Tom Tiffany Criticizes ‘Billionaire Loophole’ But Backed Law Creating It

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany has said his campaign is aiming to raise $40 million for the 2026 gubernatorial race. Tiffany delivers a speech at his launch event in Wausau in September. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the current frontrunner in the GOP gubernatorial primary, criticized the “billionaire loophole” that has led to record spending in statewide races in Wisconsin, even though he voted for the legislation that helped expand spending in 2015.

Tiffany has said his campaign is aiming to raise $40 million for the 2026 gubernatorial race. “We’ll see if we get there,” Tiffany said in an interview with PBS Wisconsin last week. “But, you know, Wisconsin, because of that pass-through loophole, I call it the billionaire loophole, there’s just so much money that comes into Wisconsin. But, you know, you can cry about it or you can compete. We choose to compete… We’re hoping to raise $40 million.”

Spending on Wisconsin statewide elections has grown substantially over the last decade in part because of an overhaul of the state’s campaign finance laws adopted in 2015 under the leadership of former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature.

Republican lawmakers at the time argued that the changes to the campaign finance laws were necessary to align state law with U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Citizens United v. FEC, which in 2010 struck down a nationwide ban on political donations from corporations, and McCutcheon v. FEC, which in 2014 found that annual caps on total political donations from one person are unconstitutional.

Under 2015 Wisconsin Act 117, Wisconsin lawmakers eliminated a state law that capped individual donations to all candidates and political committees in a single year at $10,000. Limits on contributions for each state and local office were increased and limits on contributions to party and legislative campaign committees were eliminated, creating a loophole that allowed unlimited money to flow through parties and committees into individual campaigns. The law eliminated restrictions on coordination between political parties and candidates and allowed for political parties and legislative campaign committees to make unlimited contributions to candidate committees.

The state law has become a topic of conversation again as the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case Tuesday challenging a federal law limiting the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with a candidate for office.

Tiffany has represented Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District since 2020, but prior to that he served in the state Senate. As a state senator, Tiffany voted for AB 387, which later became Act 117, along with the other Senate Republicans. Only one Republican, former state Sen. Rob Cowles, voted against the measure.

Tiffany’s campaign has not responded to a request for comment about the vote and whether he wants to see changes to state campaign finance law.

At the time, advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers warned the legislation would lead to obscene spending in Wisconsin elections. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign warned in written testimony that the legislation would mean “billionaires and multimillionaires will have an outsized influence over who gets elected” and that political contests would “be less between candidates and more between tycoons.”

Spending in governors’ races was already growing following the U.S. Supreme Court decision and before the state law was adopted. In 2010, $37.37 million was spent on the governor’s race; in 2014, spending increased to $81.78 million. The increase in spending ballooned dramatically after the passage of the 2015 law.

A record-breaking $164 million was spent in 2022 on Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race. According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, the cost represented a 77% increase from the previous $93.06 million record that was set in the 2018 governor’s race.

Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Mandela Barnes, who served in the Assembly in 2015, did not vote on the campaign spending bill, joining the rest of his Democratic Assembly colleagues who said it was a conflict of interest for lawmakers to rewrite the laws that govern their campaigns. He is the only Democratic candidate in the current crowded primary field who was in the Legislature at the time.

Barnes said in a press release in 2015 that he opposed the bill because Republicans rejected an amendment that would have delayed implementation until after the 2016 election cycle. He said Republicans “acted in blatant self-interest for their campaign committees by voting down my effort,” so he “recused myself from voting on ultimate passage of this outrageous proposal.”

Barnes also said then that with the legislation Republicans had “fully embraced the darkness of corruption by voting to rig the rules to line their own campaign pockets with shady special interest money and allow for more corruption to go undetected and unprosecuted.”

Barnes, a former lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate candidate, recently said he is aiming to raise $50 million over the course of the race, but at the same time criticized the escalation in campaign spending.

“It’s not a good sign for things. I wish that were not the case,” Barnes told reporters Monday. “The goal is to get big money out of politics. The goal is for campaign and ethics reform… We should be taking more steps to reduce the impact of money in politics.”

Other Democratic candidates include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee Co. Exec. David Crowley, state Sen. Kelda Roys, state Rep. Francesca Hong, Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey.

Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann is the only other Republican candidate currently in the race.

Barnes and Tiffany have not had to file campaign finance reports yet as they entered after the last deadline. Candidates’ next campaign finance filing deadline is Jan. 15, 2026. Those reports will cover July 1, 2025 through Dec. 31, 2025.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany criticizes ‘billionaire loophole’ but voted for law that created it was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.