As the general election 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 Sean Johnson here with my
colleagues, Anya Van Wectendonk and
Zach 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 Anya, 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
find 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
who I am, but more importantly,
perhaps this is who that other guy
is and here's why you don't wanna
vote for him.
Define or be defined,
Zach. And it strikes me that these
two candidates in particular are
maybe especially vulnerable
to that because.
They're not that well known.
They're not that well 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 wanna have to talk about
crime rates or doesn't have 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 Anya, 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 center
David Crowley, DCDC,
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 Crowely
hasn't pledged to kind roll back
these specific tax incentives, that
that makes him more pro data center.
David Crowly 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 and
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 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 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 and all 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.
Yeah, Zach, I was just seeing some
social media appearances from Tom
Tiffany. He was at an event, and
he's kind of framing it as data
centers versus farmland.
It's 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 I'll 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 with 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 decision.
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 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 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 Kamala Harris, and
they're trying to repeat that
pattern at David Crowley.
If they can paint him as more
moderate, more corporate, and less
true far left,
then some of those voters may go
third party or just set out
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 gonna have a moratorium on
data centers. I like the sounds of
that. Why wouldn't David Crowley
just say, hey, 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 places in Wisconsin that are
kind of hurting for economic
opportunities.
You know, another piece of this too
is that a lot of the
data center, a lot of the
unions that back 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 things
that you 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
itself as being about party of 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 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 the
baby. He's doing a little bit of
both. He's still continuing his I'm
in every man who thinks of
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
DC congressman is
frankly toxic in the national
political environment No one wants
to say I'm deeply connected to
Donald Trump in Washington DC.
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 has
got the support to do it and the
money to do.
And at the same time he's starting
to run his negative ads going after
David Crowley in all these areas.
Crowley on the flip side and his
allies we've seen from the
Democratic Governors Association are
doing everything we expected to 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's not a winning formula for Tom
Tiffany going into the fall.
Voters are thinking of those two
together.
And 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 primarily
and kind of seem to fill
that crucial period when
you wanna be grabbing people's
attention.
What does it take for one side to
win this
definition war, Anya and
Zach? I mean, it's kinda 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 see
the positive ads.
Like, we've seen just kind of a lot
of different types of messaging get
thrown out there, because what
resonates with, like, a young,
annoyed, you know Hong
voter who isn't quite sure about
Crowley, isn't going to be the same
thing that resonates, it's 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 Sean 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 though
but you can lose it.
So in your mind what is the losing
move from either one of these
candidates and what could they do to
really put themselves in a hole
going into the fall?
You know one way to do 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 weeks.
That's dangerous territory You
know when you don't have somebody to
answer the the Tiffany
attacks You get in real
trouble that way And so I think that
the one thing you do is just you
just keep hitting those ads But the
Colgate and Crest ads is on you
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 gonna be a Tiffany versus Hong
race, which was conventional
wisdom, you know, a couple of weeks
ago.
You had Republican donors around the
country saying, sign me up,
I want to put money into that race,
I wanna 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
away, the money's 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, those 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
piffy and I am 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 isn't 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
kind of apocalyptic,
doom and gloom vision
of the 1980s of our
future.
They 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. They obviously doctored the
background to make it look a little
techno.
Um, Zach, you remember that
obviously you had the same exact
thought when you watched that.
I think of Max Hedrum all the time.
He would be a podcaster today.
He wouldn't be a television anchor.
I think he was new mediums going
forward.
We just hadn't figured
out where his role was in the world
yet.
Yeah, that's a Google reference for
all the kids.
Google it.
Max Edmonds.
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.
The ads attacking Tiffany, if I
mis-said that.
They have to betray the Tom Tiffani
that you know, and so the Tom
TIffani that they put up on the
screen is the Tom tiffani
from these ads where he's like, I'm
Mr. Wisconsin and I'm having
pancakes
and tending a dam, you name
it.
One of them, they do have his bolo
tie look, which is interesting
because he brought that out early in
the campaign 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 camp tie,
which has an interesting look
because what is it trying to say?
Is that a Wisconsin look?
Is that rural look?
Is that 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 commercials, which
who 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 and 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 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,
um, MAGA, Tom Tiffany, Donald
Trump, uh, those, that 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 this?
Well, 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 here.
She's out they're saying, I
support David Crowly.
You should too.
And some of her supporters don't
actually care for that either.
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.
Yeah, and I think the Democrats kind
of don't win if she does not like
fully kind of throw her weight
behind this because If you lose by
if you lose the nomination by 3,500
votes as she did like that is not 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
sort of 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.
Well, and I think you 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, 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 are.
We don't how much they're gonna
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 Kramer.
That's the time that we have today.
Our colleague, Rich Kramer, will be
back next week.
This has been Inside Wisconsin
Politics.
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