth is -$88,000, while Moore’s is also in the red, at -$75,000, according to their most recent financial disclosures.

On her most recent disclosure, Moore reported no assets. She disclosed a mortgage balance on her home in the range of $50,000 to $100,000. Lawmakers are not required to publicly disclose the value of their personal residence, and most do not.

Moore’s net worth has dropped almost $100,000 from $24,000 in 2008, according to her disclosure.

Van Orden does have some assets, primarily a Navy Mutual Whole Life policy valued between $50,001 and $100,000, his disclosure shows. But his overall net worth is pulled down by a mortgage and a “revolving charge account,” a category that includes credit cards and home equity and personal credit lines.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Here’s how much the wealth of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation has changed since going to Washington 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.