THIS TUESDAY’S GUBERNATORIAL PRIMARY in Wisconsin may seem like the latest chapter of an internecine fight among Democrats over the philosophical direction of the party. And it is that.
But there’s much more on the line as well: The fallout from the Wisconsin election could extend nationally, by making it possible for Trump-allied Republicans to screw with the presidential election results in ways they tried, but failed, to do in 2020.
On the line is the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s decade-and-a-half-long effort to claw its way back to a unified state government, as well as the opportunity to add more safe Democratic House seats to the next congressional map. Beyond that, however, is another hugely consequential prize: the capacity to ensure that the state’s 2028 presidential election results will be properly certified. Wisconsin’s governor will play a critical role in that, much as the current outgoing governor—Democrat Tony Evers—did when Donald Trump contested the state in 2020. There are real fears in Democratic circles that Wisconsin Democratic voters aren’t quite appreciating these stakes as they head to the polls this go-around.
“The critical importance of defeating Tom Tiffany for the future of American democracy is hard to overstate,” said Ben Wikler, the former state party chair, referring to the expected GOP nominee for governor.
Wikler’s fears aren’t imaginary. Tiffany, a House Republican who is cruising to the nomination, has a lengthy history of embracing Trump’s election lies. He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, peddled lies that “hundreds of thousands of illegal votes” were cast in Wisconsin, and signed on to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit seeking to bar Wisconsin and other swing states from voting in the Electoral College. More recently, he’s suggested that those convicted in the January 6th riot could possibly be owed restitution and he’s continued to back an FBI probe into Wisconsin’s 2020 election workers. He remains unwilling to definitively state that Trump lost the 2020 race.
“It is very clear that Tom Tiffany has a real issue when it comes to democracy,” said Devin Remiker, the current chair of the state Democrats. “Under Governor Tom Tiffany, I don’t know if we would be able to count on him doing the right thing and ensuring that that certification was properly done if he didn’t like the outcome.” And it’s not just the presidential election that may be at risk, Remiker notes: In Wisconsin the governor’s signature is necessary to certify even U.S. Senate elections—so it’s conceivable that Tiffany might interfere with the results of the 2028 Senate election.1
The potential for an electoral-count crisis in the 2028 presidential election looms over several critical states as candidates connected to Donald Trump’s undying lie about the stolen 2020 election are running for governorships. Rep. Andy Biggs, who tried to overturn the 2020 results, is the GOP nominee for governor in Arizona, another critical presidential state.2 And the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, has publicly called into question the results of the 2020 election.
But unlike in Wisconsin, where Evers decided not to run for a third term, Biggs and Garrity are both up against popular Democratic incumbents. And while national Democrats are fretting about election-denying GOP governors possibly having a hand in presidential election certification in a swing state, it’s not clear to local Democrats if that prospect is factoring into voters’ calculations.
“I don’t know if people are fully grasping the stakes,” said Joe Zepecki, a Milwaukee-based Democratic strategist. “Tiffany is not someone who just went along with the lies in 2020 to keep Trump’s favor. He has continued to push these conspiracies through 2026.”
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ALSO ON THE LINE in this fall’s Wisconsin election: The possibility of another round of congressional map-drawing in early 2027.
The nationwide clash over redrawing congressional districts over the last year saw red states make their maps redder and blue states make their maps bluer (with a handful of states’ redrawn maps rejected by the courts). Wisconsin Democrats entered 2026 optimistic about their chances of flipping the state Assembly and state Senate as well as keeping the governorship—which would allow them to redraw maps ahead of 2028 that could net additional safe Democratic House seats. (Wisconsin’s U.S. House delegation currently has six Republicans and two Democrats.) Losing the governor’s chair would imperil that, even if the party were to flip the state houses. And if Republicans were to win a trifecta of their own—controlling the governorship and both houses of the state legislature as they did from 2011 to 2018—they could just as easily redraw congressional lines that wipe Democratic House seats off the map.
“Wisconsin might be the single state with the biggest possible swing in what happens with House maps based on what happens in the midterms,” said Wikler.
Given those stakes, a panic has set in among some Democrats that the party appears to be on the verge of nominating Francesca Hong, a DSA candidate—someone who has called for canceling Thanksgiving, abolishing the Senate, and eliminating police funding entirely—as its gubernatorial nominee.
Hong’s defenders argue that she’s not the risk that her critics insist she is. They say she can marshal populist support to counter any losses she may suffer among the moderate suburban voters who might not find her socialist-tinted policies to their comfort or liking. They point to the swelling of support for Hong in the primary as evidence that she can succeed in the general election, should she get there—as the polls strongly suggest she will:
But Hong’s success is also owed, in part, to the screwups of the establishment and the moderate wing of the party. A few months ago, Democrats believed that a competitive primary field for governor was a good thing and that the strongest candidate would ultimately emerge from it. The likely beneficiary, they believed, would be Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez—especially after Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley ended his campaign and endorsed her.
But Rodriguez stunned Wisconsin Democrats when she announced she was suspending her campaign after discovering that her campaign manager had mishandled the campaign’s financial reports. Crowley jumped back in the race. And Evers quickly endorsed him.
Anti-Hong Dems debated whether to rally around Crowley or former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes—a decision that was made for them when Barnes dropped out of the race amid reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel into allegations that he leveraged his role in the party to have sexual encounters with young adult women. Republicans weren’t just enjoying the schadenfreude as the moderate and establishment flanks of the party crashed out. They were actively trying to engineer an outcome to their liking. A super PAC tied to Republicans has spent millions of dollars on ads boosting Hong’s candidacy.
“Fran has run a very good campaign. She was the most aggressive in spending early, and the fact that she is not a traditional Democrat allowed her to be a safe haven for people who are frustrated with the Democratic party,” said Zepecki. “Everything the establishment tried to do happened too late.”
In the final few days of the primary, Wisconsin Democrats have debated whether the race is baked and the only option is to get Hong all the help possible to prepare her for the general—or if going all-out for Crowley in a Hail Mary attempt to keep Hong from securing the nomination is the better path. Some Democratic officials saw Abdul El-Sayed’s closer-than-expected victory in the Michigan Senate primary as evidence that Hong’s support may be softer than polls suggest.
Still, even Hong’s critics privately acknowledged to me last week that, given her big lead in the polls, Crowley probably does not have enough time to turn around the race. Instead, the conversation among Wisconsin Dems has slowly turned into a brainstorming session about what can be done to take Hong from a candidate regarded by a good chunk of the state as unserious, and convincingly reintroduce her as a legitimate politician prepared for the gravity of the job. They insist that it’s not an impossible task and that she could still win in a matchup against Tiffany, particularly given how blue this cycle is trending and how close Tiffany is to the increasingly unpopular president. Remiker told me that the state party, which has remained neutral in the primary, is already planning a statewide tour for the nominee and is prepared to lend staff to the nominee’s campaign.
“Fran may not have been the candidate or the nominee that people expected, but I don’t think that takes away from the possibility of still winning in November,” said Madison-based Democratic strategist Scott Spector, who managed Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s successful 2018 and 2024 re-election campaigns. “There’s so much on the line that you’re not going to have folks who are going to sit on their hands and say ‘We’ll see what happens in four years.’ People are going to do everything they can to take advantage of this historic opportunity in November.”
The opportunity that Spector is referring to is the chance for Democrats to win a governing trifecta for the first time since 2010, when Wisconsin Republicans gained majorities in the U.S. House delegation, State Assembly, State Senate, and took control of the governorship with the election of Scott Walker.3 As Wisconsin Democrats see it, they’ve been working ever since then to undo Walker’s legacy—from his gerrymandered congressional and legislative maps to his efforts to gut the state’s public employee unions.
“When Scott Walker and the GOP took control of Wisconsin in 2010, Wisconsin experienced a miniature version of the political crisis that the whole country is experiencing right now [with Donald Trump],” Wikler told me. “It’s taken sixteen years and thousands of people organizing in every corner of the state to unrig the state’s legislative maps and reach this moment when a Democratic trifecta is possible.”
It would be a cruel fate for Wikler and others to see all the hard work they put in to flip Wisconsin back to Democrats come up short right at the finish line. It would be particularly difficult for it to happen in a cycle when Democrats are expected to make major gains across the country. But that pain may be overshadowed by the damage that could come two years later, when a presidential contest comes down to a few key states—especially if the outcome of that contest depends on whether Trump allies are able to interfere in the election in ways they tried and failed to do in 2020.
“The 2026 [cycle] has had a huge circle around it,” as Wikler put it—a big, bright warning that the stakes are high, even if the voters haven’t caught on yet.
My open tabs:
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— Guess What? Tony P Hates You, Too.
— Pat Ryan’s Very Cordial Class War
Ben Wikler, the former state Democratic chair, indicated last month that he may run for the U.S. Senate in 2028. The incumbent whose seat will be up that cycle, Republican Ron Johnson, has not announced whether he will run for re-election—and suggested last year that he would rather not.
Biggs is running against incumbent Gov. Katie Hobbs. Hobbs won in 2022 by defeating Kari Lake—who went from being a 2020 election denier on behalf of Trump to denying her own defeat by Hobbs in 2022.
The current Republican majority in the Wisconsin Senate is 18–15. Of the 17 seats up for election in 2026, 12 are currently held by Republicans; Democrats need to pick up 2 to have a majority in the chamber. In the Wisconsin Assembly, where all 99 seats are up for election, the current Republican majority is 54–45.
As a Wisconsin voter, it’s mind boggling that the Democrats let this race get to this point. I don’t see anyway Hong beats Tiffany, she makes Mandela Barnes look like a moderate and he way underperformed. I know several people who are to the left of me who are, at best shakey on voting her, which does not bode well to win a statewide race. She may be popular in Madison and parts of Milwaukee but she needs WAY more than that to win here. Saying there are too many old white people in a Culver’s or being the Holiday grinch is not going to get her there.
I'm not a fan of Hong. Even though she is trying to temper her former intemperate statements, I still think that she has a very steep hill to climb. Whether she has the chops to actually be a governor remains to be seen. I was also skeptical of El-Sayed. But after listening, really listening and watching him campaign, I have changed my mind. Other than the Piker debacle which I think he should renounce post haste, I'd vote for him if I were a Michigander. All this said, the Democratic party is in real flux. Change is hard, especially with so much on the line. But maybe these new, younger more progressive voices are the party to come. Surely the Establishment sold out long ago. I say, give them a chance, let the voting chips fall where they may and ORGANIZE in support of whomever emerges as the Democratic nominee. Republicans are only able to win these days by cheating, lying, stealing. Surely we can do better.