Caffeinated Politics

The Wisconsin State Journal‘s endorsement of David Crowley for governor ended with this line.

We’re recommending Crowley for governor because he’s run a much bigger ship, shows more independence and hasn’t threatened our democracy.

That last phrase is most remarkable, because the Board even had to evaluate it and then write it. It makes us think harder about where we are as a state and nation in 2026.

Last week, I had a long phone conversation with a close friend, and we talked about our shared unease with how fragile our democracy can be when ambition, fear, and blind loyalty overwhelm principle. Then only days later, the Wisconsin State Journal gave a powerful endorsement of David Crowley for governor. The editorial’s punchline spoke directly to a concern that has lingered since the 2020 election. The newspaper warned that Congressman Tom Tiffany voted against finalizing legitimate electoral votes from two states and signaled that he would have objected to Wisconsin’s votes as well. Although Tiffany now much belatedly acknowledges that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, the Journal expressed concern that political pressure might tempt him to interfere with election outcomes again. Those concerns deserve serious reflection.

Most concerning, Tiffany voted against finalizing the legitimate electoral votes of two states following the 2020 election. At the time, he even said he would have voted against counting Wisconsin’s votes. He went along with the president’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.

Tiffany told our editorial board recently that Biden won the 2020 election. We appreciate him acknowledging that fact. Yet we worry that, if he is pressured again to meddle with Wisconsin’s voting results as governor, he might indulge in disruption.

We’re recommending Crowley for governor because he’s run a much bigger ship, shows more independence and hasn’t threatened our democracy.

What troubles me most is Tom Tiffany’s willingness to abandon his own judgment in service of an autrocratic baffon. After the votes were cast, counted, recounted, and certified, a coordinated effort tried to convince Wisconsinites that millions of their fellow citizens had somehow not really spoken. Courts rejected the claims. Election officials, many of them Republicans, rejected the claims. Yet Tiffany continued repeating them because telling the truth risked angering Donald Trump and his most devoted and duped supporters.

The lasting damage was not merely political. I argue it was a moral wound to the nation’s public institutions and the fiber of its citizenry. Public office holders swear allegiance to the Constitution, not to a president. Their obligation is to the rule of law, not to a political bully’s demands.

In July, I wrote about why voters needed to be especially mindful of having a winning candidate on the ballot for the fall election with the 2028 presidential election in mind.

I have stressed that we need a Democratic governor in 2028 to ensure our state’s election machinery holds up when national politics turns toward autocracy.

After the pressure campaigns we witnessed in 2020, false‑elector schemes, and administrative chaos, it became painfully clear that state‑level officials grounded in basic civics matter. Not because they can “flip” an election as Donald Trump requested be done in Georgia, but because state officials control the guardrails that keep the process from being bent by outside actors undermining the will of the people as expressed by the ballot box.

Then there’s the veto pen. Wisconsin’s governor holds one of the strongest veto powers in the country, including the partial veto that has been the stuff of political folklore for decades. In 2023, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed bills that would have changed election administration rules, including measures affecting absentee ballot procedures. During the post‑2020 fallout, the legislature advanced bills altering how WEC operates and how clerks handle ballots. The governor’s veto prevented those changes from becoming law. Even though there is a very good chance that the state senate will flip to a Democratic majority, let us not forget that Governor Evers proved to be a powerful line in the sand as a defense against legislative changes that would have undermined our state’s election processes.

That is why the Journal’s concerns about who is elected governor matter so very much. They are not about relitigating the past. They are about evaluating character for the future. When the next moment of pressure arrives, when the next election produces winners and losers, Wisconsin deserves a governor whose first instinct is to honor the will of the people, not test how far it can be ignored.

Tiffany had a moment in 2020 when character mattered. He bent the knee when courage was required, and that decision revealed far more about his lack of character than anything else in his career.

This November, Wisconsin voters can teach a civic lesson of their own. We will not vote for anyone who sought to undermine the people’s balloting. We should never entrust someone who seeks to undo voters’ intentions with overseeing future elections.