campaign begins, the candidates for governor
look to define one another. That includes Tom Tiffany
attacking David Crowley on data centers. This is
inside Wisconsin politics.
I'm Shawn Johnson here with my colleagues Anya van
Wagtendonk and Zac Schultz. Hey, you two.
>> Hello. >> So it feels like ads are
just always running in Wisconsin, swing state,
Wisconsin, where every election is so important.
But Ana, I wonder if there is an argument to be made
that the ads that are running right now are
potentially very critical to the outcome of a race
like the one we have for governor.
>> I mean, right. This is sort of the pivot point. We
are going from primary to general, and especially in
this particular instance, where we had such a kind of
crazy Democratic primary, there's now two very clear
candidates that are going to be on the ballot. And so
they are trying to define themselves and they're
trying to define one another. And so right now,
I think with all of that momentum kind of coming out
of the primary week, now is the time that they have to
turn to the entire state, not just their party base,
and say, this is who I am. But more importantly,
perhaps this is who that other guy is. And here's
why you don't want to vote for him.
>> Define or be defined. Zac. It strikes me that
these two candidates in particular are maybe
especially vulnerable to that because they're not
that well known. statewide. And this is
really their opportunity to decide on what territory
the election will be fought. Will it be about for Tom
Tiffany? His greatest fear is this is an election on
his connections to Donald Trump and the national
economy and affordability or abortion, or any of
those topics that he really doesn't want to talk about.
For David Crowley, it's absolutely he doesn't want
to have to talk about crime rates, or he doesn't want
to talk about some of the executive decisions he's
made in Milwaukee or some of the history of that
county, and especially where he is on data centers.
This is one of those pivot points that Tom Tiffany is
trying to say. Let's put the race in that category,
because I think that's an area that people want to
talk about, and I think I can make it more favorable
to myself, especially in the sense that he's not
well defined in that area. Just as we were talking
about, he's trying to create the definition of
where does Tom Tiffany stand on data centers?
Because it's not super clear.
>> Yeah. I mean, with the caveat that we don't know
how it's going to work and neither does the Tiffany
campaign. As far as wedge issues go, it's fairly
clever. This is a relatively new issue to
politics. So it's not defined in the way that
some other issues are. You don't know exactly where
the interest groups stand with the parties. So Ana
how is that playing out in this attack from Tom
Tiffany? How is he going after David Crowley trying
to frame him? >> Yeah, I mean, he's
trying to use his initials against him. He's calling
him Data Data Center. David Crowley DC, DC as a way of
trying to kind of tie him to this. And the way he's
doing it is in a slightly convoluted way by saying
that because David Crowley hasn't pledged to kind of
roll back these specific tax incentives, that that
makes him more pro data center. David Crowley is
also kind of trying to split the difference a
little bit and say, well, I support local control. So
communities that don't want it don't have to have it. I
would want, you know, sort of tight controls and
regulations in this kind of thing. But the other kind
of interesting piece of how Tom Tiffany is handling
this, so I went yesterday to an endorsement
announcement for these environmental groups that
are now backing David Crowley. And of course,
environmental concerns are very tied up in people's
concerns over data centers. And part of the way that
that Tom Tiffany is now framing it is that data
centers are taking away farmland. And also because
there's a push from Democrats to have a
sustainable energy, be sort of the backbone of data
centers. He's also now kind of using it as a one, two,
three punch of they're trying to take farmland,
not just to create data centers, but also to create
wind farms and solar farms. And so he can kind of
package it together in all of these things that will
speak to Republican voters, Democrats obviously, like
solar, like wind farms. And so they'll have more of
their work cut out for them to kind of distinguish
those issues. seeing some social media
appearances from Tom and he's kind of framing it
as data centers versus farmland is maybe like a
pretty transparent appeal to rural voters in that
instance. >> It's doing so many
things at the same time because it is about his
base and rural farmland. One of his earliest ads
months ago talked about how prevent foreign countries
from coming in and buying up our farmland, which is
an issue that does concern people that are worried
about the rising cost of just trying to rent out a
field to put crops in the ground, as we've seen with
all the international tariffs affecting soybean
and corn farmers, they're looking for someone to
blame. And if they're some of the cognitive dissonance
for them is they don't want to blame Donald Trump. I've
interviewed them, and they don't really want to blame
him and his decisions. So if they Tom Tiffany says,
well, it's not his fault. It's over here. This is who
you blame for your rising costs. Well, they're more
than happy to follow along if they're if they're in
that inclination to begin with. So it's definitely a
way to do that. But what's another element that's
fascinating is he's really trying to split split off
those Hong voters from David Crowley and split the
left, because we've seen elections where the far
left and progressive left have sat out. Maybe not in
huge numbers, but enough numbers where potentially
it does swing an election. We saw that with Hillary
Clinton. We saw that with Kamala Harris, and they're
trying to repeat that pattern with David Crowley.
If they can paint him as more moderate, more
corporate and less true, far left than some of those
voters may go third party or just set all together.
And that's one of the concerns, is he has to
watch his flank, even though he won by being in
the center. >> That's definitely an
open question for me, especially because you at
least get the impression that a lot of Hong voters
are maybe not a politics first kind of voter. You
know, they came to her because she spoke to them
in different ways, more of a movement candidate. She
would not want to identify with Donald Trump, but a
movement candidate in that way. You get different
people into the political arena. And, you know, one
question that I think some of them had during the
primary was, why don't more Democrats just say what
Francesca Hong is saying? We're going to have a
moratorium on data centers. I like the sounds of that.
Why wouldn't David Crowley Ana just say, hey, let's
let's put the brakes on these. And this data center
issue is all taken care of for me politically.
>> Well, politically speaking, data centers are
not popular. The vast majority of voters,
Democrats and Republicans, don't support data centers,
or they certainly don't support them sort of coming
into their own communities. But there is a real kind of
question around the types of jobs that they can bring
in, the kind of economic development possibilities
there. And so I think like as a politician, you don't
necessarily want to say, you know, categorically, I
will not support a thing that could be a driver of
economic growth, especially in some of these kind of
hard hit places in Wisconsin that are kind of
hurting for economic opportunities. You know,
another piece of this, too, is that a lot of the the
data center, a lot of the unions that Bakke David
Crowley are involved in data center construction.
And so one of the things that he has said is that,
you know, again, if a local community wants a data
center, one of the things that he would want to see
is that it has to be union built. That gets you union
support. And unions are a pretty big part of how the
Democratic Party defines the unions. And unions are
a pretty big part of how Republicans have started to
kind of make huge inroads with working people. So the
union question, I think, is an untapped and unanswered
one so far. >> And it seems like he's
also raised sort of just the practical arguments
during the primary campaign that, look, putting a
moratorium on these things is, is not going to change
the ones that are already in the works, that there's
a lot of data centers that are happening or in
development now that a moratorium just won't solve.
So how are we seeing David Crowley and his allies? I
guess you'd say go after Tom Tiffany in this early
stage, or how is he presenting himself as a
candidate for governor on TV airwaves?
>> Well, Tom Tiffany is splitting splitting the
baby. He's doing a little bit of both. He's still
continuing his. I'm in. Every man who thinks of,
you know, your rural farmland and your local
schools. He's still running some of those positive ads
to try and define himself. That was one of his goals
and one of the freedoms he had of not having a primary
is he could spend millions of dollars trying to create
a brand for himself as a Wisconsin guy, because his
brand as a D.C. congressman is frankly toxic in the
national political environment around. No one
wants to say, I'm deeply connected to Donald Trump
in Washington, D.C. no one from either party really
likes that at this very moment. So he has to build
a brand of being from Wisconsin, and he's got
enough roots to be able to do it, and he's got the
support to do it, and he's got the money to do it. And
at the same time, he's starting to run his
negative ads, going after David Crowley and all of
these areas. Crowley on the flip side is and his allies
we've seen from the Democratic Governors
Association are doing have happen, which is
linking Tiffany to Trump and international and
national politics, because that is their route right
now, is to try and connect those dots for voters who
may not understand that, because that is not a
winning formula for Tom Tiffany going into the fall.
Voters are thinking of those two together.
>> And and, you know, we are now seeing it was more
than a week after the primary, David Crowley
running his first ad where it's kind of biographical,
the Democratic Governors Association ads were out
right away after the primary and kind of seemed
to to fill that crucial period when you want to be
grabbing people's attention, what does it take for one
side to win this, this definition war? Anya and
Zac? I mean, it's kind of an open question, but maybe
it's a simple answer. >> I actually well, I think
it's sort of a simple answer in that the question
is like, nobody knows. Sure. Every sort of, you know,
political advertising expert I've ever spoken to
has said, you know, nobody knows why people choose
Colgate over crest or crest over Colgate. But people
spend billions of dollars to make sure that you pick
one of those. And it's sort of the same with when
you're voting. And so I think, you know, we're
seeing the negative ads, we're seeing the positive
ads, like we're seeing just kind of a lot of different
types of messaging get thrown out there. Because
what resonates with like a, a Jung annoyed, you know,
hung voter who isn't quite sure about Crowley isn't
going to be the same thing that resonates with just
sort of like your moderate person who hasn't really
been paying attention, maybe didn't vote in the
primary, but is going to vote in the general and in
any election where the difference might be 20,000
votes. As we often see in these general elections,
you kind of need to get a little bit of each of those
types of people. >> So, Shawn, we've seen
throughout history that there's a phrase that this
time of year, it talks about you. You can't win
the election now, but you can lose it. So in your
mind, what is the losing move from either one of
these candidates? Of what could they do to really put
themselves in a hole going into the fall?
it would just be to disappear. You know, if if
David Crowley had had no money or his allies had had
no money and just been off the air for a couple of
weeks, that's dangerous territory. You know, when
you don't have somebody to answer the Tiffany attacks,
you get in real trouble that way. And so I think
the one thing you do is you just keep hitting those ads.
The Colgate and Crest ads is Sonya would as she would
characterize them. So that's one thing that we've
seen from them. I think for Tiffany, it's also, though,
kind of a critical period because when the thought
was this was going to be a Tiffany versus Hong race,
which was conventional wisdom. You know, a couple
weeks ago, you had Republican donors around
the country saying, sign me up. I want to put money
into that race. I want to fight back democratic
socialism. And I want a potential win in a swing
state. In a year when Republicans could have
losses all over the place. I think the conventional
wisdom right now is still that this is Wisconsin.
Everything's 50/50 here. It's a race for governor.
And so, yeah, it's winnable for Tom Tiffany, but he
needs to maintain that perception that he can win
this race. Because once that perception goes the
way the money is going to go with it, I got a more
important question. What do we think about the way
these ads look? How are the candidates portrayed in
them when they talk about data center? David Crowley,
you know, the visuals are very striking in that ad.
>> Yeah. And I mean, especially compared to,
again, the sort of pro Tom Tiffany ads, which are all
like sunshine and backyards and pancakes and his latest
kind of, you know, defining himself ad is him saying
like, I'll teach your kids to read and I'll put money
in your pocket. And a third promise that was quite
pithy and I'm not remembering right now as
compared to the kind of doom and gloom of this
person's going to come in and build data centers and
steal your farm. And so it really is like these tonal
differences. And as you kind of go between them, it
really is like even just a color difference of sort of
Black and white versus Technicolor.
>> Yeah. I mean, the Crowley thing reminds me,
okay, Anya, this is a very old reference, but Max
headroom, the, the, you know, kind of apocalyptic
doom and gloom vision of the 1980s of our future
where we got kind of this, like kind of digital
background. And then there's David Crowley
talking up on stage. He was at a Journal Sentinel forum.
You know, they obviously doctored the background to
make it look a little techno. Zac, you remember
that? Obviously, you had the same exact thought when
you watched that. all the time. He would be a
podcaster today. He would be a television anchor. I
think he was new medium going forward.
>> Yeah, we we just hadn't figured out where his role
was in the world. >> Yeah, that's a Google
reference for all the kids watching.
>> Yeah, I will also Google that.
>> Old man memories here. >> The Democratic ads
attacking Crowley though to me it's funny. They have to
portray the Tom Tiffany that, you know, that that
ads attacking Tiffany if I miss said that they have to
portray the Tom Tiffany that you know, and so the
Tom Tiffany that they put up on the screen is the Tom
Tiffany from these ads where he's like, you know,
I'm Mr. Wisconsin and I'm having pancakes and, you
know, attending a damn, you name it.
>> One of them, they do have his bolo tie look,
which is interesting because he, he brought that
out early in the campaign to, to get a little of the
rural roots element. But then he went away from it
as his ads got more polished. But one of those
attack ads has Tom in the bolo tie, which is an
interesting look, because what is it trying to say? I
mean, is that a Wisconsin look? Is that a rural look?
Is that a rustic look? And it's just when they pick
those things, it's fun to pick them apart. If you're
really bored and you like to watch campaign
doesn't? Come on, then I think that is one thing to
decide is how do they decide what makes this
candidate look most ridiculous and not
appealing to the average voter, versus how do they
portray themselves? What kind of lighting and how
are they dressed? And I think Tiffany's wearing a
Carhartt jacket in one of them. He's of course, he's
got his rural connections. >> Well, and I think that
actually raises an interesting point, which is
that normal people don't watch these political ads.
And actually what happens is like one pops up and
people change the channel, or they try to get out of
that YouTube page or whatever. And so you need
kind of all of those frames, all of those images to say
something. So another thing that you see a lot in these
Tom Tiffany attack ads is him next to Donald Trump
because like, that's the only thing that you see for
one split second, it's putting those two people
together in your mind. And that is a win for Democrats.
>> Yeah, yeah. That's unmistakable. They always
try to try the extreme mega Tom, Tiffany, Donald Trump,
those are that's like low hanging fruit for Democrats
this time. And as clever as the data center ads are for
Tom Tiffany, it might be the Democrats just need to
hit those go to points over and over again in this
midterm election. >> I have another follow up
question for both of you. And that is, how long will
Francesca Hong continue to define this election when
she's not in it? She set the standard in the
Democratic primary. She was the conversation, and now
it's her position on data centers that is still
defining this race. So how much longer will we see her
loom over all of this? >> Well, and and I think
probably till November, she's out there campaigning
for David Crowley now, right? I mean, she's not
just being a silent partner saying, I support David
Crowley. You should too. And some of her supporters
don't actually care for that either. You know,
they're kind of going along reluctantly or not at all.
So, I mean, I think it's going to be something
that's going to be going on for a while.
Democrats kind of don't win if she does not fully kind
of throw her weight behind this. Because if you lose
by if you lose the nomination by 3500 votes,
as she did, like that is not a a clear and decisive
mandate for David Crowley and particularly on this
issue of data centers, which I think there is no
question that she defined that question, that a huge
part of why she did kind of stand out was because she
took the most standout stance on that issue. So if
she wants to kind of if Democrats want her voters
to come along, it's going to need to both revolve
around that issue and also have her as the movement
candidate, not just kind of the issues that she stood
behind, but her as this very compelling figure to
the 300, some odd thousand people who voted for her to
kind of get on board and certainly not stay home on
Election Day. have to remember that those
voters that did stay with her did that in the face of
all the pressure in the world from ads, their own
party members, a lot of their neighbors saying, are
you sure about this vote? And they stuck with her. So
they weren't casual Hong voters. So where she goes
through the fall could decide, well, how many of
those do tag along with her and say, all right, I
believe in the mission. But she said from the beginning
she was on board to defeat Tom Tiffany. And she will
need to be a crucial player in this all the way through,
which is fascinating to see how much impact she's had
in this whole process. >> I'll tell you one other
wild card that we don't know right now. As we speak
here today, we have the ads. We've seen them. We have
what they say they're going to do in terms of how big
the reach of the ads is. We don't know how much they're
going to spend on these ads. And sometimes just
repetition and bombarding the state with money is
what you need in an election like this one for
governor. I think that will be a clue that we'll see
over the coming weeks. Who's really putting money
in this race and who's not. That's all the time we have
for today. Our colleague Rich Kremer will be back
next week. This has been inside Wisconsin politics.
wisconsin.org. WPR.org, YouTube, or wherever you
get your podcasts.