Look Out For Tim Michels

It’s easy to make fun of Tim Michels, the latest Republican candidate for governor.

He hasn’t run for office since in 18 years, since a failed bid to defeat then-Senator Russ Feingold in 2004. That’s a lifetime in politics and he’s been invisible since then. Michels, moreover, is entering the race awfully late, with less than four months to go before the Republican primary. And he made the cardinal error of letting others announce his candidacy before he did.

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson told WISN that Michels was definitely running, back on April 20. That was two days before Michels got around to filing the paperwork for his candidacy and five days before Michels’ announcement today that he is indeed running for governor, turning that into old news.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin had a field day with all this, with a press release Friday headlined, “Did Tim Michels forget to announce he is running for governor?” The release went on to note the inconvenient fact that Michels is a member of the Advisory Board of the campaign launching group for Republican Rebecca Kleefisch, the 1848 Project, who is seen as the front runner in the GOP primary. It also note that Michels is “a member of the board of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the dark money group that endorsed Kleefisch and is running ads supporting her candidacy.”

Michels’ peculiar delay in announcing his campaign meant that the first story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was not the usual, positive introduction for a candidate but instead one noting he “will have to address how he will handle work his family business does with the state and how he could avoid conflicts of interest if he is elected. Michels Corp. received more than $660 million in payments from the state over the last five fiscal years.”

But despite all these negatives Michels has to be seen as a threat, not just to Kleefisch and the other Republican candidates, but to Democratic incumbent Gov. Tony Evers. Why? Because he could spend huge amounts of money.

Michels is a co-owner of the family business, the Michels Corp., a privately-held company based in Brownsville, WI, in Dodge County. The company has seen spectacular growth over the last 25 years, growing “from a few hundred employees to a… multi-faceted construction company with more than 8,000 employees,” his campaign announcement crowed.

Just how many facets are itemized by the the company’s website, which lists nine Michels Companies, including Michels Construction, Inc., Michels Power, Inc., Michels Utility Services, Inc. and Michels Pipeline Inc.

“This year’s Engineering News-Record’s Top 400 Contractors list sees Michels earn the 27th spot overall. With more than $3 billion in 2018 revenue, we were able to climb 11 spots from our 2017 position,” the company noted in 2019. The company placed “6th among Petroleum Contractors, 15th among Power Contractors, 25th among the Top 100 Contractors by New Contracts, 29th among the Top 50 Contractors Working Abroad, and 39th among the Top 50 Domestic Heavy Contractors.”

The list of projects currently undertaken by the company nationally and internationally seems endless. Because Michels is a private company, the full details of its profits and net worth of its owners is not as easy to determine, but two things are clear: the company has vastly more revenue than the last time Michels ran for office, back in 2004. And Michels clearly has the ability to self-fund and outspend any other candidate, should he and his finally members want to to do this.

This also turns the disadvantage of entering the race late into an advantage, because it gives his opponents less time to define Michels, while he can spend lavishly on ads selling himself as a political outsider who will reject donations from special interests. “I will not accept any contributions from PACs or lobbyists and I have set a cap of individual contributions to $500,” his campaign announcement promised.

As for Michels’ political invisibility since his last run, that, too, can be turned into a positive. “I’m a businessman and a veteran — not a politician.” Michels declared. “I know my proven, decisive, executive leadership experience is just what we need in Madison.”

All of which might sound like Michels will run as a moderate businessman, but that’s clearly not the case. He is running on the same issues as Kleefisch, Kevin Nicholson and Tim Ramthun, the two other Republicans in the race. All have genuflected to Donald Trump and his Big Lie about a stolen election, while criticizing Evers for his policies to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Michels has said he met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago two weeks ago and “would certainly welcome any support” from the former president.

And he blasted Evers’ pandemic policies, declaring “our economy was shut down unconstitutionally,” and claimed that elections in Wisconsin “are being hijacked by big tech foundations from California.”

The fact that he is both a businessman and veteran makes him seem very similar to Nicholson, as does his criticism of political insiders like Evers. That overlap could help Kleefisch, who did the best in a February poll by Marquette Law School, which found that among likely GOP primary voters 30% support Kleefisch, 8% back Nicholson, 5% favor Ramthun, and 54% have no preference.

But Kleefisch has had problems winning over the state’s pro-Trump Republicans, according to some GOP insiders. Michels probably did test polling before deciding to run, and must have seen enough weakness for the other GOP candidates to decide he can win. That doesn’t mean he will, but the wealthy business owner’s entry into the race all but assures this will be a hotly-fought, barn burner of a primary election.